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Ah, December. My favorite time of year. The weather gets chillier, the mood of the country turns marginally warmer, and the Christmas carols — which have been playing in Target and Walmart for months now — suddenly have new meaning. (This particular year, I gave myself permission to do something I’ve never done before: listen to one of my own audiobooks. I couldn’t help it, I brought out A CHRISTMAS CAROL and plugged it in. Seemed the right time for it, right?) I’ve noticed that most people love the end of December, the week of Christmas itself, but for me, I truly love the time immediately after Thanksgiving, probably because it brings a lot of valuable things to mind.
First off, it’s when I reflect on all the things I’m truly thankful for this year.
Second, it’s when I start getting serious about what I intend to buy people for their gift that particular year.
And third, I’m reminded of my best-intentioned promises the previous January, all those New Year’s resolutions that have possibly slid by the wayside as we make our way back to winter again.
Well, with those three things in mind, I’ve decided it’s time I gave you all a gift, each and every one of you who subscribe to this newsletter and have been so good as to support our efforts here. But what could it be? What could possibly satisfy all the various folk who tune in to these blog posts with regularity? You don’t exactly all fit into one neat gift-giving category, after all. Some of you show up for the book news, others for the professional advice, and still others for the Share the Experience contest we’ve been running, lo these many months now. Could there possibly be something that would satisfy all those demographics?
Let’s just say that, after making my list, and checking it twice, I think I’ve found just the thing. Or things, plural.
Okay, no more suspense.
First off, for those of you who tune in for the books themselves, I’m offering our biggest discount of the year, should you find something you wish to download (or hardcopies, too, they’ll also qualify — the aforementioned A CHRISTMAS CAROL hardcopy makes quite the stocking stuffer). For the month of December only, anything and everything for sale here at Brick By Brick Audiobooks will have an automatic 15% discount. But I hasten to point out, if you’re in the mood to purchase an entire series, that will be in addition to our standard 10% trilogy discounts. So, if you want the entire PHOENIX LEGACY in one fell swoop, you’ll be getting it for 25% off. All you have to do is put “xmas2009” in the coupon box (without the quote marks) when you check out. (Hard copies will be automatically discounted. Also, the discount is only on the product itself; it doesn’t affect tax or shipping). Trust me, we probably won’t be running this kind of sale again.
Click here to check out all the titles on sale now!
But then there’s the rest of you, our other primary demographic, the folks who’ve been patiently tuning in for months now, hoping for news about the contest. What I’m giving YOU is… wait for it… a new employee.
There will be a slight pause while everyone says, “Huh?”
I’ll explain. There was no way of knowing at the start of the contest what kind of overwhelming response we’d have on it, and our judges have understandably needed to take quite a bit more time slogging their way through all those 400 submissions. Most of our judges are lucky if they listen to a few dozen submissions a year, but four hundred? Well, I’ve said all this before, and you’ve all been patient to the point of sainthood, so instead I’ll say this: there was also no way of knowing just how much time this contest would take away from my narrating duties – or even the other way around, how much time my narrating duties would take away from the contest. I’ve done my best to keep people apprised of the little news we’ve had to share, I’ve answered several hundred personal emails with info and encouragement, posted dozens of updates on FaceBook and Twitter, but that hasn’t brought us any closer to the goal: the end of the contest. What we need around here is someone who’s got the time to devote to this here enterprise, and thus far, that clearly hasn’t been me.
So say hello to Gina Smith, everyone. A longtime friend and my long-suffering manager, she’ll be handling several new aspects of the contest from now on. Her job will be simple: to interface with the judges, and hopefully light a fire under them to get this assessment period of the contest finished as soon as humanly possible. I’ll still be here, working away, but it’s clearly time to bring in the big guns. If you’ve got any questions about the contest or its status, drop Gina a note gina@scottbrickpresents.com.
This is long overdue. For those of you who’ve been following our publishing schedule here, as you’ve no doubt noticed, there hasn’t been any as of late. That’s because I couldn’t in good conscience keep a commercial enterprise going (albeit one based on love and a passion for great literature) while so many people were waiting so patiently. I’m not running this contest to make money – obviously, it’s just the opposite – so I’ve refrained as much as possible from trying to sell anything else, even the books we always offer. Just didn’t seem right. That said, however, there are also lots of people out there waiting for the next series to begin (and trust me when I say we’ve been acquiring some AWESOME titles, stuff I know you’re going to love), so it’s time to get going with that again. The sooner we’re done with the contest, the sooner you dedicated listeners will have more to hear.
One last note, for those of you who want faster contest updates than I’ve been able to provide here, I hope you’ll check in with me on FaceBook and Twitter. Posts here on the website are fairly labor- and time-intensive, but I can usually dash off instant responses on either of those social networks.
And having said all that, okay, it’s time to wrap up, everyone’s got Christmas shopping to do, I’m sure. My thanks to all of you for your patience. We started this contest together and we’ll finish it together. It hasn’t gone anywhere, it’s still going, and hopefully, with Gina’s help, we’ll have a resolution in the very near future. In the meantime, however, I hope you all have a fabulous holiday season. As Tiny Tim observed, God bless us, everyone.
Thanks for listening, and merry Christmas!
Scott Brick





