So there is a thing as product placement in novels…
I already was aware of this fact, especially considering my current novel, Amit’s Ability, takes place entirely in New Mexico. I was already including specific restaurants and venues in the novel to help ground the book locally. But over the weekend, we took a friend wine-tasting, and one of the wineries was fully promoting a novel that mentions the name of the winery. The protagonist apparently really enjoys this particular winery. So I am definitely including it in the book (I know, sucker). It will be easy since one of my characters enjoys wine anyway. But what if you mention the winery or location, and something unfavorable takes place there? Or an undesirable character frequents the place? Would the establishment still want to promote/sell your book? I wonder about that, and how much censorship I’d be willing to do to sell books.
I received a very nice, personalized rejection from Hayden’s Ferry Review– my first on the extra-long story (final title: “Recovering Basquiat”) that I’d worked for a while. Okay, so the story is hitting the right mark. I was told they admired its “emotional intensity.” Cool.
No word on results from the flash fiction contest I entered in the Alibi.
One of my Fathers and Sons stories deals with the unpleasant work life the young father must take on to provide for his family. It’s not the work that is so bad as the people he must work with. They’re crude, coarse people (who can do the work well nonetheless), and they are unlike anyone he’s known in his tender years. The job is loading delivery trucks, and I based it on my son’s experience loading trucks for UPS. I’d like to mention a real-world connection like that, the actual name of the company, but it’s not really about the company; it’s about the work. And I fear that the company would object to being associated with such crude people in the reader’s eye, so I’ve left the employer vague.