[The ebooks for Sunset and Jericho and Hell and Gone are still on sale until the end of June—Apple, Kindle, Kobo, etc.—don’t miss out!]
Next year I have a book coming out under a pen name, and I’m a little unsure how to go about promoting it.
I got the usual forms and questionnaires from the publisher—a Guide for First Time Authors. How to set up a social media page, newsletter, etc.
With pen names, you can start from scratch, or simply add your sobriquet to your twitter handle. They can be acknowledged or unacknowledged. Neither feels right.
I don’t particularly want to play a character, nor do I want to do the things which made the pseudonym important in the first place, i.e. ‘be myself.’ I’ve put this off for weeks now, going over the angles.
My friend wrote a couple of excellent thrillers under an acknowledged pen name, then a nonfiction work explaining how such an arrangement let him write genre without dragging in the expectations from his literary work. It’s a smart way of helping a book find its best audience.
Approaching this from the genre side, the goal of my pseudonym is a bit different. This book is the first in a new series, a smalltown mystery in the vein of Robert B Parker’s Jesse Stone books. A pen name creates a blank slate as far as expectations go. It’s a chance to write books that could be Clint Eastwood movies, which is simply easier without my Canada and Private Eye baggage.
Easier, and kind of exciting. If I never have to explain that Canada isn’t nice, or that the PI genre is more than Chandler, that’d be OK by me.
The issue of how much of yourself to put out there (and how) is interesting. I always tried not to write about my family. But I hit a point in my dealings with them that causes me great distress. Writing about it might not solve anything, but it’s a way to sort out emotional clutter (as well as reap tremendous profit). Nonfiction is another challenge.
The next few years are going to be particularly interesting. I’m going to be someone else, and more myself, and still the Vancouver detective guy. I’ll be updating things soon. For now, I’m happy that Sunset and Jericho is still on the BC Bestseller list.
I find this really interesting! I've been reading the Expanse novel series and I found it being co-written under a pseudonym a twist from the writers' perspective. You can definitely tell the stylistic differences but I'm wondering if the double byline versus a single byline performs worse than others.
Congratulations on the new series! As a writer who juggles multiple pseudonyms, my feeling is that you shouldn't waste too much time worrying about keeping them separate. Readers who like you in one genre will probably want to find find the alternate you--or at least be curious. Even though I have some separate social media accounts for the different versions of me, I cross-promote now all the time.
Good luck! I know it can seem weird when a publisher treats you off as a "new" author.