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Originally Posted by omk3
I totally agree with all of the above! Even if, for practical reasons others have explained, a writer feels the need to use different names for different books, I appreciate it if he/she at least doesn't hide behind the names, but makes it known that they are the same person. It feels more honest to me. For example Iain Banks vs Iain M. Banks is perfectly fine. But I always feel, as a reader, a little bit cheated when I find out that two writers I thought were different persons actually weren't. And I certainly don't want to be reminded of all the marketing planning that goes on. I'd like to think of fiction as something more pure than a mere "product".
I love the idea! I feel so frustrated that I can't actually read some real PP Penrose, or Kilgore Trout!  (though I think I'd hate it if I didn't know for sure if the author was fictional or real - hmm) |
In "The Pier at the End of the World" (working title), my main character is the pulp writer Jon Wen, whose immediate financial troubles are assuaged when his reclusive Uncle dies and leaves him a Café cum cinema situated at the end of a pier. It's here that he decides, with inheritance money in the bank and owning property, to kill of his pulp creation once and for all. The novel that he's writing within the greater novel is called "Fortune's End", which is a play on the name of his pulp character, "Benny Fortune" a Hollywood PI and one time reporter.
The original idea was to merge the 'Fortune's End' book with the original book, alternating chapters, so that you had two self-contained stories. But then it grew after I'd had a conversation with a friend. The challenge is to write three or more distinctively different books that work fine alone, but when tied together, form a larger narrative. This is only possible using pseudonyms.
A novel about writing and the romance of writing.
A pulp novel that is written by the character from the first novel.
A false memoir of the pulp writer and his creation.
At the minute I'm up to the part where Jon Wen is listening to the song of mermaids out in the water beyond the pier, and Benny Fortune is quizzing a deluded and psychotic Hollywood agent in the LA Recording studio of Mermaid Records.