Calkins Day 2023: A Few Photos

The BryonySeries held its annual Calkins Day celebration on Feb. 13 at The Book Market in Crest Hill.

We even had the parade to prove it (and we will prove it, as soon as Rebekah uploads the video to the BryonySeries YouTube page).

 If you don't know what Calkins Day is, read this post and then read this post. And here are three good reasons why you should celebrate Calkins Day next year, too, read this post.

This year, we built our celebration around local authors and independent authors in order to help grow Ed's library of such authors and provide a little exposure for these authors.

You see, Ed is a real person and a ruthless dictator/Irish vampire in this book, this book, and this book in the BryonySeries, is also an author in the series. After he published his first novel, he joined WriteOn Joliet and was/is overjoyed to meet so many authors on the local level and buy and read their books.

So authors were invited to gift Ed Calkins, Steward of Tara with one of their books. In turn, they could take home any one of five books Ed either wrote or appeared in. 

Readers (anyone else who hadn't written a book) could talk Ed out of a book. One woman, who hadn't written a book yet, gifted Ed with her one large writing project: her dissertation. And it turned out Ed had some interest and knowledge on the topic and was thrilled to receive it.

Over the next few week, I will spotlight all authors who gifted their books to Ed in separate blogs, along with links to their books (if applicable) and on social media. So do watch for them. You just might find your new favorite book.

I am also working on a Calkins Day 2023 on the Bryony Facebook page. But the program kept freezing. At 10:30 last night, I gave up for the night.

But I am not getting up. I'm going to be "ruthless" about it.

When Ed Calkins distributes candy to the guests at The Book Market. When Ed held is parade in a warehouse in Joliet that distributed newspapers, he would have another worker pull his around on a pallet jack "float" while Ed tossed candy to the other workers.

Also pictured are WriteOn Joliet members Duanne Walton, Colleen Robbins, and Janet Staley, owner of The Book Market.

Helen Hicks, who is gradually branching into creative writing, gifted Ed with a copy of her dissertation.

After learning about Calkins Day from a Yorkville writers group, author C.D. White drove down from Kendall County with her husband to gift Ed with a copy of one of her children's books and take home a BryonySeries book.

As C.D. White chats with Ed, Janet Staley and Ed's wife Nancy Calkins chat in the background. It was Nancy's first trip to The Book Market and Ed was eager for her to see it and meet Janet.

Colleen and Janet take some time to catch up. Colleen is a founding member of WriteOn Joliet and author of quite a few books, which are for sale on Amazon.

Author Lindsay Lake publishes most of her books on Kindle only. And Ed has gifted friends and family with the one book she published in print (although I'm not find the print version online, but it does exist) because he loved it so much.

So Lindsay could only do one thing...

...gift Ed with a hard copy from one of her novels, complete with comments from one of her friends.

Sue Midlock found a fun "read" at The Book Market on Calkins Day: a parody cookbook called 50 Shades of Chicken.

Ed Calkins poses with author Dale Hansen, who gifted Ed with his devotional on living with Parkinson's. The photo where Ed turned the book around to see the cover is for another post about Dale and his books.

Nancy and Rebekah also spent some time catching up, since they had not seen each other since WriteOn Joliet's anthology release party in December.

Ed Calkins, who's first writing love is poetry, peruses a book by Chicago poet Alan Hines, who drove down from Chicago to gift TWO copies of his book (one to Ed, one to me), after learning about Calkins Day from a flyer at The Book Market.

Alan not only took home a free book, he actually bought a copy of this one.

I will share more about Alan Hines and his few dozen poetry books he's published on another post.

Timothy sets out the cheese and crackers he brought for the event while Daniel looks on. Rebekah made Irish soda bread and cookies. 

We also served some very special "Ed Calkins" cookies, which I will share on another post.

The captions are center aligned because Blogger is defaulting to that. Just so you know.

Duanne and Ed share a hug in honor of the day.

Ed and local author/photographer Mauverneen post for a photo. Ed already had a copy of Mauverneen's first book. So she just came out for the fun.

I also bought a nearly complete set of the books written and published by Tom Hernandez, WriteOn Joliet's co-leader, who is battling cancer. Janet rings up the sale and Rebekah waits to pay.

Author Diana Estell poses with Ed before she leaves. Diana gifted Ed with a copy of her book, too.

And then Ed gave Diana a big "goodbye" hug while Colleen and Nancy look on.

Nancy and Lindsay give each other goodbye hugs, too. Calkins Day is a day to celebrate laughter, imagination, and generosity. We certainly hit those notes, I think.

And, finally, no Calkins Day celebration would be complete without updating our Ed Cakins/Bertrand the Mouse photo. I'm adding the caption here because Blogger won't let me add it below the photo.

More photos and author information to come!