BryonySeries Back-to-School Special

Each month, I spend a few hours updating the calendar on the BryonySeries website.

Hidden under each date are links to games, crafts, music, activities, science experiments, and  recipes that pick up themes to one or more of the BryonySeries books.

This month, we are leaving the July calendar intact in case you need to catch up - and offering a "back-to-school" book special instead.

Here's how it works.

Buy any print book in our BryonySeries bookstore and receive a second book of equal or lesser value free.

No limits. However...

For each free book, you must first purchase a book of equal or greater value.

And you must purchase the "paid" book from the BryonySeries bookstore, not Amazon or any other third party seller.

After you make your purchase, email bryonyseries@gmail.com and then provide the title (s) of each free book you'd like, along with your complete name and complete address. We will send the books to you.

This offer is good until Aug. 31, 2022.

Happy reading!

 

Illustration by Kathleen Rose Van Pelt for "Bryony."

Randomness

Here are some bits and pieces of random thoughts on this extremely busy week:

We are moving in less than three weeks; at least one of us will be working all through the move (me!); and we have less than three weeks to break down and pack up two townhouses. Yikes!

I am behind in scheduling routine doctor's appointments, and these are more numerous than my social calendar. A sign of getting old?

Faith, my calico, has suddenly decided she's rather sleep on my desk chair or waaaaay up high by my pillows, not on the specially reserved spot for her on my bed, at the foot, with her own pillow. Spoiled? Spooked?

Shipping is free on the BryonySeries store and most likely will continue to be free until after we move. Only print is available for now (for eBooks, you must still go to Amazon), so if one or two or more titles appeal to you, now is the time to order and/or stock up..

Why does coffee taste the best early in the morning?

Uncle Barty is in town.

Speaking of uncles, I received the sweetest birthday card from my Uncle Carl in New York. He is eighty-one, and the front of the card reads: "A niece like you adds so much beauty, joy, and love to life." The inside reads: Celebrating all there is to love about you and the incredible difference you make in our family and in so many people's lives." I shall treasure this for a very long time.

My ears feel pretty good today. And if I don't remember to cancel the appointment with my primary today to have those ears addressed (I made an appointment for Friday and wound up in quick care over the weekend), I will be paying a no-show charge. Better put "cancel Dr. Rogers" in my calendar.

I have just under 8,000 emails in my AOL account, and if I didn't have email that needs answering (such as anthology submissions from WriteOn Joliet members), I'd delete all of them and just start fresh. Why does email pile up faster than one can respond to it?

Finally, we did not swap out the recipe on the Sue's Diner page yet and probably won't until this weekend. 

So if you'd like to check out the current one, which is authentically from the nineteenth century, apears in Bryony, and is most likely unlike anything you've ever eaten, go here.

Reminder...

 ...in honor of the new and finally fully fuctioning BryonySeries print store, we are offering FREE shipping until at least the end of June (and potentially longer) on all print books currently listed in the store.

We are only offering it on print because that is the only part of the store that is currently in place. For eBooks, you still have to order from Amazon.

Also, since we posted our "recipe of the week" on the Sue's Diner page rather late last week, we are leaving it up one more day. Check it out here.

And finally (if only to prove I can write short posts), you might want to check out our BryonySeries calendar, which has been up and running for close to a year.

This has gone through many revisions by Timothy, so that the the visitor (YOU) could have a great experience and so that the creator (ME) could stop screwing it up behind the scenes.

But what you'll find there (again, ALL Timothy's idea) are events (when we have them again) and great activity suggestions based on the various books in the series. 

Timothy set the calendar up like a vintage Advent calendar, with all the fun of, "What's behind door number..."

Some activities are aimed at youg kids, some at adults, but MOST are aimed at any age, so old and young can enjoy together.

But behind every date lies an event. And all the events on the current calendar will change next month.

For instance, check out today's event.

And have a great Monday.

BryonySeries Store Issues Appear to be Fixed

So after the great announcment that the BryonySeries store (print only right now) was finally up and running - the culmination of a trhee-year vision for Timothy, two years of figuring out how to do it, and a year of piecing it together - we had a few glitches.

Strangely, all of the issues but one were happening on the mobile site only and only with a couple selected titles.

But Timothy spent a little time with the store yesterday, and appears to have vanquished all technology bugs.

So today's post may be bad news for anyone expecting a new recipe from Sue's Diner today.

But that should be very good news for anyone who wanted to try the 1856 cruller recipe and hadn't gotten around to it yet. We are keeping the recipe up one more day.

And for those who had asked where we archive the recipes, the simple answer is: we don't.

Many of the recipes are appear in the first BryonySeries cookbook: Memories in the Kitchen: Bites and Nibbles from "Bryony." 

This is a collection of Victorian and 1970s recipes (all of the food references that appear in Bryony, the first book in the young adult "drop of blood" trilogy), and this cookbook is a perpetual fundraiser for Big Brothers Big Sisters of Will and Grundy Counties.

That means, all proceeds are donated to BBBS. We only hold back enough money for the base cost of replacing the books.

