OK, getting closer. Screwed up a few things, accidentally deleted stuff, my html is rusty, etc. And the color scheme is not there (that blue on black needs some tweaking, if not trashing). And I put some placeholder sections as incentive for me to build them out, such as being way overdue in selling my Mom's book online.
And not sure about the Guestbook option, which seems so analog. My last experience with a Guestbook ended with me killing it on bakersfield.com!
But gotta experiment to get anywhere, right?