July 1, 2008

Pen name

Anna Kathryn Lanier is a pen name, and since I blogged about my daughters, I'll tell ya'll how I arrived at that name.

Tiffany's middle name is Anne and Holly's middle name is Kathryn (Kathryn is also my sister's first name). I thought Anna went better with Kathryn than Anne did, so I made the one little change to it. Lanier was my great-grandmother's maiden name, and I thought it was the better of the family names (somehow Coons just didn't sound very romantic).

So, that's how I arrived at calling myself Anna Kathryn Lanier.

As for my other pen name M. J. Sager....well, that's my real initials and my maiden name.

~Anna Kathryn

PS On July 2nd, Skhye Moncrief will be my guest blogger. I'll be putting up an interview I did with her in a bit and she'll be blogging during the day. Please come join us.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I always wonder how people choose
their pen name.

Anna Kathryn Lanier said...

I think everyone chooses different ways. I know some authors will pick a last name that's alphabetically close to a well-known, best selling author, so when their books are on the shelf, they're next to a best seller. Now that's what one calls marketing strategy.

To tell you the truth, I don't know who Lanier would be next to on a bookstore shelf. I suppose I should find out...

Also, my plan was to use M. J. Sager for erotica and contemporaries and A.K. Lanier for historicals. But I decided I'm not doing eroticas, at least not at this time, so I've decided to not use M. J. for the time being. Both my contemporaries and historicals by The Wild Rose Press are under Anna Kathryn Lanier.

A.K.

Laura K said...

This was a neat post. You always wonder if the author is writing under her real name. Wonder what mine will be?

Anna Kathryn Lanier said...

Laura, usually, the copywrite is in the author's real name. If you look at a print book for the copywrite, you should see the real name. Amanda Quick is really Jayne Ann Krentz.

This is not always true with e-title, but with print, NYC titles, I'm pretty sure it holds true.

People chose pen names for a variety of reasons. Those who do erotica, do so for mostly obvious reasons. Others who don't write quite that hot, still use pen names becaue of their careers. School teachers for example will probably use a pen name.

I did for different reasons, one is tht I do plan to teach school one day, so thought a pen name would be good.

Anna Kathryn