If you pick up the current issue of Forbes magazine (the one that will be pulled from shelves Wednesday, not the special issue), you will find me and my words on the last page.

How did this come about?

My best guess is that, in assembling their usual page of quotes on a particular topic, the staff at Forbes head over to Goodreads and search for lines tagged with a particular keyword. In this case, the theme of the quotes page is “value,” and some Goodreads user put that tag on a line from The Tropic of Serpents: “One does not cease to treasure a gem simply because one owns another that is larger.” That’s Lady Trent talking about memories, actually, and how she regrets not having seen a particular thing even though she’s had many other awesome experiences . . . but hey, it works.

And how did I find out about this? Well, a bit over a month ago I got an email that I nearly binned as spam, asking for a photograph of myself to be used in Forbes. Let’s be real: as a general rule, the odds of me being quoted in a major business magazine are roughly nil. And I’d been getting a larger than usual volume of spam through the contact form on my site anyway. Fortunately I gave the email a second look, because this turned out to be a legitimate request, and the proof of it is now on my desk.

Had you asked me at the beginning of this year, I would have told you the member of my family most likely to appear in Forbes was my brother (involved with data security at Apple) or my father (international patent licensing). But no . . . it’s the fantasy author, with a quote from an imaginary Victoriain’t dragon naturalist.

The world is a weird place.