Christmas Presence: Prequel to the Claus Universe Series (A Science Fiction Adventure)
About this ebook
Van Holloway wanted one thing: survive a Christmas party without looking like a total disaster. Instead, he got dragged into a virtual game that came with glasses that weren't glasses and rules that weren't rules.
Oops.
Turns out there's a world inside the glasses. A place of clockwork toys, abandoned workshops, and secrets nobody ever meant to unwrap. Van and Charli (yes, the crush, yes, awkward) stumble out of the game with more than they bargained for. And something… stumbles out after them.
Now reality's misfiring like cheap Christmas lights. Something really wants back what they accidentally took from the game.
From droids in Santa suits to gingerbread rebels with attitude, Van and Charli are stuck in a war between belief and machinery, myth and madness. To make it home alive, they'll have to trust each other, cling to what's real, and take on the one enemy stronger than magic itself: doubt.
Christmas Presence: The Prequel launches the Claus Universe with sci-fi sparkle, fantasy mayhem, and enough heart to melt the North Pole. Perfect for fans of Stranger Things, The Santa Clause, and Ready Player One.
About the author
My writing career began with magazine columns, landscape design textbooks, and a gardening column at the Post and Courier (Charleston, SC). However, I've always fancied fiction.
My grandpa never graduated high school. He retired from a steel mill in the mid-70s. He was uneducated, but he was a voracious reader. I remember going through his bookshelves of paperback sci-fi novels, smelling musty old paper, pulling Piers Anthony and Isaac Asimov off shelf and promising to bring them back. I was fascinated by robots that could think and act like people. What happened when they died?
I'm a cynical reader. I demand the writer sweep me into his/her story and carry me to the end. I'd rather sail a boat than climb a mountain. That's the sort of stuff I want to write, not the assigned reading we got in school. I want to create stories that kept you up late.
Having a story unfold inside your head is an experience different than reading. You connect with characters in a deeper, more meaningful way. You feel them, empathize with them, cheer for them and even mourn. The challenge is to get the reader to experience the same thing, even if it's only a fraction of what the writer feels. Not so easy.
In 2008, I won the South Carolina Fiction Open with Four Letter Words, a short story inspired by my grandfather and Alzheimer's Disease. My first step as a novelist began when I developed a story to encourage my young son to read. This story became The Socket Greeny Saga. Socket tapped into my lifetime fascination with consciousness and identity, but this character does it from a young adult's struggle with his place in the world.
After Socket, I thought I was done with fiction. But then the ideas kept coming, and I kept writing. Most of my work investigates the human condition and the meaning of life, but not in ordinary fashion. About half of my work is Young Adult (Socket Greeny, Claus, Foreverland) because it speaks to that age of indecision and the struggle with identity. But I like to venture into adult fiction (Halfskin, Drayton) so I can cuss. Either way, I like to be entertaining.
And I'm a big fan of plot twists.
