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 This is a continuation of my blogging here at WdC |
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This will be a blog for my writing, maybe with (too much) personal thrown in. I am hoping it will be a little more interactive, with me answering questions, helping out and whatnot. If it falls this year (2024), then I may stop the whole blogging thing, but that's all a "wait and see" scenario. An index of topics can be found here: "Writing Blog No.2 Index"  Feel free to comment and interact. |
| Using Real Places – A Warning A thing happened. This is sort of related to my "20250509 Using Real People In Fiction Pt 2" post as well.A fellow local writer (who has had a great deal of success as a writer of Westerns) and I spoke about this the other day. Yes, an Australian writing US westerns, all of them published by a UK firm and selling really well in mainland Europe. Let’s not get into the way publishing works… Anyway, nowadays he writes historical romance stories and modern thrillers, all set in the local area in which we live. He self-publishes and sells them at markets. I’ve read them; they are quite good. He could easily have a publisher pick them up, but he reckons he’s beyond that at over 80 years of age. Like me, he uses the real local locations to make our stories more realistic. If anyone read my Invasive Species, they could go to Ardrossan and see all those locations; and, yes, all of them are still there! A mutual friend of ours who also self-publishes – her books are not the best; I avoid reading them now – writes detective stories set in the same area. Like the other two of us, she uses businesses and buildings that exist. She’s been doing this for a few years – I think her series (with a recurring character…) is five books in – and she makes a point of mentioning when businesses change or close or whatever, to give her stories that sense of now, and a sense of definite time. I have no issue with that. Sue Grafton did something similar with her alphabet series. However, someone has now had an issue with that. One of the businesses that appeared in her first two books, and was then quietly dropped, has demanded the business be taken out of the books. So… what happened? Well, the reason the business – a café – was dropped from the books was because the author and the owner had a falling out. To the author’s credit, her detective simply started going to a different place to have her “cuppa, white, no sugar” and no mention was made of the other business. Nothing disparaging, nothing at all. The character just went elsewhere. Readers might have been confused but it was hardly a big deal. Well, the issue between then grew a little more heated recently – neither of us know why, but there are “sides” being formed; stupid small town personality politics –and now this demand. The author went to our local (state) writer’s centre for free legal advice. Guess what? The business is fully within their rights. There was not even a verbal agreement between them. The author just started using the business and its name. I guess that beggars the question – how have the other two of us not been caught up in something similar? I mean, apart from the obvious reason of not being dicks and getting involved in petty power politics of a personal penchant. One, both of us went to the businesses and asked permission to use them. In my case, it was a café, a gym, a bakery and a corner store. The gym has since changed hands, but it is still there. Second, and I think this is very important, neither of us used the actual names of the businesses. I called the bakery “the bakery”, for example, not “Ardrossan bakery”. We use the names of real streets, but both understood you don’t have to use the real names of businesses. What I think this means is that you need to be careful not just using the names of real people, but everything that has a name. Now, the advice we have received legally is that multi-national corporations are fair game (like public figures), and only two companies do not like their company names used in fiction works – Disney and Apple. So your characters can drink Coke or Pepsi, go to KFC or McDonalds, use an IBM or HP computer , no issue. But drinking the KIS honey drink, go to Wallaroo Shores Eatery, use an OZMachines computer… maybe not? Just use generic terms: “the pub”, “the deli on Washington Ave”, “the local ginger ale”… Better be safe than sorry. As to our mutual friend, the legal advice is that she might have to pulp any leftover copies of those first two books unless she can reach an agreement with the business owner. There is nothing libellous, so what a court would decide is anyone’s guess, but it will also be costly. Just be careful who you mention and who you talk about. |
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Thank you for this very informative piece.
