There was quite the hullabaloo in Romancelandia this week that resulted in a number of conversations around why an author would choose to have a pen name, and while I support my colleagues' desire for anonymity (as long as they’re not trying to pretend they’re someone or something they’re not in order to capitalize on a perceived identity), I never actually wanted that anonymity. What I wanted was my damn name on those covers, but as a newbie author back in 2017, I let someone who (supposedly) knew more than me about book marketing convince me that having such a long author name would be a deterrent to people reading my books because it sounded pretentious and settled for “Rebecca Norinne” to end the harrassment from those parents.
Now, I don’t know if “Rebecca Norinne Caudill” sounds pretentious or not. I don’t think it does, but the reality is as I inch ever closer to 50, I genuinely don’t care if having my real name on the cover of a book that I labored for months over gives someone the icks.
I guess that’s my very long-winded way of saying that moving forward all of my books will be published as Rebecca Norinne Caudill, and I’m slowly working through updating all of my back catalog to reflect this change as well.