Writing – split personality or not

It could be argued that we writers have split personality issues anyway, what with all those characters rumbling about in our heads, not to mention hearing their voices. The question is, should we use pen-names when certain books are different in style or genre?

Fellow Crooked Cat author David W. Robinson has written an interesting blog about writing and typecasting. It’s worth a look.

http://www.dwrob.com/2014/10/wednesday-writing-typecasting/

There are no easy answers. Authors have to make up their own minds on the thorny subject, as styles and the subject matter differ. 

Quite a while ago (1986), Ruth Rendell wanted to get away from her police and suspense tales and tackle darker, deeper psychological themes; so she invented the penname Barbara Vine. My favourite early Vine books are A Dark-adapted Eye, A Fatal Inversion and King Solomon’s Carpet. Certainly, not all of her readers made the switch to the new books and some felt downright uncomfortable with them. Of course she continued writing under both names and eventually the secret was out. She still produces books under both names.

Readers of cozy crime are not necessarily at ease with gritty procedural thrillers; a little gore might be acceptable, but that too is a thin line to walk upon. Perhaps you should give consideration to the appeal of your work before making a leap. Some opinion favours writing to your audience (once you have one or know what it likes); this can become a strait-jacket, however. Contrary opinion says, write for yourself, whatever the genre, which works too – though in the current hard-nosed market-place, that might prove counter-productive. Truth is, the boundaries are gradually melting away, thanks to the wide appeal of the e-book. You might lose old readers when you switch to a different style or genre; equally, you might gain new readers who love the switch.

Bottom line: write what you’re comfortable writing, and don’t compromise yourself. Have faith in your product. Use a pen-name if that makes you comfortable or if it makes commercial sense. My author page on Amazon identifies me under my pen-names.

I’ve dabbled with a few pen-names over the years, for articles, short stories and even novels. I suspect I’ll continue to use a few, depending on the material.  My crime and thriller books published by Crooked Cat (Spanish Eye, Blood of the Dragon Trees, and Sudden Vengeance) are under my Nik Morton moniker; as will the upcoming thrillers Catalyst, The Prague Papers and The Tehran Text.  My westerns are written as Ross Morton (though I made an exception with Bullets for a Ballot, which is by Nik Morton! [Yes, it does get confusing, but as this latter book was likely to be marketed more at US readers, and I was better known in the US as Nik rather than Ross, I opted for that departure from the norm!]

 
So, there you have it. If you’re prolific or want to stretch your writing beyond any particular ghetto, there is no simple choice; you have to go with your gut instinct.

My e-books published by Crooked Cat – Amazon UK
http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=Nik+morton+crooked+cat&rh=n%3A341677031%2Ck%3ANik+morton+crooked+cat

My e-books published by Crooked Cat – Amazon COM

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=nik+morton+crooked+cat&rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Anik+morton+crooked+cat

 

Why do you use a pen name?

I’ve been asked that over the years, as, doubtless, have many other authors who fall into that category. There are reasons.

Let me start by pointing out that my real name is Robert William Nicholson-Morton (no secret, it's on my website). Yes, quite a mouthful. When cheques were the normal form of payment, I hated signing them with that name – more like a squiggle. In truth, I hated signing cheques anyway!

When I joined the Royal Navy, my name-tally ended up as R.W.N-Morton. Having a double-barrelled name had its amusing side. When I appeared for duty one evening, the Leading Hand called out ‘Morton’ and I answered, ‘Here!’ Then he called out ‘Nicholson!’ So I said, ‘Here!’ I quickly added, ‘But I don’t want two jobs.’ Inevitably, in true forces spirit, I had to have a nickname. I became ‘Nik’ – I insisted on dropping the ‘c’ so I could sign my cartoons that way. (I thought there couldn’t be another Nik Morton around – and there wasn’t for some years, but now there is, and he’s a distinguished doctor in UK! But I got there first.)

That’s one reason to opt for a pen name; you’ve either got a common or familiar name or your name is already on the covers of published books. And although it doesn’t deter some authors, a long name is harder to fit onto a cover than a shorter snappier one.

I digress.

Way back in 1971, when I first started submitting short stories and articles, I wrote as Platen Syder. Being in the RN, I felt it prudent in case I ended up having some possibly controversial piece published. (I’d slightly adapted the name of someone I’d signed-up to join the Navy in Gosport, Platten Syder, who now lives in Truro, UK). Despite the name being in front of them, some magazine sub editors managed to give me the byline Playten Syder!

 

By the time I was publishing the magazine Auguries (http://auguries-magazine.blogspot.com.es/), I was using Nik Morton. (When courting my wife-to-be Jennifer, she knew me only as ‘Nik’ for a short while, and to this day I am still Nik to virtually everyone. Schizophrenic, who me?)

When I ran book reviews in my magazine, I had a small stable of reviewers; but the volume of books meant there were still too many for them to cope with. So I reviewed some books under the names Maggie Weaver, Nicola Williams as well as Nik Morton, to avoid the name monotony!

Eventually, after many years, my first novel acceptance was Pain Wears No Mask by Nik Morton, in 2007. Within a month or so afterwards, I wrote my first western and felt it should be under a different brand, so Ross Morton was invented. Ross was my late mother’s maiden name. Bear in mind that this was in the traditional publishing arena, where genre branding is considered important. The reasons for this are manifold: readers’ expectations possibly top the publishers’ list. If a reader buys a Nik Morton book, they expect it to be a crime novel. This is a little nonsensical if the cover and blurb of the book stated the story was a western, or a science fiction dystopian novel, surely? Nik Morton is considered a ‘brand’, in effect.

So quite a number of authors over the years have adopted pen names to get out of the ‘brand’ straitjacket – Ruth Rendell became Barbara Vine, for example, and recently J.K. Rowling hid behind Robert Galbraith for The Cuckoo’s Calling, perhaps because she felt she’d never get a dispassionate review as herself. Years ago, Doris Lessing did something similar with the pen name Jane Somers for two books. And yet there are exceptions, of course; she also successfully switched genre from ‘mainstream’ to science fiction with her Canopus in Argos sequence, eschewing a pen name; perhaps the success of her remarkable dystopian novel Memoirs of a Survivor helped.  

 

Nowadays, as any reader or writer knows, publishing is changing. There’s a recognition that maybe readers are happy to read an author no matter the genre she or he writes. Of course there will be those who won’t touch a western or a science fiction novel ever – or not again, not after reading a bad one. (You mean, there are no bad detective, mystery, romance novels? Fancy that!)

Things have become a little blurred for me and my pen name usage. I was commissioned to write a western, chose the title, Bullets for a Ballot, but then baulked at the byline – Nik Morton or Ross Morton. The publisher had published my short stories as Nik Morton, and that was the name most familiar to a US readership, so I clouded the issue and settled on Nik Morton!

I have a horror-crime-romance cross-over novel written as Robert Morton – Death is Another Life. My science fiction and horror short stories were published as both Platen Syder (or Playten Syder!) and Nik Morton, so the confusion persists.

Should a writer use a pen name, then? It’s his or her decision. There’s a great deal of excellent advice and background material on pen names to be found in the blog of Kristine Kathryn Rusch (former editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and an incredibly prolific writer in several genres); just one instance: she wrote the popular novelization of The Tenth Kingdom as Kathryn Wesley. Her blog is: http://kriswrites.com/2013/10/02/the-business-rusch-pen-names/