For Shireen, trudelphi, California Peggy and others: ALMOST there, and what a sendoff!
My book should be ready by the end of October, maybe before. The technical aspects of the printing are the sticking points, but the rest of it is ready.
The big news is: I decided to risk getting it reviewed by Kirkus reviews in New York. They're expensive, and they're known for being cranky if your book lands with a reviewer who finds it wanting. To be fair to disappointed authors, they give authors the option of keeping their review secret, not for public eyes. This way, if they try again with another book, potential readers, agents, whatever, don't have a negative track record that might cause rejection in advance.
I knew this was a risk, and though I have great plugs by such known people as Stan Lee, Adrian Cronauer and Howard Dean, none of them are known for boosting sales of quirky novels.
Instead of the lukewarm review I was fearing/expecting from Kirkus, here are some (typical!!) excerpts of their review:
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Likable, unambitious Everyman Robert Packard (“like Hewlett-Packard, but without the money”) is happy enough with his life at the beginning of (DFW)’s strange, uproarious novel......
He can scarcely believe his luck (“Things like this happen to characters made up by Stan Lee,” he thinks, “not to me”), and he quickly decides to up the ante and kill two birds with one stone: He’ll not only obtain more valuable bottles of wine from the past, but he’ll do it by meeting one of his all-time favorite historical personages: U.S. president—and well-known wine enthusiast—Thomas Jefferson.............
At first the scheme seems to be working perfectly, but (DFW) soon complicates it in half a dozen ways that all flow naturally from the plot’s central gimmick, and each new complication is funnier than the last—and all of them add up to a pitch-perfect comic novel.
Enthusiastically recommended.
A hilarious time-travel shaggy dog story.
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OK, I was indeed trying to put in some humor, although not to make it the central theme, but I'll take it. "Pitch-perfect? Enthusiatically recommended????" Bring it on, baby. It may not help me sell a single book, but I'll savor that one for a while!!
= new reply since forum marked as read
You know I'll be wanting an autographed copy as soon as it's available..........and I insist on paying for it!
Major congratulations!
And I will feel forever thankful that I got a sneak preview of it.
Congratulations! 
You have written a wonderful book. That should be obvious to anyone who reads it - even a critic. Here's to Kirkus Reviews for giving you some of the recognition you deserve.
Well-deserved!!
many more.
So great to hear good news for one of the "good guys". Congrats!
Great blurbs!!!
I hope it's a blockbuster! 
