I was riding my bicycle home the other day, and a neighbour called after me, “I’m on page 148!” My, this is fun. I have been getting all kinds of feedback – a bit not so good, from a friend who told me the book was well written but the story didn’t engage him, and a cousin in New York who wrote, “So many details!!!” I’m glad people are honest. But mostly the reviews have been positive. My son’s friend Tristan, who’s 21, told me he was at the part where the chick was crazy for Jacob Gordin. “Been there, done that,” he said.

I was thrilled to hear that Syracuse University Press has sold most of this print run and is considering another. So that’s pretty good, considering that there haven’t been any reviews yet, except one on-line which gives the book three stars out of four and then ends, “If you have a short attention span, give this one a miss.” (It might just as well have said, “So many details!!!”)

In the last week I’ve sent out four pieces to magazines and newspapers. Three were sitting there, nearly done, in my files, but I hadn’t had the chance to finish them while dealing with the albatross, no, the wonderful book which is now flying on its own. And one – I went for a walk Sunday morning, had an idea, mulled it over on the way home, sat down, wrote it, sent it out. Now that’s the way it should be – no more of this twenty-five years of research, all those @#$%&* details.