Pen names, Pseudonyms, or Nom de Plumes.

Jenn McKinlay: There are probably as many reasons to have a pen name as there are pen names in use. So why do some authors write under different names?

     A quick study of famous authors and their pseudonyms reveals that Stephen King wrote under the name Richard Bachman so that he wasn’t constrained by the publishing belief at the time that an author was limited to one book per year. He also wanted to discover for himself if his success was due to talent or luck. Unfortunately, he was outed as Bachman fairly early on and never did satisfy that question to his liking, much like another famous author J.K. Rowling.

     Rowling used her initials instead of her first name Joanne, because her publisher felt that her reader demographic (tween boys) wouldn’t respond to a female author. In fact, Rowling didn’t have a middle name and had to borrow the K from her grandmother’s name Kathleen. After the success of Harry Potter, she wanted to try her hand at mysteries and wrote under the name Robert Galbraith to take the new work as far away from herself as possible. Like King, her true identity was revealed too soon for her to discover how her books would have fared had readers not discovered Galbraith’s true identity.

     Other authors have used pseudonyms to allow them to try out different genres. Dame Agatha Christie wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott. She said the mysteries were her day job but the romances were for fun! In a flip on this, romance author Nora Roberts writes futuristic police procedurals under the name J.D. Robb. Ann Rice, also used a penname when she wrote two erotic novels under the name Anne Rampling. Of course, Ann Rice is actually a nom de plume with her maiden name being Howard Allen Frances O’Brien. And then, there is Dean Koontz who is said to have as many as ten pen names, because like Stephen King, he wrote so many books that his publisher couldn’t keep up. Also, in an interview he said there was no way he could earn a livable wage writing just one book per year. Some of his names include David Axton, Richard Paige, Anthony North, and his gothic-romance pseudonym Deanna Dwyer.

     There are other reasons that authors use pen names, for me, it was because my first mystery was actually a writer for hire work. Having had FISH FOOD -- my dead strip club owner found being eaten by the fish in his saltwater tank mystery -- soundly rejected, I was willing to give it a go when a publisher asked my agent to ask me if I’d consider writing one of their in house ideas. Because while they weren’t keen on my book -- at all -- they did like my voice. Um…thanks?

     Turned out, they wanted a mystery series about decoupage. Decou-what? Yeah, whatever. Of course, I said yes! Suspecting this would be a short-lived series, I made up a pen name that consisted of my dog (Lucy) and my grandmother (Lawrence). And then an interesting thing happened, I discovered I liked writing under a pen name. It was liberating in ways I hadn’t expected so when the opportunity arose to take on another series while maintaining the two series I’d begun since the decoupage books tanked (shocker!), I took the job and wrote a bargain hunters series under the name Josie Belle (another grandmother name mash-up).

     Would I ever write under a pen name again? In a heartbeat. Truly, there was something very freeing about writing as someone else. Although, next time, I’m going to be a dude.

     How about you, Reds? Any nom de plumes in action out there? If not, what is the pen name you would write under if you had the chance?

For Fun:

 QUIZ: Match the author to the pen name 
(I scored 8 out of 10, if we’re sharing!)