Blog Tour Flury: Journey of
the Snowman by Tony Bertauski
This is my stop during the blog tour for Flury:
Journey of the Snowman by Tony Bertauski. This blog tour is organized by Lola's
Blog Tours. The blog tour runs from 14 till 27 November, you can view the
complete tour schedule on the website of Lola’s Blog Tours: http://lolasblogtours.net/blog-tour-flury-journey-of-the-snowman-by-tony-bertauski/
So far this series contains 3 books, all books can be
read as standalones.
Flury: Journey of the
Snowman (Claus #3)
by Tony Bertauski
Genre: Science Fiction
Age category: Young Adult
Release Date: November 15, 2014
Blurb:
Life hasn’t been kind to Oliver Toye.
As if juvenile diabetes isn’t enough, he’s forced to
live with his tyrannical grandmother in a snow-bound house. He spends his days
doing chores and the nights listening to the forest rumble.
But when he discovers the first leather-bound journal,
the family secrets begin to surface. The mystery of his great-grandfather’s
voyage to the North Pole is revealed. That’s when the snowman appears.
Flury.
Magical and mysterious, the snowman will save Oliver
more than once. But when the time comes for Oliver to discover the truth, will
he have the courage? When he Flury needs him, will he have the strength? When
believing isn’t enough, will he save the snowman from melting away?
Because sometimes even magic needs a little help.
You can find Flury on Goodreads
You can buy Flury here:
Excerpt:
Something
has stepped onto the bridge.
Oliver
takes one giant leap off the tree, stumbling down the stones and into a thicket
of vines and branches. The wooden orb flies from his hand, disappearing into
the snow.
The
fallen tree groans behind him.
Oliver
scrambles to his feet, blindly sprinting through a world blurred with tears and
panic, pulling at ropey vines and tangled branches, tripping on stones.
Ignoring where he’s going or what’s in front of him, he pushes ahead—
And
slams into a wall.
If
it was a tree or a boulder, he’d be unconscious. Oliver bounces on his
backpack, flails to his knees, wiping the tears to see what’s in front of him:
two enormous stumps of snow.
Legs.
He
grinds the heels of his hands into his eyes.
Ten
feet tall.
Thick
body and long arms.
Head
like a turret.
A
snowman looks down at him.
It can’t be.
Branches
are breaking. The ground trembles. Before Oliver sees what’s coming, the
snowman sweeps him off the ground. The wind shrieks in Oliver’s ears, ripping
the stocking cap from his head. A wintry blast hardens his cheeks and fills his
head. Tree trunks fly past and disappear. Then the open field is all around.
The
world is spinning.
It
happens so fast that he’s unaware when the spinning stops or how he ends up
lying in the snow, the screech of the windmill nearby.
The
acrid taste of vomit stings his throat.
Oliver
looks up at the massive form. Again, he wipes his eyes. Twilight highlights the
hulking figure; snow like sparkling skin. It remains still and, for a moment,
sanity returns and he’s just an intricately carved figure of snow.
I am not an “it.”
Just
like that, reality tilts back into fantasy. The snowman is not an “it.” Oliver
thought that. No, he heard it. He thinks he heard it… “him”… think it…and
Oliver heard him think it.
Earlier books in this series:
Claus: Legend of the Fat Man (Claus #1)
by Tony Bertauski
Genre: Science Fiction
Age category: Young Adult
Release Date: June 19, 2012
Blurb:
Santa is not just about the presents.
See something deeper in this mythological figure. A story that’s meaningful.
Find a cast of gritty, compassionate and courageous characters that make the
journey to mythological fame despite their shortcomings and frailties. Pull
away the veil of magic, reveal the difficulties of love and loss and struggle
with life.
Because Santa Claus is much more than
presents.
In the early 1800s, Nicholas, Jessica
and Jon Santa attempt the first human trek to the North Pole and stumble upon
an ancient race of people left over from the Ice Age. They are short, fat and
hairy. They slide across the ice on scaly soles and carve their homes in the
ice that floats on the Arctic Ocean. The elven are adapted to life in the
extreme cold. They are as wise as they are ancient.
