Semi-Famous in Grand Rapids

Posted on July 18, 2010 by Mark
(Posted July 18, 2010)

My kids long ago coined the phrase. We were in Winnipeg, Manitoba, where I was to read from my debut novel, The Legacy at the Grant Park McNally-Robinson bookstore. My second son Dylan (who was in high school at the time) came up with the label. The A-Channel, a Winnipeg television station, was at the bookstore to capture the reading on tape. The station actually aired a spot on the ten o’clock news which included a snippet interview with the author.
“Dad, you’re semi-famous in Winnipeg,” my son said as the piece ended.Dylan’s acerbic observation is a phrase that’s haunted me ever since.Why, you ask? Despite great support from readers, my writing has never won acclaim, never been awarded so much as an honorable mention in the Northeast Minnesota Book Awards or the Minnesota Book Awards, two contests I regularly enter my books in for consideration. But reader after reader, with one or two (and I mean that literally: there have been less than a handful) exceptions, keep coming back to buy another book from me. So I trudge along in semi-fame, wondering if I’ve deluded myself into thinking I can actually spin a good yarn. To keep the bottom line afloat above the red ink, some positive reinforcement from the gods of writing, those folks who decide who wins, who loses, would be much appreciated. But it hasn’t happened yet. So I put one word ahead of another and move forward, onto my next project, all the while keeping a small slender flame of hope alive against the critics of the world.

Saturday. My eyes scan the morning skies as I sit in my portable camp chair in my EZ Up on a soon-to-be sweltering blacktopped parking lot. The forecast for the MacRostie Art Center Festival isn’t good. Rain. Temperatures in the high eighties. Thunder storms. High winds. Hail. That’s the prediction, though, up until noon, the clouds hang in the distance and don’t seem interested in moving towards Grand Rapids.

My eldest son Matt, and his wife, Lisa, join me. They’re both geeked out to the max; checking dueling cell phones with big screens and wireless Internet to chart the storm’s progress. I ask Lisa to check my favorite weather site, Weather Underground. She pulls it up on the tiny digital screen. We both study the display. Radar depicts storms to the north and south of Grand Rapids, with a small breach (approximately where my tent is set up) between thunderheads. The kids buy me lunch, check out the festival, and wander back to their house in Hibbing. Overweight droplets of rain spatter the canopy of my tent as they leave but the storm never materializes.

“I just wanted to tell you,” a smallish woman of middle age says as she ducks away from slow drops and stands in my tent, a copy of Mr. Environment:The Willard Munger Story held aloft in small hands, “that this is a wonderful book. You cover more than just Willard. You’ve captured the entire history of Liberal politics in Minnesota. What a treasure!”

Her husband follows her into the tent and nods.

“She loaned our copy to someone when I was only halfway through it. I need to get it back so I can finish it. It’s a great book.”

The couple doesn’t buy another copy of Mr. Environment, or any of my other books. The woman simply places the biography back on its stack and follows her husband out of the tent.

A smile forms on my face.

She didn’t need to buy anything to make my day. She gave me the one thing I need to keep me writing.

Semi-fame isn’t all bad.

Peace.

Mark

About Mark

I'm a reformed lawyer and author.
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