Monday, December 26, 2011

So much for name recognition!

Many writers agonize over how their names will appear on the covers of their novels and short story collections. Dean Koontz spent years trying to decide if he wanted to keep the middle initial "R" in his pen name. Kurt Vonnegut included "Jr." for years, only to stop later on when he realized nobody called him that and he was old.

When the pressure was on for me to decide how my name would appear, I went through the literary equivalent of wardrobe changes during a Broadway epic. Here are the ones with which I struggled before choosing what I now use:

Chris Nadeau
Chris A. Nadeau
Christopher A. Nadeau
C.A. Nadeau
C. Nadeau
Jose Felliciano

Okay, the last one is bullshit, but you get my point. Eventually, I settled on Christopher Nadeau, which happens to be my name, so it was easy to remember in a pinch. Besides, other than the young marine who murdered his child and wife, I hadn't seen the name used much. So, now I have a novel and nearly two dozen published short stories under that name and what do I run across on Amazon today?

This gimmicky pastiche of emails masquerading as a book!

2 comments:

robertswilson said...

Haha, could be worse. You could be Robert Wilson. One in a million... other Robert Wilsons.

c nadeau said...

One of my favorite authors is Robert Anton Wilson.

2 Migraine-inducingly Moronic Posts

 No commentary, no attempts to rationalize. Just gaze, if you dare, on the stupid!