Pen Names

Step 1: The first thing you want to do after you write your book, or before you write your book, whichever you prefer, is you want to think about the genres of your book. Depending on the genre of your book, you’ll need to pick a name that suits the categories. For example, if you are writing a cute romance novel, you wouldn’t pick a name like Kristof Zanvek. Sounds a little more like a hardcore science fiction author, right?

Step 2: Decide if you want initials or a fully spelled name. Now this also slightly depends on the genre you are writing, on how you want your name to be spelled out. Take JK Rowling for example. Her real name is Joanne. Now if you were to find a Harry Potter book by Joanne Rowling, wouldn’t the book sound a little more girly? Because her book was meant for girls AND boys, but her name wouldn’t attract as many boys to her book series, Joanne Rowling gave herself a pan name if JK Rowling. With this new pen name, no one can tell if the Harry Potter books were written by a boy or girl when they first see the cover and the author name. So if you have a book that is meant for boys and girls, consider using a pen name that is gender neutral, that way you attract more readers.

Now, maybe you want to have a gender neutral pen name, but you don't want to use initials. Never fear! Lucky for you, there are a ton of names that can be used for boys or girls. For example, you can use the name Taylor. I have both male and female friends who have that name, and it works well for either side.

Onto the next steps!

Step 3: Find names you like. Now that you know around what vibe your name should give off, go find some names that you like! You can google for something specific like ‘names that mean kind/dark/fire’ and find some cool names that way. There are numerous ways you can find names.

Step 4: Piece the name together! Also, if you like the sound of a name, but don’t like the spelling, feel free to tweak the names so that they fit your style! For example maybe you are using the name Clare Hayle, but you don’t like the spelling. Play around with the letters, adding some in and taking some out. You could end up with something like Clayre Haeyl, or Claire Haiyle.

So those are the basic steps for choosing a pen name, and I hope they help! As a little bonus for this post, I’ll tell y'all how I came up with my pen name I am using for Elven Cursed, ‘Aurora Rain’, and with the pen name I use for this blog, A.G. Silver!

For Aurora Rain, I chose this one because

A) I love mythology, and Aurora is the Roman goddess of the dawn.

B) I love the rain.

C) Combined together, Aurora Rain sounds like a romantic fantasy author name and it fits really well with my writing style so of course I chose it!

The one for A.G. Silver is a little bit more complicated if you aren’t a science-y person, but if you are, you’ve probably figured out my pen name by now. Pretty much what I did was that I took my first initial, and middle name initial. Then I used the periodic table. I searched for an element whose symbol was the two letters, A and G. Take a random guess at the element I got- you guessed it, silver. So lo and behold, I got my pen name A.G. Silver. Now this way of choosing a pen name doesn’t work for everyone- T.C. tried it but she ended up with the name ‘T.C. Technetium’ which isn’t a very good pen name to say the least. Of course she could tweak the last name until it fits her liking, but she ended up choosing the last name ‘Arc’ instead, because her patron saint is St. Joan of Arc.

I hope you Readers enjoyed today’s blog! I thought it would be something fun to write about, but also, I’ve had quite a few people ask me for help on choosing a pen name, and I decided to put out all my advice on here, that way everyone can have access to it!

Now onto that picture I was talking about… So the other night I had a dream about Hogwarts, and the ball that they hold. I was in the Gryffindor house, and because my grandma had taught me to sew so well, I was able to create a dress for myself. Here’s what it looked like in the dream: