Welcome to Before Christmas Press

Our first release

has been honored by

Writer's Digest!

Runner-up of 400+ entries

Mainstream Fiction

Writer's Digest

14th annual International Self-published Book Awards

"I would recommend it to both young and old. Elements of its story recall C.S. Lewis and other classics, but it is also an original story, vividly imagined and illustrated in the author's narrative. ... The author is a great storyteller."

Writer's Digest judge

Beauty and the Boy:

an old man's story for a dying boy

by Steve Hays

For many generations people trapped in hideous lives have loved the story of the handsome prince trapped in the body of a beast, who fell in love with a girl named Beauty and spent his life longing for Beauty to love him back.

Image of the Beast from Beauty and the Beast

Beauty and the Boy is the tale of an old storyteller and a dying teenage boy, whom the old man offers the only gift he can: a story. It is the story of a sixteen-year-old boy on a weekend camping trip who slips through an invisible portal into a world of terror and hopelessness, where he discovers beauty and becomes a hero. Beauty and the Boy is a mythic fantasy--serious, dark, and hopeful in the tradition of Plato, Tolkein, and C.S. Lewis, a tradition that believes stories can reveal truth and only truth can bring joy and healing.

269 pages, Smyth stitched, case bound (hardback). $24.95