It’s Wednesday, not Monday

Welp…I’m already falling off my schedule. It’s Wednesday and this should have been put up on Monday. Of course, I had a headache that lasted two days…and now its Wednesday.

So, I wanted to post about pen names and why folx use them. Though I can’t really speak for others, I can speak for myself.

I publish under several pen names…one of which is Tara Moeller; this is for my adult novels and novellas. There aren’t a whole lot of them yet, but there should be another one out by the end of the year. There are also a couple of short stories under this name that were published in college.

I also have novels published as E. G. Gaddess. This is the first name I used for any of my novels, which happen to be young adult steampunk and vampire novels (two different trilogies, btw). Very different from what I write under my own name. Though I think this name lends itself to the Victorianness of these novels, its actually my grandmother’s maiden name, and the initials for the names my grandfather thought I should have been given when I was born. I use it to honor them.

Then, there is T. L. Frye, used for my middle grade books, like the Secret of Magik and Dragons. The Truth About Magik and Dragons is in cover art production now and when it publishes, will use Open Dyslexic like the rest of the books DreamPunk Press puts out.

And now, I have Zhara Jons for young adult contemporary stories (and YA contemporary paranormal). The first under this pseudonym will publish in March of this year. And I am excited. There are two more completed and another in the works.

But why do I use pen names? I write so many different stories, and not everyone will like all of them. I am hoping that each pen name will become a brand for the types of stories I tell using them. Like the steampunk new Victorians of E.G. Gaddess.

Other writers have other reasons. Do you use a pen name? Or two (or three)? If so, why? I’d really like to know I’m not alone in my reasoning.

I’m back… I think

It’s been awhile, I know. More time that I want to count.

But…my mother passed and it will be two years this coming April (she died on Friday the 13th). It was a peaceful event, I think. For her anyway.

I thought I was ready, that I’d prepared myself for her to be gone. I wasn’t.

I bawled. I wasn’t there. I’d gone home to grab something to eat and make the hard phone calls to her siblings–my aunts and uncle–that she was ready to go. We all knew it was coming. It wasn’t a surprise.

She’d had lymphoma–a rare primary site of the brain–since the summer of 2012. By all rights, she could have died then, almost did, maybe it…no, I’m not going to think that way.

But she wasn’t alone on the 13th in the nursing home (we’d only moved her into one a few weeks prior). My kid (an adult) was with her, along with their best friend, a nursing school student. They painted her nails and put lotion on her hands. They spoke to her. Said goodbye. I’m sure they sang.

I wanted–want–her back, even though her dementia had taken much of her away from me long ago. Even those small bits of her would be better than nothing.