This is why I have always been fascinated with pseudonyms. When I was in grade school, around third or fourth grade, we had to write a report on our favorite author. My favorite series was the Hardy Boys written by Franklin W. Dixon. I hauled my little ass to the library and proceeded to get the most disappointing news of my life. Franklin W. Dixon wasn’t a real person. A collection of writers penned the Hardy Boys, they made up the name and wrote under it so it seemed as though one man wrote the series. The Nancy Drew books weren’t written by Caroline Keene either, but I thought those books were dumb — she entered flower arranging competitions for crying out loud — so I didn’t care as much. I’m sure I wrote the report but I couldn’t tell you what author I picked, my heart was broken, my favorite author didn’t exist. The world was a cruel place.

Fast forward five years to when I discovered Stephen King. I loved the horror and the slow drawn out suspense. When I learned that he wrote under the pseudonym Richard Bachman I was intrigued. At least this time I wasn’t reading Bachman first and feeling betrayed when I found out he was really King. This was 1999. King had been outed as Bachman around the time I was born. He had invented the pseudonym because at the time (the late 1970s) publishers were worried about an author saturating the market. King could easily write more than one novel a year and wanted to see if something he wrote could sell under a different name. He was curious to see if people were buying his books because he was talented or if it was just because they liked the brand he had created. According to King, he was outed too soon to tell.

Being Stephen King he couldn’t just admit to writing under another name and then move on. He killed off Bachman and has since published books under that name claiming that he found manuscripts in Bachman’s attic. It seems creepy to kill off someone who is really yourself. I think the recesses of King’s mind are a dark place indeed. I wish he had been allowed to see his experiment progress further.

King’s son writes under the name Joe Hill. He too wanted to see if people would buy his books because of his talent and not the pure luck of being Stephen King’s offspring. He had ten years being Joe Hill before confirming a magazine article that had outed him as Stephen King’s son. He won a lot of awards in that time. I’m sure growing up in the King household taught him a thing or two about writing. Being Stephen King’s son helped him in more than just the name. His older brother Owen is a writer as well.

Lots of authors use pseudonyms. Mark Twain is probably the most famous. He had used other pen names before he came up with Mark Twain, and there are a lot of articles out there about what Mark Twain means – steamboats, water depth, and whatnot – but not a lot of information about why he wanted a pen name in the first place. I think deciding against using your own name is more interesting than the name you come up with.

For example the female author P. D. James writes mysteries, a male-dominated genre for writers and readers. By using her initials instead of her name, Phyllis Dorothy, she could “trick” male readers into giving her books a chance. J. D. Robb does the same thing. It’s romance writer Nora Roberts’ pen name for her mystery series. Both authors use an author photo of themselves, unlike King who used a friend of a friend for his Bachman author photos. I can’t say for sure, but I assume it’s because people know by now who P. D. James and J. D. Robb really are. In the beginning the books were probably published sans photo. There would be no point in using masculine initials on the cover and then slapping a woman’s picture on the back.

Breaking into a traditionally male genre like science fiction or mysteries is a good reason to give a fake name. Another good reason for creating a pen name, and a good warning story for new authors, is what happened to romance writer Jayne Ann Krentz. She signed a contract when she first began publishing her stand alone titles, giving ownership of her name, Jayne Castle, to the publisher. After she left that publisher she couldn’t publish under her name for ten years. I can’t imagine the frustration. Check the fine print folks! She came out on top by publishing under her married name, Jayne Ann Krentz, and then creating different names for her different series. She is Jayne Castle, Jayne Taylor, Jayne Bentley, Jayne Ann Krentz, Stephanie James, Amanda Glass, and Amanda Quick. She even uses different names in the same series to make it look like three different authors contribute work. Talk about making lemonade.

Making up names seems to go hand in hand with making up stories. The Brontë sisters and Mary Anne Evans (aka George Eliot) published under male names to get their novels out into the world and get the guarantee that their works would be received as serious literature. It’s more than a little sad that some female authors still portray themselves as men to get the readership they want. I would hope I could put my true name on anything and be judged on the merit of my work, not my gender.

I do see the fun in using a pseudonym. I have thought that Kay McLain would be a good name to use if I ever wanted to write romance. It would be like creating a character who writes the books. Kay McLain, my first initial and middle name, would be a sweet older lady who sees charm and romance in everyday life. She wouldn’t have my cynicism. There would be happy endings. Kelly Hannon’s stories often end badly for everyone involved.

Maybe Samuel Clemens wanted to separate his writing life from his real life. Maybe his lighthearted short stories needed to be written by a version of himself. I think part of the creative process is exposing yourself to the world. Maybe developing a pseudonym can take the sting off of showing your inner soul to the judgmental masses. And if Kay McLain tanks at writing romance she can fade away, while Kelly Hannon remains, allowing me to start anew with a different name and a different story.

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Kelly Hannon worked in an indie bookstore, is editing her first novel, and blogs about annoying people at www.letterstopeopleihate.com. Follow her on Twitter @KellyMHannon

Diana Wynne Jones

One of Jones’ books always eluded me. I found it once at a library but never saw a copy again. As I grew older I was haunted by images from the book — a skeletal ship, a man chained to a rock, a girl with a withered arm — and, having forgot the title, began think that I’d dreamed it rather than read it. It was The Homeward Bounders.

