A Slight Delay and the First Review

Grant us a brief delay; impulse in everything is but a worthless servant.
Caecilius Statius

Critics are sentinels in the grand army of letters, stationed at the corners of newspapers and reviews, to challenge every new author.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


Publishers, like the rest of us, are subject to timetable shifts due to circumstances beyond their control. Meet Me Under the Ceiba was scheduled for release on September 30, but for various reasons—none of which are really important—the printer will deliver the copies of the book in mid-October. From that point it will take a couple of weeks for Arte Público Press to enter the book into inventory and then mail out review copies and back orders. As a result, Meet Me Under the Ceiba will become available to the reading public at the beginning of November.

Is such a delay frustrating for an author? In this case, not at all. The manuscript of Meet Me Under the Ceiba has undergone a seven-year odyssey that perhaps someday will be worth of a long essay. During that journey, the novel took a side-trip, entering the University of California, Irvine’s Chicano/Latino Literary Contest and winning First Place. More importantly, I’m very proud of the result, and I’m confident that this work will garner a nice measure of positive attention.

The first review that confirms my faith in the quality of Meet Me Under the Ceiba recently appeared in Booklist. The New York Times calls Booklist "an acquisitions bible for public and school librarians nationwide." Booklist is the review journal of the American Library Association. It recommends works of fiction, nonfiction, children's books, reference books, and media to its 30,000 institutional and personal subscribers. In-house editors and contributing reviewers from around the country review more than 7,500 books each year, most before publication.

And the review reads as follows:

BOOKLIST
Advanced Review – Uncorrected Proof
Issue: September 1, 2009

Meet Me under the Ceiba.
Sirias, Silvio (Author)
Sep 2009. 232 p. Arte Publico, paperback, $15.95. (9781558855922).

Sirias brings to life a small Nicaraguan town as it reacts to the brutal murder of Adela, a beautiful young lesbian who made the mistake of challenging a wealthy landowner by luring away his mistress. The novel is based on a true story, which Sirias researched while visiting Nicaragua. He is personified as a professor spending the summer near his parents’ birthplace, where he hears the story of the lesbian lovers, and attempts to reconstruct the days before and after Adela’s demise. By means of his interviews, the reader comes to know Adela’s family, her former lover (who feared for Adela’s safety), Adela’s former husband (who never dreamed that being a lesbian would get her killed), and Adela’s magnetic and stunningly beautiful lover Ixelia, who was prostituted by her mother at age 11. The problems faced by homosexuals in Nicaragua are encapsulated in this one case: Adela’s murder is deemed a minor offense because she was a lesbian. A provocative novel that opens up a little-known world to its readers.
— Deborah Donovan

Of course, the final sentence of the review is what tugs at the heart of this proud novelist. The first sentinel—to borrow Longfellow’s term—has approved of the work.

A delay of a month, then, for something worthwhile, means little. Still, in the meantime Amazon is offering a 22% discount for anyone pre-ordering Meet Me Under the Ceiba. Be the first on your block to own a copy.