The Greatest Gift is a Child's Smile.
art by Ash Collins
Santa Clown delivered his gifts with a joke and a laugh until one Christmas Eve he disappeared into the night and was replaced by his brother Santa Claus. Santa Clown was forgotten, lost in the mists of old Christmas's. Now there is trouble in Santa's Workshop! Saboteurs are wrecking the production lines and demanding the return of the Forgotten One; "Shoot Santa Claus down, Bring back the Santa Clown".
Mr Drole, the long suffering Head Troll, is trying desperately to meet the Christmas Eve deadline whilst hunting the trouble-makers and sorting out his messed up love life; can the gifts be delivered as usual or is this the Christmas when it all falls part? Whatever happens, Christmas will never be the same again.
A searing Christian-Marxist fantasy analysing rampant Christmas commercialism, a critique of unsustainable models of growth and delivery and a warning against intra-species relations or just a very silly story about Elves?
Get an eCopy 
Get a Paperback 
Waterstones
Olympia Publishers
Get the Complete Trilogy
Author's Notes
This story came out of a discussion with my youngest daughter Maheen, she had to write a Santa Claus story for homework and we started talking about what she could do. We started discussing other possible Santas and the phrase Santa Clown came up, I knew instantly this was something different and very soon the whole ethos behind him fell into place.
The concept of a Santa who also delivered jokes, as well as gifts, was a very strong one and I further developed his backstory, of why he had left. The idea of the clown who cried is well known, so I rolled that into his character; his stroy arc was reflective of the late Spike Milligan (a brilliant comic genius who suffered severe depression all his life). This, together with unrest in Santa's workshop, was the perfect plot to poke fun at the commercialisation of Christmas; throw in some love interest and the stage was set.
Art for this was by Ash Collins who did some really brilliant work in the character design; the cover features Santa Clown based on an old Spike Milligan picture.
