Just had a story pseudo rejected. (It was a contest entry and they just announced the winners and I wasn’t one of them.) As I was reading the piece getting ready to send it off to another market, I realized I’d used an agent’s name as one of the characters. Not only that, but as someone who receives a certain amount of positive attention from a bit of a sexist pig who is one of the other characters.
(Hangs head in shame…)
A reason it would be helpful to have fellow in my genre writers read my pieces…Or at least why I should google all characters before submission. I cannot trust my mind sometimes.
Well, now I can blame all future rejections on that. I can be that author that wrote that story that, yeah. Hopefully no one else noticed it and it’s fixed now at least.
M.H. Lee 
Submitting your work anywhere is a crap shoot. You never know who is actually going to read it. There are so many factors involved from the reader’s personal preferences to their mood that day. All you can do is keep trying. 🙂
Exactly. Keep trying. And trying. And trying. And trying some more.
Someone would have to be fairly arrogant to assume a character with their name was named after them.
True…but it wouldn’t be outside the realm of possibility for someone to say, “You wouldn’t believe the story I just read with a character that had your name…” (First and last, I should add.)
Fortunately, I think this particular agent would roll with it no matter what. Still. Not something I meant to do!