Rules

It’s an honest mistake.

Blackwater official logo.

I thought I was being clever: in Night’s Favour, I’ve got a couple of big ticket companies.  These are Blackwater Associates, a mercenary contractor, and Pharmachem, a “big pharma.”

Turns out these are real company names.  Blackwater is now known as Academi, and they are just the kinds of people I don’t want knocking on my door.  Pharmachem Labs is a company that makes nutritional ingredients – a little separate from the way I’d named it.

On top of that, I mention “real” organisations – like Microsoft or Google – and their executive staff.  Yeah, it’s a book about werewolves, sort of.

Academi official logo.

The question, I guess, is how much leeway are you allowed as an author?  This is bothering me through the edit process – I’m not married to the names (I thought) I’d made up, but there’s no telling whether or not some small company somewhere is going to get pissy.

A bit of research seems to indicate that the former (e.g., use of Blackwater) would be bad, but use of Google Maps might be ok.  As with all things, it depends, and this is maddening.  I think I’m going to need to rename Blackwater and Pharmachem.

They were such cool names.  Duh – obviously, someone else thought of it first.