Pat Rice checking in (actually, that's Charlotte Bronte, but since we're talking about pseudonyms today...), if –-in the spirit of retrograde—I don’t forget to sign in and post this.
Jaclyn Laurin asks:
"I'm fascinated with pseudonyms. The why (were you embarrassed to use your real one?), where (did you get the inspiration for your pen name?), how (did it come about?), who (gave you the idea for it?)."
Jaclyn wins her choice of my books because I didn’t dare get into a historical opinion piece on our political process to go with President’s Day! 
I don’t currently use a pseudonym. I tried though! I sold my first book the week I started work for an accounting company owned in part by a couple of Baptist deacons. This being a very small town, I was sure my sexy historical would get me fired before I even started. So once I picked myself up off the floor after the editor’s call (I’d been trying to find a job and/or sell a book for two years, so some planet was in the right house that week!), I wrote a letter explaining that I needed to use a pseudonym. In the days before instant e-mail responses, we quickly became accustomed to not hearing from NYC unless it was important to them. Pseudonyms apparently didn’t fall under my editor’s radar, or the shortness of my name made it irresistible. The next thing I knew, I was looking at galleys with “Pat Rice” on them, and had to confess all before the book hit the stands. The Baptist deacons took it in good stride. They were men. They didn’t read books. Wreaked havoc with the life of my teenagers though!
Now I’m branded with the Patricia Rice label and my readers expect a certain kind of book when they see my name. (You can usually tell how well known an author is by the size of her name on the cover!) A lot of readers recognize the label, so giving up this recognition would have to be a big decision. Over the years, I’ve toyed with the idea since I’ve always found “Patricia” boring and unoriginal (I’m quite convinced 25% of my generation has the name), and “Rice” has been rather overused in the book market.
Currently, I’m toying with a few books that really don’t fit the Patricia Rice brand label, and I’m again contemplating finding a really sexy, exciting name, one that better fits my perceived image. <G> This is not precisely a new marketing scheme. Charles Dodgson wrote his academic papers on logic under his real name, and wrote his Alice books under Lewis Carroll. Agatha Christie wrote romances under Mary Westmacott. And apparently, over the years, some writers were so prolific that they took pen names so their publishers didn’t know how many books they were writing!
So, in the spirit of creativity, or procrastination, whichever, I used numerology to pick out the letters I want in my new name, and because it would be fun to sell these books to more than women, I decided I wanted a fairly androgynous nom de plume. (Shades of the Brontes, who did the same! Men apparently don’t take a writer seriously unless they have male names.) A lot of people call upon their maiden names or family names, but I’m stuck with a family that dates back to Adam and Eve and prides itself on family names like Hasbrouck and worse. So not going there. I want distinctive, but Hasbrouck is in a class by itself. Besides, it’s too long. Book jackets look better with short names. I tried to persuade my agent that a one word name would do it, but she wasn’t buying it.
She did, however, grasp what I was after and came up with a great name that I will reveal should I ever finish these books. Ha. That may happen in the next millennium. But when it does, I’ll be prepared! Of course, given that I’m lucky to remember my real name, it could get interesting remembering who I am at a booksigning. Maybe I better rethink this.
All right, ‘fess up, what would the rest of you call yourselves if you could choose any name you wanted? And why?