7/23/23
Naming Names
This is number twenty in the blog series, “My Life In Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community so I can afford to keep writing.
I SHOULD HAVE LEARNED my lesson long ago. But even back then, we weren’t so “rights” crazy that I really needed to worry about it. At least I didn’t think so.
I wrote a long serial, way back when. It was very nostalgic. The story took place right where I grew up and I named characters after kids I knew, even describing their appearance, though the characters were not at all like the kids I knew. After the series was nearly finished, I decided to publish it as eBooks. Too long for just one eBook.
And that was when I realized that a reader could do a search on Amazon and recognize herself in my writing! Oh no!
I went through the entire series and changed the names of people and places that might be recognizable. That caused such an upset on SOL, that I changed all the names back on that platform only. It still causes confusion because two years later, I wrote a tenth eBook in the series and used only the new names. To this day, I have people contacting me about which character equates to whom.
I thought everything was taken care of, but when I published book seven (of ten) on Amazon, they blocked it. They would not be specific about why they blocked it and threatened to review all the books I’d published to be sure they met community standards and would cancel my account if they didn’t, if I pursued the matter.
Their only statement, when I pushed a little, was that they didn’t like the cover and some internal content. The cover was by the same artist as all the other nine covers in the series and showed nothing more than any of them did! The internal content? No comment.
Let me just say that the Jolly Green Rainforest fancies itself as a publisher. NO! They are not a publisher of most of their content. They are a damned bookstore. That’s all! End of rant.
After nearly a year of examination of the content and Amazon’s vague “community standards,” I concluded that what offended their delicate sensibilities was having used the name of a popular late-night talk show and its long-dead host. I rewrote the content using a fictional name and published the book on Barnes and Noble and on Bookapy. Not on Amazon. That ISBN was blocked permanently. So, I give that volume away free in the series. Guess I showed them! Um…
Regardless, all the distribution platforms now ask the publisher or author if they own the rights to all the content and swear that no names or images of actual people or products have been used without their explicit permission.
So much for historical fiction.
That brought me to a dilemma when I started writing the Photo Finish series with Full Frame, Shutter Speed, Exposure, F/Stop, Over Exposure, and Follow Focus. I was writing a historical fiction. According to MasterClass, a streaming service with online lessons in many fields, including writing:
Historical fiction transports readers to another time and place, either real or imagined. Writing historical fiction requires a balance of research and creativity, and while it often includes real people and events, the genre offers a fiction writer many opportunities to tell a wholly unique story.
“…includes real people and events…”
The setting for the Photo Finish series is the decade from 1966-1976. It is a fairly well-known period in American history. It includes racial tensions, the Vietnam War, the draft, free love, drugs, rock and roll, riots, and protests. It includes The Beatles, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Robert Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew, Gerald Ford, Robert McNamara, 2001: A Space Odysey, Alice’s Restaurant, and M.A.S.H.
At one time or another, I mention all of these. What am I supposed to say when asked if my work contains the names of real people, products, etc. without their permission?
Note: This is a work of historical fiction. As such, names of historical characters, places, products, events, movies, and music have been used to set the context and reality of the time. But the story and characters are fiction. While much of the action is based on actual events or experiences, ultimately, it is still all fiction. Perhaps it will entertain. Perhaps it will take you to a similar time in your own life. Perhaps in rare instances, it will enlighten.
That is the official disclaimer I put at the beginning of each of my stories in this cycle. All the characters in the action are made up. They may have some similarities to people who lived through that time, but so does my Aunt Cora. People mistake her for someone all the time. The location is based on a real town but I gave it a fake name. The names of the people, the businesses and everything else about the town are fiction.
In other words, it’s historical FICTION!
I will say that I visited the town on which this was based and the librarians were both excited and pleased to help me research the community and get the atmosphere right. They went so far as to call in a fellow who lived in the town during that period so I could interview him! Even when I told them the story was erotica, they were so pleased that I was setting it in their little town! That was the inspiration for later setting a movie in the town of Tenbrook, and the town’s enthusiastic response to having a murder mystery set in their community!
I still have to be careful, though. I can’t quote a conversation with a historical character if it contradicts what is known historically. I could still write a conversation that could have happened, but that starts treading on shaky ground. I can’t send a character to the embassy in Nassau six months before The Bahamas became independent and were recognized as a nation. I can’t do anything that contradicts what is known. I can’t, for example, declare that Tricky Dick admitted to me that he engineered the entire Watergate break-in and cover-up. I didn’t talk to him and Dick is known to have never really confessed, even though he resigned and was given amnesty so the action couldn’t be investigated. Similar to other illegal actions that will be forgiven as soon as someone is in power who will do so.
Within those boundaries, I can be as free and crazy as I want to be. And hopefully, my generalization of a character living through that era will enlighten others regarding this small subset of people who lived in that era.
If you decide to write historical fiction, you need to determine what the boundaries are for your work. If the time was more than fifty years ago, you might be able to simply write a story about a dead historical figure. If you declare your work an “alternate timeline” then you can pick up anything you want and change all the details you want, because it isn’t what really happened. All you are using is a set of characteristics of the era to set the stage.
Regardless, Amazon, the great self-declared literary police force, might refuse to “publish” your work. Believe me, they won’t tell you why.
I drafted this post during a week when I was at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon. Great experience. But recent events have me wondering about the temporal nature of our words. Or as Hamlet said, “Words. Words. Words. Words.” Next week.
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
