My Secret Selves-- Gini Koch

My Secret Selves

By Gini Koch (and Jemma Chase, A.E. Stanton, Anita Ensal, J.C. Koch, and more)

As more and more of my works get published, more and more of my “secret selves” see their words hit the light of day. Who are my secret selves? My pen names.

Each name is an extension of me, and yet, not me. Similar to how my characters are both extensions of me (I created them, after all) and yet, not me (they aren’t me or supposed to be me, and they’re each different both from me and each other).

I have a lot of pen names. A lot. And I get asked, more and more frequently, both why I have them, and then, why I have so many.

My first answer is simple: I have a LOT of voices in my head and my various pen names control their own sets of voices. (It’s a party in my mind, but hey, it gets the writing done, so it’s all good!)

My more professional answer is this: I have pen names for both business reasons and creative reasons. Let’s tackle creative reasons first.

I write in every genre. That’s cool, right? Right! Only…my voice is not the same as I spend time with my various characters and settings. Sometimes my voice isn’t the same within the same genre.

I believe that your name on a book should be a promise to your reader. Gini Koch writes fast, fresh and funny science fiction with a lot of humor, romance and action. Jemma Chase, on the other hand, writes about paranormal creatures, and while her stuff isn’t always dark and dour, it’s also not supposed to be a laugh riot. Readers can and do like both, but if a reader who loves my Alien/Katherine “Kitty” Katt series from DAW Books or my Martian Alliance Chronicles series with Musa picked up “The Disciple” and thought it was from Gini Koch…well, they wouldn’t enjoy it. At all. But from Jemma Chase it works just fine (in part because Jemma loves vampires and werewolves and all that jazz and Gini thinks aliens are far more da bomb…but I digress).

A.E. Stanton is writing post-apocalyptic fiction in an Old West setting that also has this world’s version of zombies in it -- not exactly a laugh riot, and it sounds nothing like Gini Koch, or Jemma Chase, for that matter. Again, readers can and do enjoy The New West series, but if you read “When Josie Comes Home” you’ll agree it doesn’t sound like something Gini Koch wrote. And it shouldn’t.

I get to do what I want, try new things, go wherever I want, because I’m not limited to doing one thing forever and ever. It makes all my writing stronger and me a much happier author.

So, by the fact that my voice changes, I have a new pen name. New voice? New pen name. And so it goes. And those are the creative reasons.

Now, the business reasons. Genres exist for readers, yes, but they really exist for bookstores, so the bookstores know where to shelve the books. The easiest example for why this matters is erotica vs. children’s -- if you write both, you’re GOING to have different pen names. But that’s an obvious example, so let’s take one that’s a little less obvious.

Jane Smith writes an exciting romantic suspense novel. It’s shelved in the romance section and does well. Jane’s happy, and she writes another book. Jane’s next book is a dark, dystopian future suspense novel. Somehow, Jane’s publisher lets this go through under the same name as her romantic suspense. The bookstores get Jane Smith’s next book, and shelves it in the romance section, right next to her first book.

Jane’s readers, the ones who bought and loved her romantic suspense, race to get this new one. They read it, and most of them hate it, because they read the whole thing and there is no romance, and it’s dark, and the bad guys pretty much win. They vow never to buy Jane again.

Jane’s TRUE audience for her dystopian suspense novel never find it, however. Because they don’t look for dark dystopian suspense novels in the Romance section. Jane’s career is pretty much over, at least if she wants to keep writing as Jane Smith.

And that’s the other reason authors use pen names, a reason I so far (knock on wood) haven’t had to pay attention to -- if you bomb in one name, it’s pretty much dead forever, so you have to make a new one.

Bombing out in a name doesn’t mean you were a bad writer. In our example, both of Jane’s books are really good. But because she used her same name for both, the bookstores and readers expected the same THING from both books. When they don’t get that, they either give Jane up forever or never discover her. And yes, readers are very fickle especially if they feel betrayed.

I never want to betray my readers’ trust. I want them to know what kind of story they’re getting from me, and have them enjoy every story I give to them, and I do that by telling them which of my secret selves has written it.

“Contingency Plan” from Anita Ensal releases tomorrow. It’s the first installment of The Neighborhood, a rural and urban fantasy series about a group of white witches and other magic users who protect the regular folks from all the bad beasties out there. Does it sound like Gini, or Jemma, or A.E.? No. It sounds like Anita, who is both thoughtful and a little whimsical. Give it a try…the rest of us assure you you’ll like her, too.

Buy all of Gini's Books at Musa Publishing

http://www.ginikoch.com