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The 8th standalone novel in the Claus Universe. His real name is Christmas. It's embarrassing. He's been accepted into the Institute of Creative Mind, a prestigious institute for eccentrics, outliers, and gifted students. A school located in the middle of nowhere with two-hundred-year-old castles and a formidable stone wall. A school where Christmas is celebrated the entire year. Christmas trees, ornaments, and lights decorate the castles. Presents are given out every month, and students are pitted against each other in creative challenges. Chris soon finds out, however, the stakes are high.…mehr

Produktbeschreibung
The 8th standalone novel in the Claus Universe. His real name is Christmas. It's embarrassing. He's been accepted into the Institute of Creative Mind, a prestigious institute for eccentrics, outliers, and gifted students. A school located in the middle of nowhere with two-hundred-year-old castles and a formidable stone wall. A school where Christmas is celebrated the entire year. Christmas trees, ornaments, and lights decorate the castles. Presents are given out every month, and students are pitted against each other in creative challenges. Chris soon finds out, however, the stakes are high. The losers are expelled. He spends sleepless nights keeping up with his homework to not disappoint his parents and to keep a cruel guidance counsellor off his back. But this place is more than a demanding school for gifted students. Chris finds a clue in a textbook his first night, written in code. Run, run as fast as you can. When he's presented with an impossibility that defies all laws of physics and biology, anything becomes possible. Chris discovers students aren't chosen for their artistic abilities but because of a DNA test. He doesn't know what the school is really after. If he doesn't stop them, Christmas will end forever. Everything depends on his courage. And a strange little friend.
Autorenporträt
I grew up in the Midwest where the land is flat and the corn is tall. The winters are bleak and cold. I hated winters. I always wanted to write. But writing was hard. And I wasn't very disciplined. The cold had nothing to do with that, but it didn't help. That changed in grad school. After several attempts at a proposal, my major advisor was losing money on red ink and advised me to figure it out. Somehow, I did. After grad school, my wife and my two very little children moved to the South in Charleston, South Carolina where the winters are spring and the summers are a sauna (cliche but dead accurate). That's when I started teaching and writing articles for trade magazines. I eventually published two textbooks on landscape design. I then transitioned to writing a column for the Post and Courier. They were all great gigs, but they weren't fiction. That was a few years later. My daughter started reading before she could read, pretending she knew the words in books she propped on her lap. My son was a different story. In an attempt to change that, I began writing a story with him. We made up a character, gave him a name, and something to do. As with much of parenting, it did not go as planned. But the character got stuck in my head. He wanted out. A few years later, Socket Greeny was born. It was a science fiction trilogy that was gritty and thoughtful. That was 2005. I have been practicing Zen since I was 23 years old. A daily meditator, I wanted to instill something meaningful in my stories that appeals to a young adult crowd as well as adult. I hadn't planned to write fiction, didn't even know if I had anymore stories in me after Socket Greeny. Turns out I did.