I’m in a Star Trek novel called Last Full Measure! How did it happen? Read on!

Andy Mangels (one of the authors) is a Star Trek writer; he’s also a leatherman. Last year at ABW, there was an auction for charity, and Andy’s contribution was the opportunity to have a Tuckerism in a Star Trek book. A said I could bid up to $200 on it as my next Xmas present, so I was very excited when it came up for auction. (I was actually interpreting at the time, so fairerhiannon switched with me quickly so I could bid!) To my surprise, though, the auction shot up to $500 in a matter of minutes, and it ended up selling for about $900 as I recall. Of course, I was very disappointed, but I went back to work.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but preppyperv had noticed how disappointed I was. She talked to Andy at a later event, and asked if he might be willing to give me the same “Tuckerism” prize that had been sold at auction. She explained that I had donated a lot of interpreting services to ABW, and asked if he could give this to me as a thank-you. So a couple of weeks later, I was quite surprised to get an e-mail from Andy! He said preppyperv had talked about it with him and he was going to give me a place in the next Enterprise book, Last Full Measure. He had me send him a couple of photographs and some personal information like hobbies and pets; because I’m an interpreter in real life he said I would probably end up as a MACO linguist working with the Hoshi Sato character.

And then I waited for a year! Last night I suddenly realized the book had been released a couple of weeks ago. I called Borders and had them place some on hold for me (I got one for myself, and one for each of my parents) and rushed out there. I flipped through some pages at the register but didn’t see anything noteworthy; after I paid I sat on a bench outside - I wasn’t going anywhere until I found my name! I turned up on page 277, apparently injured, so I drove home.

I haven’t read the book yet, but I did flip through looking for my name. “I” turned out to be a corporal in the MACOs, and my specialty seems to be more rifle expertise rather than linguistics. I do indeed get injured by the end of the book, but it’s made very clear that I’m going to be fine. Andy had e-mailed me and said that if a character survives one book (not all Tuckerized characters do), they might turn up in the next one, so I’ll be buying that one too!