My Fifteen Minutes of Fame

I was sitting at my desk in the office Thursday morning, minding my own business, when four coworkers jostled into my cube. One of them was waving a newspaper in his hand. "Hey, David, you made the papers!" he said enthusiastically. "Yeah, and you didn't even have to get arrested to do it," another said. The others grinned and shook my hand.

I was bewildered. What did they mean, I made the papers? Was this a joke? My office is full of jokesters. Then the man with the newspaper slapped it down on my desk and opened to page 2. "What?" I asked, still dumbfounded. I looked over the page of newsprint. I saw a familiar picture. It was Janice Kapp Perry. She had apparently just published a book of children's songs. I saw an article about Prince Andrew commenting on the excellent humanitarian work of the LDS Church.

I scanned other columns but didn't see anything to warrant four guys coming to my desk. Then my eye caught a glimpse of a little green picture of a book cover about the size of my thumbnail. It looked very familiar. I focused on it a moment. Then my eye drifted upward and I saw a small photograph of an old man with a bald head and a devilishly handsome smile. Holy smokes! That is me! My picture was in the newspaper!

I widened my vision and finally saw the headline. The Deseret News had published a review of my novel In the Days of Lachoneus. It appeared in the Mormon Times section of the Deseret News on 21 January 2016. This was one of the few times in my life that I was genuinely stunned.

"Can I get your autograph?" one of them asked. It was a joke, of course. Grown men don't collect autographs from each other. But still, it was fun to hear the buzz go around the office. About an hour later, as I was heading downstairs for a business meeting, a thought stopped me dead in my tracks: Maybe people will actually see the book review and go out and get my book and read it! I smiled.

Today I am just normal old me again. I do my work, shop for groceries, take care of my wife with a bad cold, talk to my daughter on the phone for an hour about everything under the sun except my book, and balance my checkbook. Life didn't change that much after all. But for a few minutes, it felt really good - almost sinfully good - to have accomplished a goal. I am an author not just in my own mind but in the mind of at least a few readers!

P.S. The review was very good. My thanks to Angela Carter, who wrote the article, and to Christine Rappleye of the Deseret News for publishing it.