A Rose by Any Other Name

by Alethea Williams

What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet…

Most writers will recognize Shakespeare’s lines from Romeo and Juliet, where Juliet is lamenting the fact that it is only Romeo’s surname of Montague which bars them from being together. Preceding these most famous lines about a rose, Juliet Capulet proclaims:

 O, be some other name!

When choosing the name under which to publish my historical novels, I can’t say I had Shakespeare in mind.  I’m not sure I would have had the courage to publish under my given name. I did feel like an actress, another, braver version of me with a version of my name could present my work to the viewing public. But there were more reasons than one that I  chose to publish under a pseudonym. I didn’t want to use my first name as when it was combined with my surname the result seemed generic. Not quite as bad as Jane Doe, but close enough. And there were already at least five people on Amazon with published works under that name. So I thought I would use my middle name. There wasn’t anyone on Amazon publishing under “Alethea Williams,”so I was fairly sure it would be unique. I had never met anyone else named Alethea; it had to be uncommon, right?

Alas, I should have done a bit more homework. There might not be anyone else publishing under my chosen name, but on Facebook my sisters-in-nomenclature and I form a virtual throng: Wrong Alethea Williams? Why, here are at least eight more! Do a search of the name and eleven additional Alethea Williamses pop up.

DON’T HIDE YOUR IDENTITY               Photo credit: ♥KatB Photography♥ / Foter.com / CC BY-NC

To make matters worse, I came to discover that using any other name than the one people knew me by for my whole life garnered some rather testy results. I wasn’t deliberately trying to fool them, but that must have been how it appeared. My naive use of a nom de plume in my home town turned out to be something less than a crowd pleaser.

When I asked my editor what worked best to sell books, she said, “Word of mouth.” There is a trick to that, however, and the trick is to try and see that people are saying good things about you. I’ve read advice on other blogs that discourages writers from using any name other than their own.  Apparently, some people will not accept that Rose smells just as sweet when she is called Alethea. I think my experience with a pen name showed me that the people who personally know a writer  feel a sense of ownership in that person and, as a consequence, in that person’s writing.  Your old friends know you, they probably know more than a bit about your subject matter, and they can be one of your advertising advantages, just because they remember you from way back when.

So now, a year later, I’ve had a second novel accepted for publication. This one is contemporary instead of the previous historical. It’s sensual versus the sweet content of my historicals. I should have an easier time attracting readers to this new work, since I’ve already done the hard work selling Alethea the Writer, right?

MASKED Photo credit: ViaMoi / Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND

Well, no, as it turns out. I’ve learned a different lesson. Many of those who read and told me they loved my first book are not those I think of as the audience who will read the second book without some kind of resistance. I don’t want to sell anyone a book under the false pretense of expecting what they got from the first book. To avoid anyone feeling cheated because they’re not getting what they now expect from the writer of historicals, Alethea, I made up a whole new pen name under which to publish my contemporary romances. And so I must start over building an audience for this persona, the Writer of Sensual Romance.

And I hope this third version of me is the end of branching out as a writer, and that I don’t take it into my head to start writing fantasy and science fiction, or horror, or YA.  The last thing I need is yet another writer in my house. My desk already feels crowded with the three of us sitting here elbowing each other for our turn at the keyboard.

Writers aren’t exactly people…they’re a whole lot of people trying to be one person.
–F. Scott Fitzgerald
US writer (1896-1940)

For another, more courageous take on how to handle publishing in more than one genre, see Nancy Jardine on Writing Wranglers and Warriors blog. http://writingwranglersandwarriors.wordpress.com/2013/03/09/anonymity-is-it-worth-it/

The author of historical novel Willow Vale, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Jargon Media, Alethea Williams blogs on Actually Alethea about writing, writers, and Wyoming history.  Follow on Twitter @actuallyalethea, or like Alethea Williams, author on Facebook.  Friend her on Facebook, Goodreads, LibraryThing and Google+.  Comments and honest feedback always welcome!