Anybody else ever had this kind of thing happen to them?
Today, my father told me that one of his friends has written a book. He named characters after my father and me - and they both die right away in a car crash. I’m the lead character’s daughter’s (late) boyfriend, or something like that. My father was amused, but to tell you the truth, I’m not. Maybe it’s because I don’t really know his friend, or maybe I’ve just been around too much death lately. It’s vanity publishing, so I’m not worried that I’ll see this on the bookshelves or anything - although “Marley and Me” was a best-seller, so I’ve already had that kind of experience.
Just hope this doesn’t become like that Will Ferrell/Emma Thompson movie that’s coming out soon…
I’m planning on doing NaNoWriMo next month, and since I’m bad at coming up with plausible character names, I was thinking of just randomly using the names of people I know. Buuuut I decided that might not be the best idea, should I do something unpleasant to one of my friend’s namesakes…
“Marley, a tall, transvestite hooker, walked into Goodwill to buy some new clothes and a gift for Mr. Foley. After that incident at the Page Ball Orgy, he owed the Senator at least a token expression of his gratitude…”
Yup, I’ve been written into a book. Valentine’s Rising, and passing mention in Valentine’s Exile. There are some similarities as her name is my nickname I’ve used for ages online, height, basic description, attraction to the main character (I’ve somewhat crushed on David since the first book) and she had a son. That’s about it.
Doing a Google vanity search I found that my name was used for the dead girl in some amateur, published-online crime novel. Intrigued (I always enjoy picking apart the flaws in literary forensic investigations) I decided to read the novel and … well, it was just a little too eerie. Not only did the dead girl share my name, she also shared my:
The names of the authors were written on the site and I gave them a bit of a Googling, but never could confirm that it was anyone that I knew or had ever met in passing … so I have chalked it up to a coincidence. But, if I ever end up mysteriously dead, I’m hoping my husband will insist that these two guys are made part of the investigation!
My husband’s real name is used in a work of fiction by an author we’ve never met. In the book he has two daughters and leaves his wife. IRL he only has one daughter and loves his wife. I like real life better.
A friend of a friend who happened to be an author (the FOAF, not the friend) spent a couple of days in our house while our mutual friend was moving. About a year later he had a new book come out in which the name of one of our sons was used for a dog (unusual name, both for a boy and for a dog) and the name of another son was used as a very minor character who did computer hacking (very common name–not when I gave it to him, but by then).
He said he didn’t do it on purpose.
I later found out, when I knew more about mystery fans, that authors offer up the chance to be a character in a book, and people bid on it and pay, sometimes a lot. There is one person who is a named character in a great many books because she announced that if she appeared as a character she would buy the book (and she was a bookstore owner).
Still later, as an author, I did this once. Somebody paid $250 (!!!) to be a character in one of my books. I found it really disconcerting to have to either change the name of one of my characters or write in a whole new character, and I don’t think it would do it again. BTW the $250 went to some charity, not to me.
I was working on a book when my son, who I had given up for adoption at birth found me. My son and the first victim in my book shared:
name
approximate age (character 32, actual son 33)
job description
physical description
hobbies (golf and rock climbing–rock climbing being the venue in which the character was killed)
wife’s name
daughter’s name
(The character had two daughters–obviously only one of them shared a name with my real-life granddaughter)
Let me tell you, that was weird–it’s almost one of those unexplainable quasi-psychic things.
Keep in mind here, until he located me the last contact I had had with my son was when I gave him up, when he was 10 days old. I am glad he found me before the book went into print.
My forename+surname is unique in the U.K.; I believe my full name is globally unique. If my name were to appear in any published context, I would be most interested.
The high school I attended is very old: 400+ years. There was a display of historical documents in the lobby, which included the black-bordered Victorian death notice of one of the former students.
For the sake of argument, let’s say my name is James Thomas Smith. In which case, the kid who died was called James Thomas Smythe.
Let’s say I was born on the 4th of August, 1967. James Smythe was born on the 4th of August, 1867.
My school’s former pupil, James Smythe, died on October 29th, 1880. I, a current pupil, saw the notice in mid-August, 1980.
Being a neurotic and credulous teenager, I convinced myself I was going to repeat my namesake’s century-old demise to the day, October 29th, 1980. I had many, many sleepless nights.
On the day itself I was strangely calm, and resigned to my fate. What actually happened was my dad took me to the Science Museum in London and I went to bed happy, but convinced a meteorite was going to take me out in my sleep, since nothing else that day had whacked me.
I was very, very relieved when I woke up on the morning of October 30th. And felt like a putz.
I was never a character in a book (with my name? yeah right), but a Russian book about the internet was dedicated to me - twice!
Once using my name as admin in a site; another under my player name at the same site. The writer didn’t know both were the same person.
The book recommended that site as “a place with great people, a great ambience and great English, very good to practice your English skills while having fun”, so we got several hundred Russian-and-thereabouts players from it. One of them sent me the dedication.
