On Secret Identities (or problems I never realized I’d have)

I’m currently juggling two secret identities as well as two public identities, and for the record this gets confusing because these identities are all secret from each other.

I don’t talk about my work here (seriously though, snore fest). I don’t talk about my home life at work. And I have book contracts under two different pen names. Talk about problems to have! :-)

Obviously, this blog is hosted by one of my pen names, and my other pen name doesn’t have any internet love. No blog, no twitters, no facebook. Which brings me to my dilemma:

I’ve seen that most writers have two names that they’re very upfront about, the name they publish traditionally with, and the name they use for their self published stuff. I’ve seen that system work pretty well, where authors go through and very openly acknowledge both writing aspects to make it easier for fans to find their other works.

But that’s not the case with my two names. They’re both traditionally pubbed (though through a small press), but they are a bit night and day. One is magic and explosions, and chase scenes, and the other is awkward teenage moments leading to a rip-your-heart-out-break-your-soul tragedy―well, at least, that’s what I’m aiming for, but I think I’m a bit wide of the mark.

But really one book is all: 

And the other book is a little more:

 

So the question I pose to the gallery is what would you guys do? Would you build up a whole separate online presence around the second pen name, or would you tack the contemporary pen name onto an already existing social media network?

Solar eclipse...

… but first a name.

Thank you to everyone who voted. My mother was very concerned because her favorite pick was in danger. All you lovely people voted my pen name to be Rena Rockford, and thus I am. (hmm, that almost sound biblical, completely unintentional).

And the winner of my pick-your-prize prize was the fifteenth commenter, Carrie Bastyr! Congratulations Carrie, I’ll be sending you an email soon (if I haven’t already).

So, you can now reach me at DrFaerieGodmother (at) gmail.com if you have burning need to contact me. And again, thank you to everyone who took the time to vote and comment.

But now onto the main event!

I live in Albuquerque, so Sunday night I was treated to a fantastic solar show. It was an annular eclipse (not to be confused with a total eclipse) where 95% of the sun was blocked out by the moon. There will be a total eclipse on the 21^st of August in 2017 (more on that later). I thought I’d share a bit of the experience for those of you who didn’t get to see it for yourself.

First off, it was like everyone decided to throw a tailgate party across the whole city. It was awesome. We chose to go up to the hockey rink because it has a commanding view, and a lovely observation deck. Also, we know the people who play hockey there on Sundays, and it was a great excuse to say “hi.”

If you’ve never been to an eclipse event, pretty much everyone looks like this:

3-y-o in dr. horrible training

And most of the pictures… well, unless you’re good, you aren’t going to get really good pictures. We all tried. And at first we got some fantastic pictures of the sun drowning out the cameras (nope, I’m not showing those), but then I noticed something else in the image.

See, in the image here, that’s a solar flare that happens to be the mirror image of the actual eclipse. It’s an artifact of the lenses in a camera, but it is a shadow of the actual sun, and the stage of the eclipse. I wish I’d realized a little sooner.

So then I took another

And another

(It’s worth noting that the sun is still so bright that it drowns out the camera’s light sensors, and only 5% of it is showing. 5%!!!! That’s crazy bright!).

 

Since the sun was setting for the whole time, we eventually got to see the sun set while still blocked by part of the moon.

And if that wasn’t enough, during totality, the hockey game being played on the ice took a break so all the players could come up and have a look at the eclipse.

Liquid Awesome.

All in all, not a bad afternoon. 

Happy Nerd watched eclipse.

Pick my pen name

If you’re new here, I have a dilemma, and what better place to go than the blogosphere to solve my problems? My problem is simple: I have a number of exceptionally boring science publications. The science isn’t boring, but there’s something about the process of “just the facts, ma’am” that manages to desiccate a paper down to the common cure for insomnia.

And let’s face it, as a writer, I don’t want to be associated with science papers so boring even I fall asleep when I read them (and I really care about them!). And that means it’s time for a pen name.

But how does a person pick a pen name? I’ve seen some people just announce it, and I’ve seen people have contests, so I decided to go with a contest. It’s a simple thing, I’ve got a list of possible pen names (subject to publisher approval, of course) and a list of prizes. Vote for your favorite pen name, and comment below to be entered to win a prize of your choice! (and who doesn’t like prizes!)

See, easy as pie.

The poll is in the side bar and it will be open until May 19^th at 11:59pm, and you have until then to enter for the prize. I know that people have different things that they want in life right now, so I thought I’d go ahead and put out a prize list that has something for everyone.

Here are the prizes:

A $25 dollar gift card for Amazon or Barnes and Noble (your choice)

A full beta read of your manuscript (up to 120k words). This is a beta read where I give you feed back on the overall arc of your story, characters, and emotional impact.

A line edit of your query and first thirty pages. This would include things like grammar and spelling, as well as an inclusion of

A custom binding of your manuscript (up to 120K words, they start to look lumpy after that). I will typeset, print and bind your manuscript into one book (cover paper of your choice from my collection).

And if none of those prizes strike your fancy, I’ll donate $25 dollars to Crits for Water in your name (or even sponsor you for a Kat-Crit, if you’d prefer).

How about those prizes! One lucky winner will get to pick whichever prize they want.

Now, since there’s no way for me to check to see if you actually voted, this is all on the honor system. Comment to enter and vote for a pen name (you can even vote more than once if you’d like). Anyhow, this contest is helping me out, so you don’t need to follow to enter (though, I’d love it if you did). Just comment and vote. Easy peasy. (do make sure that you leave your email in the comment so I can contact you in case you win, I promise not to spam you).

