“This is not a rebranding?” Well, I guess, if you live in the universe of Opposite Day. (And yeah, I know, I’m responding to her, here, but…I don’t really know her.)

Otherwise…just changing your name for life purposes is a pretty classic branding illustration used in classes and at work, everywhere. Changing your name for professional purposes, especially when you’ve just spelled out the reason, and it’s “My real name lost value,” is a pretty definitive and basic rebrand.

Sucks, that’s how book publishing is, now. But it’s not like it’s new or anything, either, really.

If I ever have to use a pseudonym and tell everybody it’s me, it’s going to be Fart Starter, and I’m going to put diacriticals all over it, tell everybody it’s Finnish, and they had better not pronounce it like it looks.

His admin’s done better with that than the last two, yeah, among other things. I have my great disappointments, but…mostly I’ve been kind of impressed.

Unfortunately, the “African Stalin took over the White House and liberals eat Christian babies’ blood baked into their matzoh” story is still winning. This is a critical juncture, there, though – the religious right in the US, in particular, has been whipped into such a frenzy of unreason, of late, that they’re becoming unmanageable for the GOP. This is scary, but it also provides opportunity: the story can get crazier and worse, or the story can change to something better.

I hope. And I hope somebody with some funds and position to do something about it is thinking similarly.

I don’t have a list of author names as such, but after I heard someone’s anecdote about having to choose a new name very quickly I started lists of first and last names just in case. Most of the last names are plucked off my family tree. (I admit I was a little sad when I found out there was an author named Felicity Savage, as that means I probably need to cross Savage, my grandma’s maiden name, off the list.) I figure at least the first name should be something I wouldn’t mind people accidentally calling me all the time.

Oh, I do have ONE designated: if people stop letting me publish literary and spec-fic under the same name, my literary self can be Anne DeCourcey (middle, mother’s maiden). It’s not Cornwall Urquhart, but I like it just fine.

I don’t have a list of author names as such, but after I heard someone’s anecdote about having to choose a new name very quickly I started lists of first and last names just in case. Most of the last names are plucked off my family tree. (I admit I was a little sad when I found out there was an author named Felicity Savage, as that means I probably need to cross Savage, my grandma’s maiden name, off the list.) I figure at least the first name should be something I wouldn’t mind people accidentally calling me all the time.

Oh, I do have ONE designated: if people stop letting me publish literary and spec-fic under the same name, my literary self can be Anne DeCourcey (middle, mother’s maiden). It’s not Cornwall Urquhart, but I like it just fine.

I like old women’s names nobody uses anymore, like “Olive” and “Eunice.” I made a half-hearted effort at giving Kate a name like that. My ex was probably wise to decline.

Oh, and Anne DeCourcey sounds like she could use a good rogering from Lanyard Cox.

“And back in the late 1970’s, when I’d hear people say, “I saw Eight is Enough last night,” I’d go, hmm, who is this Ada Zenov everyone keeps talking about. True story.”

For years, I thought there were two diseases: namonia, the one I heard about, and pewneemia, the one I read about.

“And back in the late 1970’s, when I’d hear people say, “I saw Eight is Enough last night,” I’d go, hmm, who is this Ada Zenov everyone keeps talking about. True story.”

For years, I thought there were two diseases: namonia, the one I heard about, and pewneemia, the one I read about.