I'm excited to announce that my latest story, "It's Nothing Personal," appears in the new anthology, CRIMEUCOPIA: TOTALLY PSYCHO LOGICAL.
When Dani DeLuca returns home after serving in the Army in the war in Afghanistan, she doesn't expect a secret from her time there to come back to threaten the new life she has built.
Now available in paperback at amazon with the ebook to follow. Check out the "Short Stories" tab for a link.
Updated: Mar 1
There are many reasons a fiction writer might choose to use a pseudonym. Perhaps her fiction is too close to real people and events. Would her third-grade teacher realize how deeply she traumatized her shy, insecure student when she forced her to stand in front of a roomful of mean girls and read her essay on how she spent her summer vacation helping her mother clean the houses of some of them? Would the mean girls see themselves as the bullies they had been? The odds were slim that any of them would read her murder mystery and even slimmer that they would recognize themselves as the monsters they were. But even as an adult, she still might fear their capacity for retribution. The solution: a pseudonym and well-disguised author photo.
Also, someone who is a successful cozy mystery writer might want to use a pseudonym for her noir mysteries to avoid confusing her fans. When they pick up a book with her real name on it, they know what they’re getting, a predictable but ultimately sweet story of true love overcoming all obstacles. How shocked they would be if, in the opening scene, a heavy-drinking down-on-his-luck private eye is graphically seduced in his office by a well-endowed blonde who is trying to persuade him to kill her rich husband.
The best example of the successful use of pseudonyms is Nora Roberts who was wildly successful as a prolific romance writer. Her alter ego, J.D. Robb, became equally successful writing science fiction police procedurals. Her fans know what to expect from her books by the name she uses for each genre.
As a short mystery story writer, it never occurred to me I might have a reason to use a pseudonym. I’ve rarely used characters who might be recognizable to people from my real life, although there are times when in my heart I knew who inspired them as I dispatched them off this mortal earth.
Then came Sex & Violins.
I was invited to submit a story for a new anthology. The submission requirements included at least one sex scene and a central role in the plot for an orchestral instrument. Hmmm. I enjoyed coming up with the mystery part, but joining the world of erotica turned out to be much more difficult than I expected. However, I managed to put together a short scene that met the requirements and was essential to the plot so I could tell myself that there was nothing gratuitous about it.
There was a long delay in the publishing date because of behind-the-scenes issues at the publisher. I confess I was relieved. But the anthology has moved to a new house and will be released very soon.
And now we come to my dilemma. To pseudonym or not to pseudonym.
Which do you think I chose?
When Hurricane Ian turned our lives inside out and upside down, part of me checked out. In those early days of using squeegees to push mud and filthy water out the front door, my husband and I felt like Sisyphus, pushing that damned boulder to the top of the hill, only to watch it roll back where it started from. No matter how much of the remains of the three feet of water we moved out, there didn’t appear to be any difference in the layer of muck throughout the house.
I found myself retreating from our new reality. My brain refused to believe what my eyes were seeing, and I proceeded to sleepwalk through the next weeks, knowing that at some point, my protective denial would have to shatter.
Normally, I would have turned to reading fiction, preferably crime fiction, to engage my attention and distract from whatever bad thing was happening. Not this time. I was unable to read for the first time in my life. My New Year’s resolution that year of 2022 had been to write and submit at least one new short mystery story each month. By September 28, I had stuck to it, with nine stories in the hands of editors. I never could have imagined I wouldn’t write again for the next six months.
What saved my sanity? Mindless romcoms and streaming mysteries. Nothing dark, nothing tragic. Reality was noir enough for me. My attention span was no more than 90 minutes long, and as soon as I reached The End, I retained nothing I had watched, but it had served its purpose by providing a respite from the lineup of our possessions out by the curb, waiting for the City to cart them away.
I was reminded of this recently when my husband tested positive for Covid. Playing nurse, chef, and housekeeper while trying to keep from catching it myself brought a whole new level of stress. Glimpses of the current news were more than I could bear. Climate change, politics, multiple wars, global misery. I ran out of bandwidth, so where did I turn for respite? Where else but Taylor Swift and the Kansas City Chiefs.
Married to a Kansas boy, and having watched Netflix’s “Quarterback,” I was more familiar with Patrick Mahomes’s career than with Taylor Swift’s music. Who could resist a real-life, Hallmark movie love story? Not me.
Even now, when Covid has left the building and I’m reading and writing again, the news grabs me every time there’s a mention of the lovebirds. I’m not looking forward to the Super Bowl because it will mean the end of those glimpses of Taylor cheering on her man. I just hope if and when I need to escape again, I’ll be able to find my next shelter from the storm.