Their scientific advancements have
yielded great inventions -- time-stopping devices and gravitational spheres
that build living snowmen and genetically-modified reindeer that leap great
distances. They’ve even unlocked the secrets to aging. For 40,000 years, they
have lived in peace.
Until now.
An elven known as The Cold One has
divided his people. He’s tired of their seclusion and wants to conquer the
world. Only one elven stands between The Cold
One and total chaos. He’s white-bearded and red-coated. The Santa family will help him stop The Cold One. They will come to the aid of a legendary elven
known as… Claus.
One and total chaos. He’s white-bearded and red-coated. The Santa family will help him stop The Cold One. They will come to the aid of a legendary elven
known as… Claus.
You can find Claus on Goodreads
You can buy Claus here:
-
Kobo
Excerpt:
But
when the Santas exited the tent, the Inuit were gone. Completely. Like they’d
never existed. The dogs, the sleds, the tents were gone. Not a trace. No tracks
or evidence left behind.
And
the food, gone.
The
Santas were left with a few days of food in their packs.
“We
can’t…” Nicholas started. He didn’t finish.
Jessica
knew.
Nicholas
calculated their position. He thought they had reached latitude 85˚ N. The
North Pole was at 90˚.
“We
can reach it,” he said. “We can reach it.”
Jessica
nodded.
Jon
looked back. He knew there was no other answer. As he had always done, he
accepted what was in front of him. When his parents gave him the choice to stay
in London, he chose to come with them. When they gave him the choice to return
on the Alexander, he chose to come
with them.
“No
one will know we reached it,” Jon said.
“That’s
not why we came,” Nicholas said.
We follow truth, his
father always told him. My heart sings
for adventure, not for others to approve.
Jon
gathered his pack.
The
Santas began the final leg of their journey.
They
would end it together. They could think of no better way.
Jack: The Tale of Frost (Claus
#2)
by Tony Bertauski
Genre: Science Fiction
Age category: Young Adult
Release Date: October 17, 2013
Blurb:
Sura is sixteen years old when she
meets Mr. Frost. He’s very short and very fat and he likes his room very, very
cold. Some might say inhumanly cold. His first name isn’t Jack, she’s told. And
that’s all she needed to know.
Mr. Frost’s love for Christmas is
over-the-top and slightly psychotic. And why not? He’s made billions of dollars
off the holiday he invented. Or so he claims. Rumor is he’s an elven, but
that’s silly. Elven aren’t real. And if they were, they wouldn’t live in South
Carolina. They wouldn’t hide in a tower and go to the basement to make…things.
Nonetheless, Sura will work for this
odd little recluse. Frost Plantation is where she’ll meet the love of her life.
It’s where she’ll finally feel like she belongs somewhere. And it’s where
she’ll meet someone fatter, balder and stranger than Mr. Frost. It’s where
she’ll meet Jack.
Jack hates Christmas.
You can find Jack on Goodreads
You can buy Jack here:
-
Kobo
Excerpt:
Someone
is behind him, their arms around his chest. The arms have thick, curly
hair—funny, the light makes it look slightly green—that covers the back of the
hands and the fingers up to the first knuckle—
“What
a sec.” Jack wiggles his fingers. The hairy fingers wiggle. The arms are his.
He turns his hands over, studies the creases on his seasick-green palm,
scratches the curly whiskers on his chin, and slides his fingers through coarse
hair on his head.
Something
is wrong.
He’s
not supposed to have hair.
“You
needa shave, man,” the light-skinned warmblood says.
Jack
looks back and forth between the two warmbloods. With no sudden movements, he
lifts the cover and, “OH FOR THE LOVE THAT IS SNOWY AND COLD!”
The
same hair is on his chest, his legs. His enormous feet. And he’s naked as a polar
bear.
“This
place going downhill, man,” the dark-skinned warmblood says. “They letting
green people in now. Know what I’m saying?”
About the Author:
During the day, I'm a horticulturist. While I've spent
much of my career designing landscapes or diagnosing dying plants, I've always
been a storyteller. 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.
And I'm a big fan of plot twists.
You can find and contact Tony here:
Hosted by:
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please leave comment or suggestion