Writerly Ways

[cornerofmadness]

What’s in a name? A great deal really. It’s our sense of self. I’ve already blogged about picking names for characters, or at least avoiding picking really silly ones. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my non-erotica pen name. I need to make a decision soon. There are a least two stories that I could put out there for publication that are not erotica and it would be nice to have them under what I hope will be a name to use in the future.

Picking the erotica name wasn’t as hard. Honestly, I wasn’t sure how successful that I would be at it (more than I thought as it turns out) but I had always rather liked one of my Great-Grandmother’s name ‘Jana.’ Denardo is another Great Granny’s surname. I had thought to use Concetta (I’ll be keeping my actual surname).

I mentioned this to my parents since hey, this would be the name they could actually tell their friends to look for. Mom seemed unimpressed and suggested I use her grandmother’s name, Guiseppine. I’m guessing she probably means for me to use Josephine, which is what we called Great Grandma. I, on the other hand, am less thrilled with it. Maddelena was another suggestion. I like that name. In fact, it’s the name of my vampire protagonist in Machiavelli Moon. Hmmm what to do, what to do.

Names are an interesting thing. Mom and her brother are cleaning out Grandma’s house and repainting it and otherwise bringing it up to code for the inevitable sell-off once she passes (she is 96). They found out that Grandma’s brother, Al’s, real name was Libertino. Grandma’s name is NOT Assunta on her birth certificate but rather, Santa and her name appears differently on the birth records for her three kids. We just learned the Italian surname of Mr. Christie, Great Granny’s second (or was he the third?) husband but mom and dad have yet to email me the spelling.

I need to decide what name my stories will (hopefully) be sold under. Naming is always the hardest part.

Yearly word count

4861 / 75000 words. 6% done!

Machiavelli Moon & Until the Ice Breaks & Splinters – all untouched.

Need to check the word count limits but it's probably around these...

Geek love -

2296 / 10000 words. 23% done!

Scarred -

1742 / 10000 words. 17% done!

Comments

[silvrethorn.livejournal.com]

Do you really need a pen name for your "straight" fiction? I can see the need to keep your erotica persona separate from your mainstream one, but unless you're doing multiple genres, it seems like you could go ahead and use your real name for mainstream publications.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

I would prefer not to if for no other reason than to keep my private life just that

[a2zmom.livejournal.com]

I really like the name Maddelena.Just different enough imo.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

I have thought of taking it and changing the vampire's name. I LOOK like Maddelena so much.