I KNOW the election is in everyone’s mind these days, but the fever will soon cool down and you’ll move on to other subjects, so….
This week my cousin Rod Westmaas sent me a photo he’d taken of my two books, Of Marriageable Age and The Small Fortune of Dorothea Q (TSFODQ), piled up in Austin’s Book Shop. I was delighted, since Mr Austin must have gone to a lot of trouble and expense to get these books to Guyana.

I am, however, rather disappointed that none of the newspapers in Guyana has bothered to review my latest novel, The Small Fortune of Dorothea Q. I spent over 10 years struggling to get a British or American publisher to take on one of my Guyana books – i.e, books with Guyana as a setting and Guyanese characters.

Always I was told that Guyana is not interesting to British or American readers; it’s too small and people have never even heard of it. Still, I struggled on, writing Guyana book after Guyana book – I now have four exclusively Guyanese unpublished novels on my hard drive!

Finally I found a small British publisher who felt confident enough to publish them, and TSFODG was published in January. But only silence in my home country. This is really disappointing! I did inform all the newspapers when the book was first released, but there was no reaction.

In the meantime, The Small Fortune of Dorothea Q is selling well in the UK and is making its way in the US. It has some wonderful five-star reviews on Amazon, on Goodreads, and on various book blogs. Readers are saying how much they enjoy learning about Guyana – yet still, silence from Guyana itself.

One of the reviewers is a Guyanese, Evan Philips, who grew up in Kingston in the 50s and 60s and loved the book. I got in touch with Evan and he says he will re-write the review with a  Guyanese slant for the Guyana media. You can see his review on Amazon.com.

So, now I’m trying to find out which of the Guyanese papers will publish this review, which he’ll be writing over the next few days. This letter is going to all the papers. If you are interested, please let me know!

SHARON MAAS