Daily Cardinal to review Knickknack!

Yesterday afternoon, I sent off a handful of review requests to various community publications, including both UW-Madison student papers. Based on my lack of success in getting IVD reviewed, I was not expecting a response, if any, from these editors for a very long time. Imagine my astonishment when I was enroute to choir practice and I received the following email from an editor at the Daily Cardinal (the main UW paper):

Greg,

We would be interested in reviewing a copy of the novel, and having on the shelf to display in the office. If you could please send us a copy at 821 University Ave. Rm. 2142 Vilas hall, that would be fantastic.

Thank you much,

Jeremy Gartzke

What is interesting about this email is that when I submitted a request to get IVD reviewed in 2009, they wouldn't touch that book with a ten-foot poll. Obviously, the Cardinal is under new and presumably hipper management. All I know is that once that review hits the stands, Knickknack is destined to be a cult hit on campus! Because it takes me only 25 minutes to get to Vilas Hall from my home on the East Side, I have decided to deliver the review copy, which God willing, will arrive this week, to the Cardinal office in person. I think it will be interesting to poke my head in there for the first time in over seven years. (I used to write reviews and tech articles for them.)

Who says a book can't be judged by its cover?

"IVD" would be a bestseller by now if it weren't for two impediments: the title and the cover. By now, my publicist is getting tired of telling people what the acronym stands ffor and in hindsight the novel should have been called "Press Play and Die", which incidentally is the title of the screenplay. Really, the only marketable aspect of that cover is the exploding DVD. I'm not making that mistake with my Lovecraft homage "Knickknack". One of the best aspects of Authors' Den is that they let authors design the covers. My original notion was to draw the Knickknack's head crashing through the Carters' roof, but I decided to go with something a bit more subtle. Since my tagline is "This isn't kid stuff anymore", I envisioned a teddy bear perched on the top rung of the ladder leading to my attic, clutching a knife. Due to lighting issues, the final photo shows the bear on the attic carpet leaning up against the chimney and it still took over 30 shots before I got a good pic. When I showed it to Mom, she remarked, "That knife is too clean." Since I don't buy ketchup and I don't have time to make rhubarb sauce, the logical solution was to add a touch of jpeg blood and as long as I was at it, I gave the bear glowing red eyes. The tagline should have gone above the title, but the website wouldn't let me do that unless I wanted to make it part of the title. So, it wound up going in the photo, making it look like the entity tagged the chimney, but it's better than no tagline at all. The pic on the back is a church photo and looks light years ahead of that webcammy, nerdy shot on the back of "IVD". Time will tell if the effort I put into the cover of "Knickknack" pays off, but at least I can't use the cover as an excuse in the unlikely event this book doesn't rattle the horror community to the core. http://www.authorsden.com/gregprzywara