On Being Real
There's been a lot of huff and roar lately over plagiarism, which seems so much more common now in the digital age than it was when we were all confined to print. Just in the past few weeks, a writer using the name Clarissa Black was outed for transforming Aubrey Rose's novella City Girl, Country Wolf into a work so similar (titled City Girl, Mountain Bear), it was eerie. Then the news hits that Tiffanie Rushton, writing under the name Sam Taylor Mullens, had plagiarized earlier works of Rachel Ann Nunes, among others.
Plagiarism is nothing new, but that's not the story I want to focus on. While reading through the appalling problems these other authors are facing, I've become a bit disturbed by readers' reactions, in particular those that decry the use of "fake" names and pictures by authors.
Here's the thing. There are tons of authors out there legitimately using pen names as the front for their writing. Again, this is nothing new. Back in the day when women in Western societies were pigeonholed into tightly defined roles, several prominent women assumed male names in order to have their writing accepted by the world at large. Silas Marner comes to mind. It was written by Mary Ann Evans, better known as George Eliot, a name she used so her work would be taken seriously and not brushed aside as romantic mumbles derived from the female mind.
In modern times, writers use pen names for a variety of reasons. Some use them to distinguish works of one genre from another. Others use them to guard their privacy, and still others assume pen names so that they can write about material that's not exactly accepted by the public at large.
I do all three. My writing career had its start in non-fiction in a narrow niche market where I'm fairly well-known. When I first began writing fiction, I knew I'd have to use a pen name to distinguish between my non-fiction and fiction works, though everyone knows I write under both names. I make no attempts to hide that.
When I began writing erotic PNR and dark fantasy, I chose to write under yet another name, one that only a handful of people associate with the real me. Thing is, I live in the rural South, right in the heart of the Bible Belt. My father is very Southern Baptist, and while he's open-minded about a lot of things, I'm pretty sure the explicit sex found in The Vampire's Pet would give him a heart attack. I love my Dad. Ergo, I use a pen name and guard it carefully. The biography on this website is totally made up, but if you read down, you'll see that it's meant as a joke.
The truth of V.R. Cumming comes in the biography I leave everywhere else: I live in the rural South where I write all day long, and sometimes all night long, too. This is the absolute, unvarnished truth. That it sits beside a doctored stock photo is immaterial. The real me shines through with every word I write, with every character and story and book world I share with my readers. This is the real me, the bluntly honest woman with a darkly creative mind.
Not many people see that woman. Most see the smile I wear to hide what's going on in my head and never look beyond it, and you know what? I'm perfectly fine with that. Everyone wears a mask, everyone. To single authors out because they use a pen name as their mask is hypocritical, and it's unnecessary. If you want to know the real person behind a book, read it. Go ahead. Read that book and learn every vulnerability, every weakness, every fear. Every character contains a part of who we are. Every story line is something that affected us personally, sometimes in ways we don't even realize until we're knee deep into writing and a dam opens we didn't know existed and all that pain and hurt and betrayal floods out of us onto the pages of a book.
The truth is, and I'm giving you the God's honest truth here, folks, authors can't hide who they are because everything we are is on display for everyone to see. It's the bad sister with anger issues and a taste for pain. It's the man who slowly begins to understand that love comes in many forms, some of them not tolerated or accepted by society. It's the polluted river running by our house and the ghost haunting the deep wood and the memory of blood so deep, it stains us forever with its fetid stench.
People say a lot of things about me, but the one thing no one who's read my stories can accuse me of is being fake. I'm a real, flesh and blood person. All you have to do to find me is open a book.
Plagiarism is nothing new, but that's not the story I want to focus on. While reading through the appalling problems these other authors are facing, I've become a bit disturbed by readers' reactions, in particular those that decry the use of "fake" names and pictures by authors.
Here's the thing. There are tons of authors out there legitimately using pen names as the front for their writing. Again, this is nothing new. Back in the day when women in Western societies were pigeonholed into tightly defined roles, several prominent women assumed male names in order to have their writing accepted by the world at large. Silas Marner comes to mind. It was written by Mary Ann Evans, better known as George Eliot, a name she used so her work would be taken seriously and not brushed aside as romantic mumbles derived from the female mind.
In modern times, writers use pen names for a variety of reasons. Some use them to distinguish works of one genre from another. Others use them to guard their privacy, and still others assume pen names so that they can write about material that's not exactly accepted by the public at large.
I do all three. My writing career had its start in non-fiction in a narrow niche market where I'm fairly well-known. When I first began writing fiction, I knew I'd have to use a pen name to distinguish between my non-fiction and fiction works, though everyone knows I write under both names. I make no attempts to hide that.
When I began writing erotic PNR and dark fantasy, I chose to write under yet another name, one that only a handful of people associate with the real me. Thing is, I live in the rural South, right in the heart of the Bible Belt. My father is very Southern Baptist, and while he's open-minded about a lot of things, I'm pretty sure the explicit sex found in The Vampire's Pet would give him a heart attack. I love my Dad. Ergo, I use a pen name and guard it carefully. The biography on this website is totally made up, but if you read down, you'll see that it's meant as a joke.
The truth of V.R. Cumming comes in the biography I leave everywhere else: I live in the rural South where I write all day long, and sometimes all night long, too. This is the absolute, unvarnished truth. That it sits beside a doctored stock photo is immaterial. The real me shines through with every word I write, with every character and story and book world I share with my readers. This is the real me, the bluntly honest woman with a darkly creative mind.
Not many people see that woman. Most see the smile I wear to hide what's going on in my head and never look beyond it, and you know what? I'm perfectly fine with that. Everyone wears a mask, everyone. To single authors out because they use a pen name as their mask is hypocritical, and it's unnecessary. If you want to know the real person behind a book, read it. Go ahead. Read that book and learn every vulnerability, every weakness, every fear. Every character contains a part of who we are. Every story line is something that affected us personally, sometimes in ways we don't even realize until we're knee deep into writing and a dam opens we didn't know existed and all that pain and hurt and betrayal floods out of us onto the pages of a book.
The truth is, and I'm giving you the God's honest truth here, folks, authors can't hide who they are because everything we are is on display for everyone to see. It's the bad sister with anger issues and a taste for pain. It's the man who slowly begins to understand that love comes in many forms, some of them not tolerated or accepted by society. It's the polluted river running by our house and the ghost haunting the deep wood and the memory of blood so deep, it stains us forever with its fetid stench.
People say a lot of things about me, but the one thing no one who's read my stories can accuse me of is being fake. I'm a real, flesh and blood person. All you have to do to find me is open a book.
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