So the featured recipes are to give you "a taste" of what's to come.

The remaining recipes are recipes Rebekah plays with in the kitchen and decides to share with readers. They may appear in a cookbook one day - or they may not.

The above-mentioned books (print only) can be ordered from the BryonySeries store. Until at least June 15, we are waiving all shipping costs on all titles.

For eBooks (right now), you still have to order from Amazon.

Either way, our hope is that each book provides you with a unqiue and delightful experience.

Have a great Monday! 

Just Released: "The Phoenix"

The first book in the new BryonySeries "Limbo" trilogy was just released a couple of days ago.

The book is called The Phoenix, and you can buy it through the brand new, fully functioning, BryonySeries store.

Shipping is free on all BryonySeries products until at least June 15.

Here is the summary of The Phoenix:

"Late 1895 in Munsonville, Michigan is all about survival and rebuilding: for the fishing village still reeling from deadly tragedies, for twelve-year-old Marie Clare who is grounded at Munsonville Inn with her dying father, and for two newly turned vampires foraging their meals from a dwindling supply of villagers.

"But to rise strong and unscathed, some will be sacrificed along the way. Who gets to live and thrive? And who decides?"

Enjoy!

"Rejoicing in the Streets"

That was Timothy's catchphrase for the last few weeks regarding the BryonySeries store.

You see, a couple of years ago, Timothy asked for the logins for the BryonySeries website. He was taking a marketing class and wanted to tweak the colors on the site.

He wound up giving the site a complete overhaul that he himself has overhauled more than once in his efforts to refine his vision.

We've had a "pardon our dust" sign on our home page all that time. But just so you know, the site has remeained up, operational, and fairly functional all this time.

Now one of Timothy's visions was to build a store.

Not just a listing of books that link to Amazon or another third party site.

Not just a listing of books that link to the pre-built store on the website's development service that one can personalize.

But a fully functional, unique to the BryonySeries store with payments managed by PayPal.

Sarah had wanted to build such a store when she created the first version of the website in 2010 but the site didn't have the capability, and we didn't have a way (at the time) to manage fulfillment. 

Now Timothy doesn't know code, so a lot of planning went into that store.

The store may not look complicated, but that's the point. The complication should be behind the scenes for a smooth user experience.

But on the back end, the checking out of each book has many, many layers - and many, many many hours of Timothy's time invested into it. I caught a glimpse of that when I popped into his house on Sunday to check his progress.

In fact, with most of the heavy lifting of the store done by Sunday, it still took Timothy nearly an entire day to completely finish it.

Through it all, he kept saying, "There will be rejoicing in the streets when it's done" or "There will be dancing in the streets when it's done."

For those of you reading this post, you who have already ordered off the site over the past few months - well, you might be scratching your heads at the announcment of a live store. Wasn't the store already live, you may wonder.

But the caveat with using this website building service is that you can't just publish one page at a time. Each time another page was updated (the calendar, for instance, or Sue's Diner "recipe of the week"), all the pages republished - including all of Timothy's behind-the-scenes work.

This left a fragmented store where some items worked, some descriptions went to other books, some books were overpriced, some were underpriced - all of which needed addressing on our end when a customer reached out or an order was processed.

Timothy spent an entire day this holiday weekend addressing all of it. 

Please let that sink into your head a moment. 

He gave up an entire day of his holiday weekend for this store.

The result is that the store went live Sunday night. On Monday, we only had one glitch, and the customer reached out to me, so we were able to addresss it.

In celebration of our live, fully operational store, we are waiving shipping costs for any books ordered through at least June 15. 

I say "at least" because some time after that, Timothy or Rebekah will add the shipping charges part of the store.

And that will be based on their time to get back into the back end of the store and add the charges portion of the transactions.

I should also mention that only the print version of the store is live. We are still working on the eBook and audion sections of the store - because we also have two audio books ready to go.

But in the meantime, enjoy this picture of Daniel (my youngest) carrying Timothy on his back through the parking lot of Louis Joliet Mall in March 2017, when they were, indeed, rejoicing in the streets.

Happy shopping!

For the store, visit bryonyseries.com/general-store.

To start your journey into our website (for all journeys into the BryonySeries start in Munsonville), visit the landing page at bryonyseries.com and work you way into the store.

Either way, enjoy! 

And please reach out if something is off. For Timothy also has a "contact support" feature at the bottom of each page.

One Page Nearly Done

No, not another book (although I have four in various stages of loose production).

This past weekend, Timothy finished the basic setup of the BryonySeries store.

This means he completed a design he liked, added all titles, and then linked them to Amazon.

The overall goal is to link the store to my PayPal account and run special prices, but we're having a few issues with that.

If you're curious, here is the direct link: https://www.bryonyseries.com/copy-of-general-store.

He is still tweaking other pages, merging some, and creating subpages for a cleaner, more streamlined experience.

Sue's Diner and Fetes and Feasts (events calendar) are nearly done, too, so feel free to browse.

Have a great Tuesday, readers, writers, and BryonySeries fans! :)