Sunday, May 22, 2011

People Searching Your Characters

Quick post this morning in between church and a friend's baptism.

I was Googling recent reviews for Dark Tide Rising the other night and happened upon a People Finder type of service that popped up near the top. I thought it was odd that something like that would show above the links to reviews the book already has.

You'll never guess whose profile was there, registered as if he actually existed...that's right...Mark Thurgood, the hero in my story. My blurb from the book is on his page, the profile picture is blank, but his age and physical description are there and spot-on with how I wrote them. It shows he lives in northern California and has some likes and dislikes that are oddly similar to the story.

Either someone read Dark Tide Rising and created a profile using my hero (which I think is the most likely) or I happened to write a character based on someone from real life whom I've never met. (Okay, if the latter is true, I should start a career as a kick-ass psychic. Bet I could make pretty good money.)

This whole thing makes me think of the T-shirt slogan, "Be nice or I'll kill you off in one of my books." Yeah. Now I mean it. Heh.

3 comments:

Jamie Gibbs said...

Lol, that's awesome. You should write weird scenarios involving the character and see if this 'real life' persona experiences the same things. You've got some kind of literary voodoo going on, hehe.

Karysa Faire said...

Sounds like the beginning of a paranormal suspense novel!

Kristin Miller said...

Jamie--I'm tempted to dive back into the book and re-write some things...maybe Mark Thurgood could lose an arm in a freak accident or be chased by a crazed stalker. I wonder if that would show up on the people search. :)

Karysa--YES! I know, right?!?