Articles

The Other Me (C) 2007
By Donna Harris

Who to be or who not to be? That was my question.

I’ve been Donna Harris for several years, thanks to my third trip to the altar in 2001. I ditched the husband, but kept the name. It was short, never misspelled and easy on the ears. Donna Harris. Plus, as a reporter for several newspapers and a national magazine, it was somewhat familiar to my readers.

When I finally decided to seriously write romantic fiction, the idea of a pseudonym haunted me. Should I or shouldn’t I? Donna Harris sounded like a good name to use. After all, it was me. But did I really want people to know the real me? With a pen name, I could take on a persona more interesting than any of my best characters.

An online marketing class I took suggested many reasons for choosing a pen name over my your own. I’ve compiled a list of questions to ask yourself before deciding to switch your own name for a nom de plume.

1. Is your name long, difficult to spell or pronounce? Józef Teodore Konrad Korzeniowski chose Joseph Conrad for his pen name. Much less of a mouthful and easier to remember.

2. Do you want a separate name for each type of genre you write? Nora Roberts, who started her career with a Silhouette Romance, writes futuristic romantic suspense as J.D. Robb.

3. Do you want to go incognito? If your work is filled with unmentionable acts of heated passion, you might want to write under another name to keep the tongues from wagging at the corner grocery store.

4. Do you want to retain your privacy by establishing a pen name for work and keeping your own name for family and friends?

5. Do you want a gender-changing name to appeal to a certain audience? Some men write as women, some women write as men and some of each choose to go a gender-neutral route a la J.K. Rowling.

The deciding factor in my pen naming came when I attempted to create a Web site to market my still unwritten best-sellers. Unfortunately, someone owns www.donnaharris.com, although it’s not being used for anything but ads. It is for sale for several hundred dollars if anyone wants to be me on the Internet. Some suggested I go for a dot net name instead. Good idea, but www.donnaharris.net already belongs to a Realtor in Birmingham, Ala.

I tightened my thinking cap and wrote a list of names that fit my criteria: easy to spell, easy to remember, fitting to my writer personality and good marketability.

My list seemed foreign, filled with identities I didn’t know, but could possibly see myself becoming. I looked in a mirror and repeated the names aloud, practicing the signature to match on a sheet of notebook paper. After all, if my dreams come true, I’ll be signing the front cover with my new name.

Rosanna True, Deanna Grace, Kris McKay and Jessica Grey all seemed OK, but not quite right. Emerald Matthews, Constance Michaels and Angelica Moore seemed too pretentious. I even thought of the names Calliope and Thalia as first names to pair with Michaels, a last name I liked. Both were daughters of Zeus, muses of epics and comedy, and I thought they might be good luck charms. Still not me though.

I even considered Katrina Michaels but was advised by a friend that no one on the Gulf Coast would ever buy a book written by someone named Katrina.

Then it hit me while watching the Food Network. I would be Cookie. Everyone loves cookies, right? So Cookie Michaels was born. And with that decision instantly came all these ideas for marketing – like a place for readers to submit their favorite cookie recipes on my Web site, sugar cookies to bribe TV, radio and newspaper reporters to get press for my first (and subsequent) novels, and sugar cookies for readers at book signings.

I bought the domain name and feel good about my new identity. I am Cookie. And I bet every time you bite into a sugar cookie you’ll think of me, comforting and sweet.

Donna Harris, writing as Cookie Michaels, lives with her daughter, father and spoiled miniature dachshund Magnolia Clementine. After two decades in the newspaper business, she has set her sights on romantic fiction. She says, “These voices in my head have been entertaining me for a lifetime, so I figured it’s time to share their stories with the world.”http://www.cookiemichaels.com/