Iah asked Rachel Caine:

Hi Rachel, I was wondering why you write using so many PEN names?

Rachel Caine Curiously enough, Ian is *also* one of my pen names (Ian Hammell)!

It's a funny story. Basically, I started out as Roxanne Longstreet, and my books didn't sell very well. So back in those days, in order to keep writing (and selling my work) I had to adopt a new name in order to become a "new" writer again and start over with a new publisher. They didn't like to take chances on a writer whose prior books didn't succeed, so they required it in order to allow bookstores to place new orders for books they wouldn't necessarily stock under my old name.

This happened ... three times before I became Rachel Caine.

Then, after I became Rachel Caine, I adopted some pseudonyms in order to do one-off projects that I just wanted to experiment with, like media tie-in novels or New Adult novels. But mainly I'm just Rachel Caine these days.

Fun fact: "Ian Hammell" is what they call a "house name" ... it's a name that's owned by the publisher and they hire authors to write books that are published under that name. So while I've written *an* Ian Hammell book, I didn't write all Ian Hammell books.

I hope that helps!

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