Now for the names: It’s hard to come up with names that seem like real names but don’t have five thousand other people with that same name. And names have power. People have a lot invested in names, so I don’t want to just have any old name. I spend forever picking names for my main characters, so I usually go generic until a name really catches my eye. Here’s the list of names to vote for:

Bridgett Ardin

Mithryl Kitras

Rena Rockford

Roslin Falkirk

Legara Leoria

And of course, if none of these seems like a good name, feel free to make a suggestion in the comments or hit none of the above. Thanks for voting!

Call Me Ishmael...

Turns out that the smack going down was all terrible vicious rumor, and malicious lies (I’m totally relieved). Still, it’s made me think a ton about names. I always read about protags who were named so specifically for this or that story. It always makes me jealous because I wasn’t named so I could be the protagonist in my own life. I was named to honor a beloved aunt. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but for the record, my name has four letters and four thousand mispronunciations. I suspect people with the derivative of name Anne hate the Annas, Annies, Ahnas.

Mispronunciations aside (and it’s ree-nuh, in case you were starting to wonder), I grew up very under-appreciative of my name. My name didn’t fit right, but I was a teenager, nothing about me fit right. My sister always tried to shorten it (to reen, yeah, that’s appealing, but if my mother can put up with being called Die instead of Diana, I guess I can muster on under the burden of reen), and my friends tried to hide behind clever nick names: Kit (didn’t catch on), elffy (oh boy, internet inappropriate story there), and of course Sasquatch because I have enormous feet. Nothing stuck. Never did they find a name that worked. To this day I’m not sure if I was relieved or disappointed.

Then I went to college. I went with Rena there too, I mean, nothing else seemed to work. I got some interesting titles there (Ice Queen of the Universe and High Executioner of all she Surveys), but nothing seemed right. I wanted a name that hinted of the mystical without being silly. And then I got to be a horseback riding instructor at a camp. At camp, no one goes by their names, and they didn’t warn us until we were there. We had two days to pick then we had a naming ceremony in the hours before the kids showed up. I was completely stumped. I knew better than to pick my old fall backs because they didn’t work. I already knew that. So I picked Draco, for the constellation.

Little did I know, a very popular book featured a villain named Draco, and everyone asked if that’s who I was naming myself after. Now that I know who Draco Malfoy is, I’m glad I didn’t know at the time. But what was terrible, was that name fit even worse. And by even worse, I mean it started to be a relief when the other counselors would use my real name.

Fast forward to now, and I have to admit that the idea of a pen name has much appeal, but what to choose? As awkward as I am with my name, I doubt there’s one much better suited. I was watching a you tube channel and came across someone who was talking with a bunch of drag queens and they were talking about drag names. Apparently, your drag name is your first pet’s name as your first name and the street where you grew up as your last name. Mine then is Bridgett University. Or if you go with the first pet from my college days it would be Mithryl Ellwood.

Then there’s your blues name (the name you’d have if you were in a blues band, and for the record, I’ve been in a blues band, and I have never once been called Skinny Liver Brown).

My Jedi Name? Forre Fihop.

Pirate Name? Nancy the Mauve

Gangsta Name? Loose Gat Slinger

Ninja Name? Gisaku Ogata –san

Military Code name? Red Falcon

Stage Name? Miranda Ashbourne

Obviously, this could go one, so I am going to have a contest, the Call me Ishmael contest. It'll start on Friday, so make your suggestions for pen names now, and I'll post all the rules. The prize is even better, it'll be the prize of your choice (I'll post the list of possible prizes in the official Contest post).

And definitely share your drag/pirate/jedi/gangsta names in the comments, my friends and I are have a huge laugh right now.

p.s. Crits for Water is going on right now, so head over and make a bid or just donate.

Changes

I pulled my photo.

I loved that picture. I mean seriously, you couldn’t have a more perfect for me picture. Maybe I’ll get to use it as an author pic someday (*snorts* no one would have such poor taste as to let my evil scientist picture be the picture on the jacket, I mean even I think I looked a little too excited about wearing the evil scientist goggles).

I also took down my email. If you need to get in contact just leave a comment with a user profile attached to an email. Sorry about that guys, but some smack went down at my department. It isn’t with me (seriously, this is a squeaky clean blog compared to my colleagues) but my email is my full name. I’m not in trouble, and I’m not likely to get into trouble (even if I left my picture up, and I’ll put it up again after I defend). I’ve gone preemptive. Discretion is key in this brave new world where the faculty cares about what their grad students do on the internet. I posit they might have some better things to do with their time than discuss our online presence, and I’m certain a majority of the faculty agree. In the real world, however, it only takes one disgruntled gate keeper to keep a grad student from getting the degree they’ve sacrificed so much for. So the new word isn’t mum; it’s discretion.

And this is what I find annoying.

See, I started this blog using my own name on purpose. I already have a blog under a fake name where I ask people not to mention my real name. But this was supposed to be my writer’s blog. I used my real name, because I wanted to make some real connections, but now I’m learning that my academic career isn’t conducive to using my real name on the internet. I guess that may have been naïve of me, but I figured if his real name was good enough for Asimov (who was a grad student when he sold his first science fiction stories), then my real name would be good enough for me. I guess Isaac didn’t have to worry about google cache.

It looks like I’m about to make the plunge into pen name land to distance myself from myself (Yeah, I know, silliness, but if discretion is key, I can go with that). And this could be a golden opportunity.

See, once upon a time I hated my name. I’ll have to write a post about it because it was very teenager, but that’s a post for next time.

Anyhow, help me out and leave suggestions in the comments. My mother likes Rena Rockford, and someone has already suggested Lena Charles (sounds like a romance novelist…) and there’s a suggestion for Draconna Ly Zeitlaunen (there’s a story behind it, but it has the dreaded Z last name). And let me know what you think of Pen Names. Maybe I should make a contest out of it. ::rubs chin like evil scientist::