“Santa, CEO” began as a thought experiment. It was inspired by the question, How would Santa deliver all those toys on one evening? A tongue-in-cheek essay outlined the ridiculous speed, the size of the sled, and the effect on the reindeer team — all of which added up to an impossible situation.

Those essayists had it all wrong. I knew the answer was simple. Santa would delegate. And I would write his story.

What followed would be, I thought, a short novel, with Santa at the center.

I was wrong. It turns out, Santa presides over an empire, with 40,000 stand-in human “santas” (small “s” — there can be only one Chief); thousands of elves and human-sized half-elves (centuries old, and — for half-elves, born of a human / elf tryst — sterile); suppliers; retail outlets; manufacturing; a United Elves Union; and half a million reindeer ranched worldwide.

And all of it falling apart. Falling prey to business pressures, Wall Street speculators, mergers and acquisitions, labor issues, supply base challenges, international incidents (like the Argentinian government protesting against excess quantities of reindeer poop) — on and on, a tongue-in-cheek romp that started out on the humorous side but that ended in deeper, more serious explorations, of the nature of business, of magic, of what it means, fundamentally, to lose your way. Even if you are the CEO. Even as your legendary wife has left you. Because she doesn’t know you any more. And neither do you.

I’m rewriting his story now, decades later. Trying to get the magic right. But I’m not updating it for the post-20th Century world; no, not even in the face of smartphones and genAI and climate-induced wildfires and historic flooding rains and massive inequality and misinformation campaigns and wars and all the rest.

No, not because of all this. In spite of it. Because what I learned when listening to Santa and his cast, as he and they spun this tale, creating the pages of this book, was that each iteration of human-induced pain, suffering and environmental damage is but an intensification of the violent and short-sighted behaviors that have perched us on the very edge of the precipice.

Where “The Soul Broker” (far darker, far edgier) explores good and evil, “Santa” asks the simplest of questions — can we stop the world long enough to rediscover the magic? Or will we, like Santa, be brought to the brink of destruction — and, when there, which way will we go?

You are invited to lose yourself in the “Santa” journey. I am barely ahead of you.

We begin here: