Pen Names & Real Life

When I decided to write this book I knew that my students would do everything they could to find it and read it because THAT is how teenagers work.  While I know that older students are reading, scrolling, and watching their way through many things that are not age appropriate, I wanted to write a romance novel and didn't want to hold back simply for this sake. So I decided I would use a pseudonym, as many great writers have done throughout time. 

 

Yes, there are some problems to this.  Authors need to show their faces for publicity. Will this create problems? Perhaps. In a perfect world, I would become so famous I could just write all day and quit my day job, but until that happens I will be keeping a secret that I want to share with the world more than anything. Finishing this first book  has brought me more personal joy and sense of accomplishment than anything I have done in a long, long time. 

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But there are also boundaries. As much as I share about my personal life, it is perfectly okay to keep my writing separate. People I know will eventually read my book and know who actually wrote it. Someone will inevitably say that (this teacher) from (this school) wrote about two fictional people in a healthy relationship that got physical, and OH MY THE SCANDAL that will be talked about in my community of people in my life WILL happen at some point. I know this. I am not naive. But if I can share my feelings here, hopefully people will understand my choice to write as someone else. And hopefully they will respect me for it.