The official blog of Denise M. Baran-Unland, author. Discover her books for all ages at bryonyseries.com.
So on Monday, Ed Calkins, Steward of Tara, sent me the following photo and text:
Ed: Look at the name. It has to be Henry Matthews. I think he bit my wife last night.
Me: Oh no! (Or, "oh, yes" if that will help with marketing).
So...
Is Henry still around, organizing pub crawls?
Could this be one of Lord Girard's lingering projects?
What do you think?
My BryonySeries super fan recently pulled over on a highway to snap this picture of Cornell Ditch in Indiana.
She sent it to me over the weekend. It certainly made me smile.
The crazy coincidence about "Cornell Ditch" is that supernatural super sleuth Cornell Dyer had his motor home stolen in Indiana at the end of his"Eerie Lake" book. He then trudges down the hot highway in the opening pages of "Never Robbers."
Apparently, these chapters in Cornell's life are considered historic and marked with a sign.
For your amusement today, here are excepts from those chapters.
"Eerie Lake"
Four hours later and enjoying his favorite Wagnerian opera
on his favorite classical music radio station, Cornell was far, far away from
Marbleheart and pondering where he might find his next supernatural mystery.
Up ahead,
he saw a car leaning to one side. Two of its tires were flat. Steam was rising
from its hood.
After
parking his motor home safely at the side of the road, Cornell shut off the
engine, grabbed his all-purpose fix-up-a-car magic wand, and lumbered to the
stranded motorists.
Immediately
a snow gun jammed into his side. The
wand dropped. Cornell froze. He caught a flash of the gun as his assailant
rushed away.
The side of
the gun read: Made in Toyland.
Amateurs, Cornell
thought.
He figured
a spell from such a gun would not last long. And he was right.
He spun
around in time to see his motor home speeding away.
In the
back, a girl with curly red hair held up a sign.
The sign
read: HELP ME!
Cornell
waved to show he understood.
"I'll
help you!" he cried. "Just as soon as I have a snack!"
With that,
he headed to the broken-down car and began rummaging for food.
"Never Robbers"
Cornell Dyer felt very miserable indeed.
For over two hours, he'd trudged down the dusty shoulder of Highway 52, blazer slung over his shoulder, in pursuit of his motor home and the thieves who drove away with it.
He spun around in time to see his motor home
speeding away.
In the back, a girl with curly red
hair held up a sign.
The sign read: HELP ME!
The blinding sun
stung Cornell's eyes, even as sweat rolled into them from his forehead, and
scorched his bare forearms.
The top of his damp
curly black head practically sizzled in the heat.
His stomach
rumbled. The jelly snack cakes and cheese curls he'd rummaged out of the glove
box of the thieves' broken-down car were only a memory.
His dry mouth
tasted like a wad of cotton. The bottle of cream soda he’d retrieved from under
the car's front seat was also a memory.
How dare anyone,
much less a group of anyones, steal the motor home belonging to the great
Professor Cornell Dyer, supernatural super sleuth of supernatural mysteries?
Just wait until he
caught up with them. Just wait.
His motor home had
better be intact. Not not one scratch. Not one dent. Not one fizzy potion or
sandwich cookie missing.
He'd long passed
the Indiana border. But the farther he walked, the stranger the landscape
became.
No cars zoomed
past.
No people on
bicycles whizzed past.
No joggers zipped
past.
The air was
strangely silent. No hum of an airplane or twitter of birds.
Cornell reached
inside his pocket for his enchanted everywhere map and brought up gloop.
The gloop smelled
bad and smeared the lines of the map into all the wrong directions.
Cornell had
forgotten, again, to throw away the old mayonnaise packets. Well, when one is
busying solving important supernatural mysteries, one cannot remember
everything.
He shoved the map
back inside his pocket and felt it squoosh against the mayonnaise. But Cornell
did not believe in littering.
Then he squatted,
dragged his fingers across a grassy patch to remove the smelly goop, and
resumed his trudge.
He hoped the girl
was unharmed, but she, at least, was inside his motor home. Cornell trusted the
motor home to protect her.
As soon as Cornell
reached a town, he would go straight to the police. He would report the theft,
and he would report the kidnapping.
If he had known
thieves would steal his motor home, he would not have left Larry the Llama in
Marbleheart.
If he still had
Larry, he would not be hot, tired, and still walking.
But, no, the llama
wanted to stay with Mrs. Horsehair. Ungrateful beast.
The view up ahead
blurred into squiggles.
Cornell stopped.
He shaded his eyes.
He squinted through
the sunlight.
And then he
blinked. Was that a lake?
Yes, that was
definitely a lake, shimmering irresistibly, just past the highway.
Back in the early days of this BryonySeries blog, I used to post an occasional "'Bryony' Moment of the Day" blog.
These blogs referenced chance encounters with experiences that had a "Bryony" feel to them.
Last week, I received this fun email from a fellow WriteOn Joliet member Ken McGee. Here is what he sent:
Denise, I was going through the new Emmy book and read this.
Denise, I added the title Bryony to the scene. And it did make a lasting impression. You make me aspire (fancy word, huh?) to become a better writer.
Well, making anyone aspire to be better at anything makes me feel better than a hundred references to my books.
But two can play that game.
So Ed Calkins, Steward of Tara, is still insisting that Munsonville, Munsonville in the BryonySeries is, if not a real place, then based off a real place.
He did some digging and decided I must have based it off Hudsonville, Michigan, which was also founded by one man buying up a parcel of land.
I insisted it's only a coincidence.
But then I wondered...how many more coincidences might I find?
So I started searching online for some of the pretend places in the BryonySeries and came up with these and passed them to Ed and Nancy Calkins for their "road trip."
Michigan has a village named Beulah, but not a county
...a person with the same name as one of the main characters.
In the early days of this blog, I'd have occasional posts called "Bryony Moment of the Day."
These would be those unusual coincidences that line up with the BryonySeries.
For instance, when interviewing one woman named Melissa, she told me her younger brother was Brian.
Another time, I wound up interviewing a woman by the name of Julie Drake. Of course, I had to tell her about the fictional Jule Drake. Even more wild, her husband's name is David.
We had a lunch a few times (we are overdue, thanks COVID) and still talk on social media.
So yesterday, someone who is reading Visage said he just learned a John Simotes works out at the same gym he does and then added:
Haha I mean what are the chances of that? Literally reading the book he's in and then this pops up this morning...coincidences happen of course, but the empathic/mystic sides of my brain are wondering what this could signify?
