If anyone had told fourteen-year-old Teresita that she would be mentioned twice in the same week in The New York Times, she wouldn’t have believed it. Or maybe she would have, who knows. Because the real Teresita, the weird girl whom her classmates always teased a bit, had a head full of plans and ambitions, even if no one suspected it.

This introduction is nothing more than a pretext to sneakily blow my own horn. Stripping away all subtleness, I am super happy because The Novel Detective has just been reviewed in The Gray Lady. You can read Sarah Weinman’s review “Brilliant, Bloody New Mystery Novels” at this free link.

She kindly wrote:

THE NOVEL DETECTIVE (Soho Crime, 297 pp., $28.95) is an affecting metafictional mystery about enduring female friendship and the ways that time gives you greater clarity on emotionally charged events.

I love that she also used this quote from the novel:

“Her friend was a first-rate paranoid. And she had the nerve to accuse Teresita of overdosing on mystery novels and cop shows!”

It is one of the many lines in the book based on a real-life conversation. A friend of mine, who also served as the inspiration for the character of Estrella, used to tell me that quite often. The cop show she referred to was Sector 40, that aired on Cuban television in the ‘70s and ‘80s.

 I am sure my friend will love seeing herself quoted too.

The other mention was in their special interactive hub The Best Thriller Books to Read Right Now. Seeing it featured in the “New and Noteworthy” lineup was a dream come true.

So, I am happy as a clam. Or, as we say in Spanish, feliz como una lombriz. Earthworms aren’t particularly happy, but as far as I can tell, neither are clams.

The best part was that all of this serves as the perfect grand finale to my trip to Santiago de Compostela, about which I still have much to tell. I owe you a post about interactive books, which I plan to use in my college classes (both English and Spanish), and another post about the need to write about what you know well to avoid embarrassing mistakes.

Actually, that is what I have done so far. All my books up to this point have been about Cuba, so I’ve had little chance to mess up… That doesn’t mean I haven’t messed up, of course, though just in small doses. But the next novel takes place in Galicia, and I will soon tell you about the atrocities I cobbled together before my visit and how I am fixing them.

For now, I’ll say goodbye with one more image of Teresita. Here I am with Priscilia (a Chihuahua-Terrier mix) at twelve or thirteen years old in Havana. Teresita, caught between happy and sad, trying to catch a glimpse of the future and hoping that the “good old days” weren’t actually the best…