The Homeward Bounders is a book about not finding home. Jamie narrates the story; he is twelve and is speaking into a machine left behind by Them. (They are always in italics.) Jamie grows up in late 19^th century London, the son of a grocer, exploring the city and getting into trouble. He stumbles upon Them playing a wargame, and, after consulting the rules, they decide, rather than killing him, to throw him onto the bounds.

This is the heart of the book, even though it’s only about 50 pages. Jamie ends up first in a world with nomadic herders, and many others that blur together for him as they do for us. He stays until the bounds call him, which they do sooner or later, and send him somewhere else. He is a Homeward Bounder — the rules are that if he ends up back at Home, he can stay. Other rules — he can’t die. It’s lonely. It doesn’t end.

Luckily, Jamie comes to a boundary that drops him into the sea. He is picked up the Flying Dutchman — his ship has got rid of anchors, to show that they have no hope — and dropped on an island where he meets a man in chains (who we know must be Prometheus, but Jamie doesn’t). Jamie finally meets other Homeward Bounders (a young woman exiled from her own world and a demonhunter), finally makes plans to defeat Them, and finally loses hope.

Diana Wynne Jones’ books are often madcap and hilarious, but not this one. There is humor, but the real triumph of the book is a flawless evocation of some of the bleaker moods: loneliness, hopelessness, dark irony, the feeling of being home everywhere and nowhere. I trust Jones, and I trust that any story she tells me will be important. Until I picked up The Homeward Bounders, I didn’t know I needed to read a story about how a boy can become an anchor.

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Suzanne Fischer is a historian and writer who lives in Detroit. She cares about people, places, and things. Find her on Twitter as @publichistorian

Really. Go read it. Right now.

Back?

Okay. After a few books about Bean, and Petra, that were at times a bit Tom Clancy-esque for my taste as far as science fiction is concerned, the Shadow series was laid to rest. Bean, and his young children, who were afflicted with his gigantism and huge capacity for intelligence, had been sent off into space to fly at near light speed while scientists on Earth tried to find a cure. The last book in the Shadow series, Shadow of the Giant, was published in 2005. It’s been a long wait.

When I got the book for my birthday after waiting for seven years I let it sit on the shelf until this week.

I wanted to read it. I wanted to know what happened to Bean and how his kids were surviving. I wanted to know if they made contact with the planet discovered in Children of the Mind. But I couldn’t pick up the book.

I had recently learned some not so nice things about my beloved Orson Scott Card that I didn’t want to know. And looking at his latest book on my shelf reminded me that this author and I differed on some serious issues.

If you Google “Orson Scott Card” (you don’t even have to finish typing his name) the seventh result includes the word homophobe. A friend had told me Card had made disparaging comments about homosexuality. Was my favorite childhood author really someone whose opinions would disgust me?

Now, I’m not here to discuss politics or rights or religion. Suffice it to say, I think very differently than Card. But would it stop me from reading his book?

I was torn. To be honest, I still am. By purchasing his book, which I did, I was giving him money. Money he can use in any manner he likes. Am I encouraging his opinions by adding to his book sales? No. Am I sending him a message by not buying the book? No. If I want him to know that I disagree, I can write him an email. He is very responsive to his fans. His website (hatrack.com) has helpful information for writers and readers. He writes about punctuation and writing formats. He discusses how much he reached out to his reading community to write the Shadow series because, even though he wrote Ender’s Game, he realizes that his fans are his single best resource for obsessive levels of detail about the plot and characters.

The man hosts a writing workshop in North Carolina each summer and gives one-on-one help to people trying to break into the writing world. I’m sure he would get my message.

The problem with writing to him is that I wouldn’t know what to say. I know what his seventh Google result is because I counted the list. I didn’t click on any of the links. I still want to hide my head in the sand.

I think I’ve divided him into two men: the writer and the person. I can read his books and love them without loving him. I can separate the work from the writer.

I know this is hiding. But the book was good. It was short, and the next one, Shadows Alive, doesn’t have a publication date but it should be more of a full-length novel, and I know a lot of what was going to happen. Shadows in Flight sets up some new characters for the next book and reveals more about Bean. It took me less than a day to read and I’m not sure why it was seven years in the making. I know the man writes a lot so I’ll try not to fault him there.

I feel guilty about not faulting him in other ways. Have I abandoned my convictions? Not knowing exactly what he said or believes doesn’t excuse me. I should find out. But, I really don’t want to break this fragile bond. I don’t know him and he doesn’t know me, but his books have had a great impact on my life. If his convictions are the foundation of his writing and that foundation doesn’t hold up for me, where am I left? I don’t research other writers whose books I’ve enjoyed. I don’t judge other kinds of artists by their left- or right-wing politics.

But here the door has already been propped open. I know enough to know that I don’t want to know more. Unfortunately I can’t close that door. Maybe someday I’ll read his comments and let him know that while I am a fan of his work, I disagree with many of the things he holds dear. I doubt I’ll change his mind; he wouldn’t be able to change mine. But right now I want to believe that he is reasonable and fair-minded. Really, I want to believe that he’ll care about my opinion. That it would affect him as much as his opinion affects me.

Until then I’ll wait for a publication date for Shadows Alive and slowly open the door further to see if what’s on the other side is too blinding to be left alone.

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Kelly Hannon works in an indie bookstore, is editing her first novel, and blogs about annoying people at www.letterstopeopleihate.com. Follow her on Twitter @KellyMHannon