Speaking of blurbs, I also got a look at the (almost) final front and back cover design for the book — and it's gorgeous. I was thrilled by the integration of my photo (overlooking the Hula Valley), the title and subtitle fonts, and the four wonderful blurbs from two academics and two fiction writers... all of whom I deeply admire for their own writing and thinking.
Thanks to ECW Press for the hard work — and lengthy consultations — to make this cover the best possible advertisement for the prose within.
N.B.: One final change made after I saw this draft was removing the barbed wire on the spine, which we felt didn't suit the (mostly) hopeful spirit of the manuscript.
And so it begins... the anxiety over book reviews!
With the official launch of Chasing Utopia still two months away, the book got its first early review from Kirkus, the influential trade magazine... and I was relieved (nay, thrilled) that the reviewer liked the book.
Read the full review here. If nothing else, it gives me something to salve my ego when the inevitable lukewarm or antagonistic reviews start to come in... I've got no illusions that everyone will share Kirkus's opinion about a book on a topic as deeply divided as the history of Israel.
And I look forward to adding the final line from the review to my collection of blurbs: "An eye-opening look at an Eden of eco-villages gradually giving way to economic exigencies."
Sounds good to me.
