What a revoltin' development dis is!

[journeyman]

I was just looking at the book list of a POD house that does do nautically inspired books. And what to my wondering eyes should appear but a blurb about an upcoming book that has a main character with a similar first and last name to my novel's main character. I based the name on a 17th century Jamaican privateer and now have an entire family of characters with that surname.

The book in question will be published sometime in late 2010, early 2011. First come, first serve. I think the author has dibs on the name.

My story is now sitting at a publisher in ye old slush pile. It has already been seen by two agents and the Novel Journey contest folks.

So, it looks like I will now have to do a global search and replace on my manuscript.

I plan on waiting to hear from the publisher first. If they like the story, I'll let them know about the change.

Oddly enough this is not the first time this has happened to me.

Has anyone else heard of or been in a similar predicament?

If so, how did you or the person it happened to handle it?

[Kristen]

Yes, I had a similar problem once. We discussed it over here:
wherethemapends.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=spacebar&thread=285&page=1

I wound up changing the character's name to something I actually wound up liking better.

[journeyman]

Thanks! I'll take a look!

[ryain]

no never happened before. That would be really annoying but not impossible to fix.

[Teskas]

It happened to me. A character name I dreamed up was already in print.

[ryain]

That would suck. I don't know what I would do. The characters I dream up are very special to me.

[beckyminor]

I totally feel for you! I had something like that happen not too long ago...I discovered the name of my elite order of a knighthood was pretty much the exact same phrasology as a religious order in one of Karen Hancock's books. (Guess I should have had her sooner in my 'author's to read' pile.)

I went through and did a search and replace. A little painful to realize I had to let go of a baby I thought was mine, but who wants to come off as a copycat?

[journeyman]

Exactly! It's just a painful bump in the road, nothing more. I did my search and replace last night. I'm moving on. Good thing the undercarriage is still intact. :-)

[newburydave]

I had it happen to me over at Baen. It wasn't a character name though, it was a place name that provided the name of the book I was working on at the time.

I started posting chapters in their general Slush Pile and the editors took them down because the Name of the thread was too close to one of Dave Webber's sequels in his Honorverse. They acknowledged that it was a totally different story and didn't infringe on the other DW's turf, but it "sounded" like it might be FanFic or a clone so they removed it.

I retitled it and moved on. Names are less important than the story, but it was embarrassing.

I was calling it The Defense of Mesa, that was kind lame given that I'd just finished reading all of the Honorverse novels I could get my hands on. Mesa was the really bad guys in that story world. My Mesa was the bastion of the good guys.

Ah well, I retitled the story cycle The Battle of the Rift and it's still under revision. I may serialize my chapters over in the Sandbox [/url] to see if anyone has any comments. It was my first Novelization so it's probably a throw-away.

SGD

[journeyman]

Don't give up on your stuff. Keep the good ideas, and let the tide take the rest away. :-)