Alright, here's a hypothetical question for you writers, and even the readers here to some degree. Let's say you're already an established writer, but you want to do a slightly different genre than you normally do. Case in point: Stephen King writes romance under a pen name. Not sure how many of you knew that, but he does. And to make it even more interesting, he's using a woman's name.
Now that brings me to the point of my topic. If you wanted to write in a genre or write a series on a topic or subject outside of the normal field of writing you're known for, how would you best approach it? Most authors I've seen take on a pen name and hide behind it, using that to disguise who they really are. The book then goes on and either succeeds or fails without coming back to haunt the original writer. Or in the case of success, it wouldn't interfere with their primary writing focus.
So with that in mind, should you do something like that, how would you handle publishing the book under the alter ego? How would you handle signings, publicity, sales, etc? One idea that was proffered to me was to use a stand in, someone who would be the visible face of your alter ego. So it would kinda be like ghost writing, except in this case it would be ghost personality.
Anywho, I'm interested in hearing your thoughts on this.