Using other authors as characters

[Kumabjorn]

I don't remember the title or the author, but I remember reading of an author who wrote a whodunit in which every murder victim was a New York literary critic.

I was reminded of this reading Lee Child's "Never Go Back", because in it one of the bad guys are named Ronald David Baldacci. I'm not familiar enough with naming conventions in the U.S., but it strikes me as odd that he would chose the name of another suspense writer for an unsavory character in his novel. Is there some bad blood between these authors or did Baldacci perhaps name an unsavory character Lee Child in one of his novels?

[Bookworm_Girl]

Lee Child doesn't like that David Baldacci started a new series with a character named John Puller who shares many similarities with Jack Reacher. Child said he wouldn't have minded if Baldacci were a new author but he is well-established. So Child created unsavory characters named Puller in A Wanted Man and Baldacci as you've noted in Never Go Back.

Here is the book description from B&N for John Puller Book #1 so you can form your own opinion on whether it sounds similar.

From David Baldacci the modern master of the thriller and #1 worldwide bestselling novelist-comes a new hero: a lone Army Special Agent taking on the toughest crimes facing the nation.

And Zero Day is where it all begins....

John Puller is a combat veteran and the best military investigator in the U.S. Army's Criminal Investigation Division. His father was an Army fighting legend, and his brother is serving a life sentence for treason in a federal military prison. Puller has an indomitable spirit and an unstoppable drive to find the truth.

Now, Puller is called out on a case in a remote, rural area in West Virginia coal country far from any military outpost. Someone has stumbled onto a brutal crime scene, a family slaughtered. The local homicide detective, a headstrong woman with personal demons of her own, joins forces with Puller in the investigation. As Puller digs through deception after deception, he realizes that absolutely nothing he's seen in this small town, and no one in it, are what they seem.

Facing a potential conspiracy that reaches far beyond the hills of West Virginia, he is one man on the hunt for justice against an overwhelming force.

[fjtorres]

Wilson Tucker was noted for using real people's names in his books, so much so that in SF the practice became known as Tuckerization or Tuckerizing.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuckerization

One of the earliest tuckerizations was between Robert Bloch and his mentor H. P. Lovecraft: Bloch's story "The Shambler From The Stars" (1935) featured a Lovecraft-inspired character, who was gruesomely killed off. Lovecraft replied in kind with "The Haunter of the Dark" (1936), in which the characters included one Robert Harrison Blake (who had the same Milwaukee street address as Bloch), whom Lovecraft killed off in an equally horrible fashion. After Lovecraft's death, Bloch wrote a third segment, "The Shadow From the Steeple" (1950), in which the events of the first two stories are further explored. In the early 1930s, before Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster created the comic-book superhero Superman, they wrote and illustrated a fanzine story, "The Reign of the Superman," featuring a super-powered villain. This story includes one of the very first tuckerizations: a character named after Forrest J Ackerman. More recent examples include the many science fiction and military novelists whose names are borrowed in the Axis of Time by John Birmingham, and the Lachlan Fox thriller series by James Clancy Phelan. Philip K. Dick employed tuckerization in his short story "Waterspider", in which he sent fellow author Poul Anderson ahead in time to a future where science fiction authors were seen as having precognitive abilities.

[murg]

Wasn't there a Larry Niven/Jerry Whatshisname novel where there was a bunch of SciFi authors advising the president on a alien invasion crisis of some sort?


Buffy: Gee, can you vague that up for me?

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by murg

Wasn't there a Larry Niven/Jerry Whatshisname novel where there was a bunch of SciFi authors advising the president on a alien invasion crisis of some sort?

Good memory.

In Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's Footfall, the government employs a number of science fiction writers as technical advisors to help deal with an alien invasion. These writers are thinly veiled real science fiction writers, including "Bob and Virginia Anson,", a particularly clear homage to Robert and Virginia Heinlein.

Lots of examples, here:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/.../t-503298.html

[Kumabjorn]

Originally Posted by Bookworm_Girl

Lee Child doesn't like that David Baldacci started a new series with a character named John Puller who shares many similarities with Jack Reacher. Child said he wouldn't have minded if Baldacci were a new author but he is well-established. So Child created unsavory characters named Puller in A Wanted Man and Baldacci as you've noted in Never Go Back.

