Silly Little Country

Now here is some real product placement!

"Authors offer immortailty ..." reads the title of this article.

King and Grisham are among 16 authors selling the right to have a character in a book named for the buyer to raise money for the First Amendment Project, a California-based nonprofit group that promotes freedom of information and expression.

King is Steven and Grisham is John.

I personally think the chase for even this sort of immortality is a fool's errand, so won't be bidding myself (delightfully, this is being done on eBay).

And I have a secondary thought. It is addressed in the article:

In the auction posting at http://www.ebay.com/fap, legal writer Grisham promised the character whose name he is selling would be portrayed "in a good light" in his next novel.

Amy Tan, author of "The Joy Luck Club," and best-selling romance writer Nora Roberts are also offering names, but they gave no guarantees about what sort of character it would be.

There is a converse concern in a way - being a character in a roman a clef. Your name is not used, but someone's view of you is portrayed, perhaps devastatingly. I come from a family full of people itching to write novels and I know several have some fear of winding up in one of those.

posted by Alan Adamson @ 10:46 PM