I’ve always known that I wanted to write fantasy under a pen name, but to this day I still can’t pin down exactly why. It certainly wasn’t because I desired anonymity. Perhaps I thought it would be “cooler” to have a pen name, or maybe I wanted a tiny bit of separation between people who knew me and real life and my readers so I could fully “nerd out” in a way that readers appreciate but my real life friends and family wouldn’t understand. Whatever the reason, I wanted to use a name not my own (or at least… not entirely my own) to write fantasy under. (Side note: I did not seem to have this same issue with the romances I write when I decided to publish them under my name. Go figure.)
For a long time, I thought I would use a variation of my name—SJ O’Connell. For a long time, I loved that idea (we’re talking 20+ years here). And then, earlier this year, the stars aligned for a completely different pen name.
The name, Kate Aneth, is one I’ve toyed with off and on for several years now (since around 2018?), and while it’s totally different than my name, it does have meaning to me. Kate is the heroine in my earliest attempts at fantasy, written back in fourth or fifth grade, and in the style of many young writers, she was based largely on me. And she had a dragon, a black beauty of a beast named Aneth.
The name is the rider and the dragon—forever fused as one unit as my new pen name. They would appreciate that, I think.
But that’s not the story of how the stars aligned for this pen name and why, after so many years of being so sure I would use SJ O’Connell, I suddenly decided to go with something else. I liked SJ O’Connell because using initials is a well-established tradition in fantasy. JRR Tolkien, anyone? It’s only the story of how I came up with the name in the first place.
Here’s another bit of a detour, but it plays into the decision. Back in 2012, my writing journey took an unexpected turn when I decided to try self-publishing. I ended up publishing romance first because I had three novels done that just needed some rewriting and polishing whereas none of my fantasy stories were remotely close to being ready for prime-time. And though I never intended to make writing romance a career, that’s what happened. After a couple years of fiddling around and learning, my romance sales took off. I was able to quit my day job and write full-time. The readers wanted more… and more… and more. So the fantasy writing took a backseat; I was supporting myself and my family from my romances, and when you’ve got a good thing, you keep going with it.
In the 10.5 years that followed the start of that wild ride through Romancelandia, I learned a lot about who I am as a writer, what I like, what marketing trends work, and all sorts of other things. As one does.
One of the things I discovered was that I am a big fan of the “Big Author Name” cover style. It’s one of the easiest ways to start building your author brand (and to make that brand about YOU, the author, rather than one book or one series). The traditional publishing houses and authors do it, so I figured, why not? “Fake it ’til you make it”, as they say. Or as I prefer, “Do as the pros do.” There’s a reason the trad houses use this style: it works, and they have the data to show it (data most indie authors don’t have access to). I’ve used it to much success with my romances, too.
Well, guess what. SJ O’Connell does NOT lend itself well to that cover trend. And for a while, I was okay with that. It’s not super common amongst indie authors, and I am (and plan to remain) an indie author.
And then, the death knell for poor SJ…
I made a mockup of a potential cover for a client that I knew wasn’t going to fit her book, but I liked it so much that I sent it over, anyhow, as a starting point. And while she though it was lovely, she agreed—it was the wrong tone for her book. But certain elements of it where oh-so-right for this fantasy WIP I had just started writing. This is where I could go off on how this WIP is part of a world I’d actually started writing back in 2018 and how it takes place a millennium or two before those other stories and how I already had a cover layout I adored for the world or how this particular WIP has done so much to help me rediscover the joy of writing… but that’s not the story I want to tell today.
Suffice to say, this cover mockup that I modified to suit my own purposes rocked my friggin’ world. It was one of those pieces that comes along and knocks a whole lotta other pieces together like magic.
It was perfectly set up to use the Big Author Name style. And while SJ O’Connell might not lend itself to this style, Kate Aneth does. So I plunked that in and…
Silver trumpets sounded and glittering confetti snowed from the heavens (okay, not really, but that’s how it felt inside my head—a truly magical moment). It. Was. Perfect. So perfect that I decided, unequivocally, that Kate Aneth was the name that belonged on my fantasy stories, upending over two decades of certainty that I was going to publish under SJ O’Connell. Y’all… I was so sure I would use SJ O’Connell that I snapped up the domain name years ago so I would have it at the ready when I finally got around to publishing one of my fantasy stories. I finally cancelled that domain this spring after realizing Kate Aneth was the name I needed to use. That’s how earth-shifting this decision has been to me.
Perhaps, in an even stranger twist, the decision to use Kate Aneth as my fantasy pen name convinced me that it was (finally) time to get back to writing fantasy. Not as something I wrote when I had time but the priority. There were other factors, of course, and many, many other signs pointing me in this direction, but it was deciding on the pen name that finally silenced the voice shouting, “But you need to finish the romance WIPs!” And that decision, so far, has proven to be exactly what I needed to revitalize my passion for writing—to get back to telling the kinds of stories I love most (no offense to my romances and my romance readers—I love you all). Fantasy has always been where my heart truly lies, and it’s refreshing to let myself write it, without guilt.
Another “this is right” sign for Kate Aneth: just today, when I decided to fiddle with a design for a “monogram” author logo, I realized how much better Kate Aneth lended itself to that, too, whereas Suzie O’Connell and SJ O’Connell—both SO, or maybe SJ for the one—do not. Yes, I’ve tried. I have yet to come up with anything I like. Anyhoo, with Kate Aneth’s KA, it’s so simple: the lower right leg of the K could so easily become the crossbar of the A with just the tiniest bit of Photoshop magic. So I tried it. And once again, I felt the magical spark of “Yes, this is right.”
So, what’s in a name? A lot.
