As some of you are aware, I hope to publish under a pen name. After discarding several options (mainly names that already had significant Google presence for other things) I settled on Rebecca Gabriel. Those are family names, it's not too far back in the alphabet, and I dunno...it just sounds like a "romance author" kind of name. I've gotten kind of attached to it.
Now there's a question of if I'll be able to use it. I just stumbled across an author that writes - guess what? - Scottish historicals. Her name? Sarah Gabriel. And her newest release's heroine's name? Elspeth, of all things.
*headdesk*
(To be fair, she writes straight historicals that are medieval-set, and other than the name Elspeth her book has nothing in common with mine beyond Scotland. And she's got degrees in medieval history, so I might give her books a try on that factor alone. I've gotten rather sick of non-historical historicals...)
Posts
7 comments:
let me be the first to state, for the record, that I met *your* Elspeth first!
So I was reading your post, and my eyes slid over to where Jo's cover was staring at me... after ranting about Amazon I got my copy of Spymaster's Lady on Friday and oh! how I want to read it! Wwrite, you silly girl, write!
Rebecca Gabriel will downright outshine Sarah Gabriel! There will be no confusion :)
No, seriously, from what you said I don't think you'll get problems with the name.
Umm...
I'm a real-life Rebecca Gabriel working on a Master's in creative writing, and I'm afraid I must raise serious objections. After all, I'll be on the market myself in a few years.
Thanks!
What are the odds? Just don't name your MC Elspeth, and we should be fine. *w*
There's no telling what a future agent will advise me to use, so it's all in flux until then. Unfortunately, "Jennifer Clark" is extremely commonplace and too boring for an author name, IMO...
J.R. Clark is too spare; J. Rebecca Clark sounds like I should be writing nonfic.
I really wanted "Rebecca Clark" (or Clarke) but it's taken. Hmmm...
Really? I think Jennifer Clark and J. Rebecca Clark both sound like great romance author names!
But you're right... we're all at the mercy of our agents...
~RG
But even if the other names "sound" okay, the bigger issue becomes that there are too-freaking-many "Jennifer Clarks" in the world and on the internet. Laying claim to blogs and domain names without resorting to unweildy stuff like jennifer-clark-author.com is practically impossible.
*sigh*
Guess I'll finish the book, then try to get an agent, and then see where it goes from there...
I'd lend you my pen-name :)
Bianca Elliott ;)
Post a Comment