Promoting Unknown Pen name

[Jenna]

I've decided to use a pen name for my fiction work. However, as I've built the blog and created the twitter and facebook accounts, I realized, my pen name has no friends. Building a following starting with my mom and sister will take waaaayyyy to long. I didn't decide to use a pen name to "hide" my fiction from me, but simply to separate my non-fiction and freelance work from my fiction. I have mentioned on my "real" Facebook and Twitter that I'm a closet mystery writer, so I'm considering sharing my alter ego to start generating my network. But then you have to wonder, if you're going to tell everyone, why have two names?

I'm curious as to how others have generated a following for their pen names starting from scratch.

[Tony]

Jenna wrote: "I've decided to use a pen name for my fiction work. However, as I've built the blog and created the twitter and facebook accounts, I realized, my pen name has no friends. Building a following start..."

I can't speak for myself as I'm a publisher and not a writer. But I can give you an idea of what my writers have done.

Currently the books I have been publishing are 'erotic romance'. Or with the most recent 'Christian erotic romance' (I should note, I don't care what genre I publish, I'm trying to build my publishing company). These writers all use a pen-name (for good reason). What they did first was to publish their stories to storiesonline.net as well as to their pen-name website. Once they had a following they started letting their readers know that I was going to published their stories and where to find them.

Now I realize your story might not have any sex scene in them. That really does not matter with Storiesonline.net. It's sister site finestories.com is for non-erotic stories. There are other sites out there.

I also realize you may not want to go this route and the time it takes to build up a following. In that case, you are going to have a hard time to keep your pen-name and real life name separate. You can try word of mouth but you will feel like your building the following for someone else.

[Jenna]

Thank you Tony. I haven't heard of those sites so I'll check it out. My story is a mystery with a romance so there is a little sex, but nothing close to erotica (or even Nora Roberts). My goal is less about staying secret and more about keeping my name related to my non-fiction and freelance writing. I know many writers cross all genres and types of writing, but I'd like to separate mine. Thanks agian.