...and in another story...

[kaigou]

Big honkin' tip to writers of stories set in contemporary, Western-based environments: please, please google your characters' names before you write. Please. Use Wiki. It's there, it's easy, it's your friend, and if you bloody well can't recognize right off the bat that you've given your character the name of one of the biggest and most notorious porn stars evah, then you've only yourself to blame when I can't read because I'm laughing too hard.

The story otherwise is well-paced, so far, but the first minute there's a joke in reference to the name, this is one author who's going to get a rather snarky comment from me, I think. I can put up with a lot of crap from a writer, but I sincerely loathe the self-patting smirk of a writer who thinks s/he is being just too clever by half. No, honey, no, you're not.

I mean, come on... John Holmes, people!



[and instead, we get reference to "No, no relation to Sherlock," and I can just hear the author saying, aww, aren't I clever? while I'm going, Wonderland! Wonderland! ...and thinking maybe I'm one of about two on my flist who get that reference. Google is your friend, people. Playing the author-cute game is not.]

Comments

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

>one of the biggest...porn stars evah

...so to speak.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

*cough*

[sarolynne.livejournal.com]

...Well, that made my morning a little funnier.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

The sad thing (I think?) is that I actually had to wiki Holmes myself, because I kept thinking, no, that can't be right, it has to be Jack Holmes the Porn Star or was it Joe Holmes because this can't possibly be... uh... it is...

And then I just stared at the PDF for several minutes in total, unblinking surprise. It's amusing enough if this were mainstream fiction, but it's detective/thriller meets gay erotica genre, and you'd think of anyone, an author writing gay literary porn should frickin' know at least the name "John Holmes", or at least his/her editor, y'know, someone.

What makes it especially wacky/boggling to me (that it was missed?) is knowing the real John Holmes' best work is considered a series of parody-gumshoe flicks, in which he played a private *cough* dick.

[I keep thinking of that line in EW that I never got, but now I think I do: "If you're trying to be funny, you're not, and if you're being sarcastic, that's worse."]

[sans-pertinence.livejournal.com]

This... just about killed me. My ex was a fan of the - er - classics.