Log: After profound loss, a weary writer encounters a wise cricket who guides him on a journey through grief, wonder, and memory—leading to the discovery of Santa Land, a hidden realm where love, imagination, and the soul’s true purpose intertwine. A fairy tale for grownups, Santa Land explores the enduring questions: Who am I? Why do I exist? And how do we love forward into a world aching for hope.
Santa Land Novel
Santa Land is a layered literary novel written in a tone reminiscent of The Little Prince or Winnie the Pooh for grownups. Told through a blend of magical realism and emotional honesty, it follows Tom Sanders, a successful novelist stuck in grief after the death of his mother. Struggling with memory, identity, and time itself, Tom retreats into isolation, unable to finish the book his publisher is waiting for.
When a mysterious cricket appears, seemingly sent from beyond, he begins to unravel a deeper truth and writes Santa Land, a Christmas tale filled with gentle magic, spiritual insight, and redemptive warmth. In it, "The Beloved" wakes up in the snow, and with the cricket’s help, sets off on a quest to rediscover true identity and purpose. It is a layered allegory; one that invites discovery with each turn of the page.
The novel is structurally recursive, with Santa Land nested within Tom’s own unfolding. It explores themes such as grief, love, childhood memory, identity, and the transformational nature of storytelling.
It is a meditation on the significance of storytelling as a way to process reality, and the healing power of understanding one’s own experiences. The language is intentionally simple, poetic, and resonant; designed to be both soothing and profound.
To support the book’s eventual release and cultivate a listening audience, I launched The Santa Land Podcast, where each episode includes a read-aloud chapter followed by a short commentary segment exploring the chapter’s emotional and philosophical themes, alongside reflections on the creative process itself. The podcast is gaining momentum and already attracting a thoughtful, engaged audience. You can listen at SantaLandPodcast.com, or on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Santa Land is an unconventional novel in both structure and tone. It’s written in the spirit of reading aloud to a child — simple in language, but layered in meaning. The voice moves between clarity and abstraction with purpose: to allow metaphor and simile to evolve into analogy, and for allegory to invite the reader inward.
There are recursive layers to the narrative that are intentionally crafted to echo the nature of memory, grief, and identity. The story is told through the perspective of a mysterious cricket; but one of the book’s quiet truths is that the cricket is also the cursor on the page. At another level, the cricket becomes Tom’s voice — a part of him narrating his own journey under the guise of detachment. And stepping back again, it is my voice as the author, creating a world described by the cricket but lived through the Beloved and the other characters in the real world and in the fantasy written by Tom.
There are embedded symbols, secrets, and thematic resonances that reveal themselves with each layer — much like memory itself. This structure is not experimental for its own sake, but serves the core intention of the work: to provide a soulful, gently guided experience of self-discovery, remembrance, and transformation.
My request is simply that you approach it with curiosity, and know that what may seem abstract at first is part of a deliberate unfolding. Just chaos tends to order.
With gratitude,
Tony
Status
Manuscript Completed - April 2025
Podcast Launched - April 2025
Copy Editing - August 2025 - September 2025
The book is currently being edited and we welcome inquiries from publishers and literary agents. A children's book version is in the works as well as a film adaptation.
Tony Felice
Writer. Artist. Structural Philosopher.
Tony Felice is a writer, artist, and structural philosopher whose work bridges the poetic and the scientific, blending storytelling, metaphysics, and wonder into immersive worlds. A summa cum laude graduate of Arizona State University’s College of Engineering, Tony’s interdisciplinary background spans mathematics, science, and communication, which he weaves into narratives that explore love, perception, and the architecture of reality.
As founder and President of The Felice Agency, he has guided brands and movements with the belief that the deepest strategies are rooted in care, curiosity, and human connection. His creative work—most notably Santa Land—is infused with his lifelong fascination for the spaces between things: the moment before knowing, the vibration before form, the love before the word.
Tony’s journey has been shaped by extraordinary experiences, from near-death awakenings to quiet mornings listening to crickets, all of which deepen his commitment to living—and writing—without reservation. He believes every story is, at its heart, a love story, and every question worth asking begins with “Why?” He lives in San Diego with his husband, Tim, and their small but mighty dog, Obie Wan Cannoli.
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