Abandoning Pen Name

I wrote White Sugar, Brown Sugar for over 30 years.  As a practicing lawyer with a fairly good reputation, and a number of clients who would not dream that I would have any inkling about the subject matter of the book, I decided to publish the book under a pen name. I worried that clients and others in my home town of Daytona Beach would be appalled to think that I could write such a graphic depiction of such negative matters.

But after it was published, the Daytona Times newspaper and WPUL interviewed me for Black History Moth regarding my recollections and depictions in the book of race relations in Daytona during the 50s and 60s.  The article used my real name, and even showed my photograph.  A few weeks later, a reader praised the book on the “I Grew Up in Daytona Beach!” Facebook page.  It only took about two or three posts before somebody said, well according to the Daytona Times, the author is Mike Pyle.

Since then, I have spoken at the Volusia County libraries and other places, and again, I have received no negative comments, and haven’t lost any clients. Suddenly everybody knew, and people on the Facebook Page started reading it and talking about it, and very few said anything negative. I started to question the use of a pen name.  I have published non-fiction books in the past, and have a number of fiction books in the works with my own name as author, and using the same characters.  I thought maybe I should come out.

Then, we hired a publicist, and the first thing they said was the pen name was going to cause confusion, and I should drop it. So I did.  As of today, June 12, 2013, the same book with my name as author is in the works for E-Book publication as well as print publication, and will be showing up in a week or so.  The book is the same. All that changed was the author name and description, the acknowledgments page and correction of some typos.

I hope the change in name won’t cause confusion, and eventually the good reviews posted under the prior author name will make their way to the new materials.  But since there were only about 500 books issued under the prior name, I trust that all will be o.k.