What’s in a Pseudonym?
I have a terrible confession to make. Although I am a science fiction writer, for many years now, I have been secretly writing crime stories.
Let me give you a moment to pick yourself up off the floor – and for my furious blushing to subside.
I didn’t mean to do it. I was living in Brisbane when it all started. I’d decided to start having a go at this writing thing again and I thought that, this time, I’d join one of those writing group thingies and see if that would help. However, the only writing group I could find within 40km of my home was a bunch of crime writers. (It turns out there were loads of writing groups in Brisbane – many much closer to home – but they didn’t turn up in my searches at the time. These are the accidents that shape our lives.) So I joined and to, you know, join in, I wrote a few crime stories for critiques and such.
The thing is, I really liked the stories I was writing and I very quickly zeroed in on a particular character, Alexandra Bertolissio, a detective constable in the Queensland Police Service. Before I finally left that particular writing group, with a firm intention to focus all my efforts on science fiction, I’d written tens of thousands of words about Alexandra Bertolissio, her sister (Mel) and her daily battle with the Brisbane underbelly. As I say in one of the Alexandra Bertolissio stories:
To be corrupted is to find yourself tempted into a pleasure you should not enjoy, to want that pleasure again and again, no matter how wicked it is. To be corrupted is to discover yourself.
About that time (in fact, indirectly, through a connection I made in my crime writers’ group), my sci-fi writing career began to take off. I got a few short stories published and I was getting loads of interest from Big 5 publishers. I self-published my novel, Timesplash, and it did incredibly well. But I kept glancing at the Alexandra Bertolissio stories and thinking I should do something with them. I sent one off to a magazine and it said it would publish it but it went bust before the edition with my story came out. (This is not uncommon in the magazine business. It has happened to me four times so far.) I was, frankly, a bit relieved because I’d been reading stuff from other authors about how writing in multiple genres can “dilute your brand” and, if you must do it, you should use a different pseudonym for each genre.
I still thought of the crime stories as a potential distraction, so I self-published them (two novellas and a collection of short stories) under a false name and forgot about them. They never sold well and I took that as a sign that I’d made the right choice.
However, I’ve always felt guilty about them, alone out there, disowned by their father, ignored and abandoned, like bastard children, raised by the gamekeeper and his wife, never knowing they belonged up here in the big house.
And, in the end, it grew unbearable. So, I have brought them back into the fold. I’ve put them all together in a single, omnibus edition (novellas and all), slapped my real name on the front, and declared to the world that they are my own. I only hope that, in time, they will learn to forgive me.
If you’re curious as to what kind of crime stories a hard line sci-fi writer like me can produce, the collection is called “Sisters” and it’s available for pre-order at your favourite online store (just type my name into the site search and all my books will magically appear). I believe the stories are what crime writers call “police procedural” and, while there’s a smidgeon of sex and violence in them, they probably tend towards the “cozy” end of the detective fiction spectrum.
These days, I regret not having the courage to own up to my crime stories. Maybe all that brand stuff isn’t complete bollocks, maybe writing in multiple genres actually does confuse “the market”, but that really doesn’t matter, does it? I do what I do. I am what I am. If that doesn’t sell books, who gives a rat’s arse? There are more important things in life.
Fortunately.