Here is the book description from B&N for John Puller Book #1 so you can form your own opinion on whether it sounds similar.

I see, thanks. Didn't know that, the Baldacci novels I have read had different protagonists. I can see that he might be a bit peeved about something like that. Still, does come off as a tad puerile.

[crich70]

I don't know how much he based his characters on real people but Isaac Asimov wrote a murder mystery "A Whiff of Death" that involved the politics of the academic world as part of his plot.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Kumabjorn

Still, does come off as a tad puerile.

During the Hachete catfight he came out to openly engage Joe Konrath on his blog and he sounded more than a bit full of himself.
Stuff along the lines of "my last book sold more than you will sell in your entire life". Some defended it as banter...
(Shrug)

I pretty much gave up on gritty action heroes after the fourth or fifth Mack Bolan novel from the 70's. I generally prefer my comic book action in movies or comic books. Glad he's never made a cent off me.

[DuskyRose]

I've been reading Urban Fantasy lately, and came across the Paul Cornell book "The Severed Streets". He has Neil Gaiman as a character in the book, down to the description of the guy. And not just a cameo, but looking to be a return character in the next book.

While I'm sure he's gotten permission, since he thanks Mr. Gaiman in the front of the book, I'm not really liking it. When I hit upon it in the book, it bumped me out of the story, wondering if maybe I was reading the character's name wrong. So I checked the name and description to make sure it was actually the Neil Gaiman I was thinking of.

Anything that bumps me out of the story, IMHO, is a bad thing. I didn't need it, the story didn't need it, and I'm sure no one would have missed out on it if the author had just created a new character to fill that spot.

I just find it really annoying when they do that.

[fjtorres]

Chester Anderson's BUTTERFLY KID is a first person book featuring a cast composed of Chester Anderson, his roommate, and some of his friends.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Butterfly_Kid

Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote stories that featured a guy named Edgar Rice Burroughs who was related to John Carter and interacted with several other notable adventurers of his world.
It is not uncommon.

[murg]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote stories that featured a guy named Edgar Rice Burroughs who was related to John Carter and interacted with several other notable adventurers of his world.
It is not uncommon.

I think this was the literary mechanism by which ERB 'obtained' the true story of John Carter's adventures on Mars.

[wodin]

Stephen King used himself as a character in the Dark Tower (Gunslinger) series.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by murg

I think this was the literary mechanism by which ERB 'obtained' the true story of John Carter's adventures on Mars.

That framing device was common in adventure fiction at the time.
Placing yourself in the role of storyteller, less common. But Burroughs took it a step further, placing his alter ego as a common link between all his major characters, creating a linked multi-character world where Tarzan, Napier, Carter, Innes, and Gridley all knew of each other and interacted either by correspondence, wireless, or in person. Which is how Tarzan got to visit Pellucidar and Carson, aiming for Mars, ended up on Venus.

Apparently he intended to do other crossovers but either didn't get around to it or couldn't make it work to his satisfaction. Which is too bad because I for one would've enjoyed seeing Tarzan tsk-tsking Napier for his habit of running away from enemy armies.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

That framing device was common in adventure fiction at the time.
Placing yourself in the role of storyteller, less common. But Burroughs took it a step further, placing his alter ego as a common link between all his major characters, creating a linked multi-character world where Tarzan, Napier, Carter, Innes, and Gridley all knew of each other and interacted either by correspondence, wireless, or in person. Which is how Tarzan got to visit Pellucidar and Carson, aiming for Mars, ended up on Venus.

Apparently he intended to do other crossovers but either didn't get around to it or couldn't make it work to his satisfaction. Which is too bad because I for one would've enjoyed seeing Tarzan tsk-tsking Napier for his habit of running away from enemy armies.

And long before that as well. Frankenstein is a frame story.

[cromag]

Originally Posted by DuskyRose

...
Anything that bumps me out of the story, IMHO, is a bad thing. I didn't need it, the story didn't need it, and I'm sure no one would have missed out on it if the author had just created a new character to fill that spot.

I just find it really annoying when they do that.

In general, I agree. The exception being when I know in advance what's in store for me and I'm looking for light entertainment.