I have a confession. Tara Maya is a pen name. My real name has a lot of syllables. I decided ages ago — in my year abroad in college, to be precise — I needed a pen name. Mostly I was too shy to face the idea of anyone knowing I was an author, but partly I thought a nice, short name could be written in a larger font on a paperback. 😉

I’m over the shyness and who even knows if there will still be paperbacks by the time any of my writing sees print. Furthermore, I discovered the downside to a pen name. It isn’t your real name. I know. Duh. But I wasn’t thinking about the importance of social networking, or any other kind of marketing, back when I decided to start writing under a pseudonym. 

Why not just start using my real name? Well, for one thing, now I’m married, so that’s changed anyway. Another thing, I’ve been participating in writer’s groups, submitting to agents and have even been published under Tara Maya. To the extent anyone knows I exist as a writer at all, they know me as Tara Maya.

Oh, right, unless of course they know me by my other pen name. Yeah, I have two. I’ve published under that one too. I have a blog for the other pen name too, but I hardly ever write in it (what, hardly ever? well, never) because I prefer to write in this blog.

Therein lies the other big problem with pen names. The more you have, the more time you have to spend separately marketing each one. What a bother.

On to my question. Should I write my new book under a different name — my real name, for instance?

I know, I know, I just said it was a bother to have more than one, so why would I want three?

One word: genre.

As Tara Maya, I write science fiction and fantasy. My other pen name writes steamy romance. The new book I’m working on isn’t in either of those genres. It’s a mainstream novel. Historical, I suppose, would be the closest genre, although this particular book only takes place about ten years ago.

Any thoughts?

(The art is by roz-red from deviant art.)