What's In A Name?

You might have noticed that I've added a second name to my little bio/profile on the left. Yep, I'm writing under a pen name now. This is something I've thought a lot about and actually agonized over the name choice for quite a while. It wasn't an easy decision, but a necessary one.

My first book was under my married name. I'd toyed with the idea of a pen name then, but frankly I wanted credit for the book. I had also done some pre-book stuff in the area and felt I could draw upon that audience. So, I was published in non-fiction with a book geared primarily toward teenagers and their parents.

Come to now. My first contracted title is a paranormal romance novella. This book is not intended to be Young Adult and I decided that I wanted to keep my non-fiction works separate from my romance works. Yet, I also didn't want to hide that I am the author of my romance works. I decided on a public pen name. This is fairly common for authors who write in different genres. It allows their fans to know what they are getting when they pick up a particular authors book (no thinking you have a historical and finding it's a paranormal) while also allowing those readers that read multiple genres to know that their favorite historical author writes paranormals under this other name.

I plan to release my paranormal and romantic suspense novels and novellas under the Angie Derek name and will continue to use Angelia Almos for my non-fiction and possibly young adult books since I can tie into my already established base of young adult readers (especially for young adult horsey fiction since I'm published in young adult horsey nonfiction).

How about you? Are you considering using a pen name? Do you publish under a pen name? Is it a public one or secret?

Comments

  1. The last name was Greg's suggestion as I was trying to come up with something totally made up.

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  2. I've considered using a pen name, but I have an uncommon last name, and I like that I can't find another person (through Google) with my name. So I'm going to keep it. But I do see the point in using a pen name, especially for people who write in very different genres--using one name for children's and one name for adults, or one for darker novels and one for contemporary.

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