A rose by any other nom (de plume)

As Canada Reads 2010 ramps up, I’m finding myself immersed fully in the online world of books. Since the debates start next week and I’ll be deep into coding, live chats and social media, I’m afraid I can only offer up one post here per week. Guest posts will resume after (if you’re interested in being a guest drop me a line at kimberly.aliasgrace [at] gmail [dot] com). Check out this lovely complementary debate, Civilians Read, running all this week over at the Keepin’ It Real Book Club blog.

As a writer while I’m living, breathing and thinking about books, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to pen names in the last little while. I thought I’d throw this out to you for an opinion or two, as readers of my blog.

Here’s my dilemma: My married name (although I love the sound of it more than my maiden name) is pretty vanilla. It also belongs to a Girls Aloud band member (who knew?!) and, in terms of Google ranking, I’m not sure if I could compete with that particular distinction.

I suppose it could be worse. My name could be Jenna Jameson.

Here’s the thing though. As many of you know, I’m writing a novel. The genre I’m writing in is Young Adult supernatural fiction.

Yeah, that’s right. And it involves werewolves.

If you laughed, that’s exactly another reason why I’d like to keep my “professional” writing separate from my fiction writing. It seems to be fairly standard practice to use pen names between different genres.

In any case, pretty soon I’ll be looking at starting a writing blog separate from this one to spare anyone not interested in my attempt at becoming an “author” the boring details of the creative process. I want a name that’s still reflective of me and who I am. Ideas I’ve tossed around are using my maiden name (Kruger) because it’s reflective of me as, well, a young adult. Or I could use my first and middle name (in some kind of homage to my Twitter handle @AliasGrace). Or perhaps I could revisit the name Katherine (shortened as Kat, Katie or Kitty) as my young adult self wanted to do. Or maybe I’m overthinking it and should just stick with the real deal and own up to the fact that no matter what I write, it should be representative of me on some level.

I sure would like your input though, gentle readers.

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