Tomorrow is my birthday! I don’t like to boast, but there is going to be a parade *buffs nails on shirt*. Genuinely, though, when I was a kid I thought the 12th July parades were just for me. It’s amazing that I’m not more full of myself!

Anyhow.

Pen names!

Pen names get a lot of flack these days. Understandably and, in some cases, more than justifiably. However, people use a name online, or on books, that isn’t the name on their electricity bill for lots of reasons. Most of the time, without any other evidence of abusive behaviour, I think the names people adopt are a lot more about how they want to see themselves than how they want other people to react.

I mean, obviously I sorta use a pen name. It’s just my initials.

My main reason for using a pen name is that my name just…doesn’t scream crime writer to me. Tammy. It’s a good name, it suits me most of the time. However, it doesn’t sound serious does it? It doesn’t scream ‘crime’. I don’t know if that was on my mum’s mind when she named me, but she’d have probably considered it a point in its favour.

Most people call me Tam, so I considered that. Except there’s too much ‘mmm’ in Tam Moore. It just doesn’t sound right. So TA Moore it was. I did consider my Gran’s maiden name, because I was very close to my Gran and she always supported my writing. That would have been Tammy Belle, though, and frankly…I can’t live up to that.

Other authors I know went for a pen name that hid their identity more thoroughly. One was a teacher who didn’t want any of the kids in her class to look her up online and find that she’d written sex scenes. Another worked in a very formal, strait-laced environment and didn’t want anyone she worked with to know that their hard-nosed boss actually wrote the most ridiculously fluffy children’s books.

Oh and when I was starting out I was also halfway through a YA novel, and I was told that if I’d written adult sex scenes under one name I’d need another for a YA novel. I don’t know how true that is, but I was told it.

And of course, some people just don’t like their given name and didn’t want to spend all their time answering to it in their authorial guise. Others who write things that they worry would generate animus toward them and their families, and proactively take steps to prevent that getting too close.

Finally, of course, there are the bad guys. They pick names so they can control the narrative around them. However, there are bad actors everywhere. All you can do is keep an eye on people and see if their story is being used to bind people tighter to them or generate money.

I did tell you that it was my birthday, but I’m happy with a few ‘happy
birthdays!’

Seriously though. Tammy Belle. She’d have to write way more…sparkly…stuff than I can muster, right?