A Writer By Any Other Name, Part II – I’ve been tagged!

Wicked wicked Dani ! She tagged me with another meme, this one as a creative way of searching for a possible pen name. Actually I shouldn’t call Dani wicked for doing this because it gave me a ‘freebie’ as far as post topics. I’m having a blast doing this August blog challenge, but it can be…er…challenging to come up with fresh topics, especially when I’m trying to focus on a novel deadline. And I have a post due at Fatal Foodies for tomorrow, so by tagging me with this meme, Dani has actually done me a huge favor.

Thank you, Dani!

She’s still kind of wicked, though… 🙂

So without further ado, playing with names! Oh yeah, a bit of further ado: make sure to check and see if you’ve been tagged!!

1. Your real name: Dana

2. Your Gangsta name:(first 3 letters of real name plus izzle) Danizzle (hey, Dani and I are Gangsta twins!)

3. Your Detective name:(fave color and fave animal) Blue Jaguar (that’s my favorite color and animal today. Ask me tomorrow and it could be Green Tiger)
4. Your Soap Opera name:(your middle name and street you live on) Carol 44th (I guess this is a futuristic soap opera and I’m a clone?…)

5. Your Star Wars name:(the first 3 letters of your last name, first 2 letters of your first name) Fredda (Iskoo EETA, Solo… heh heh heh…)
6. Your Superhero name:(your 2ND favorite color, and favorite drink) Redwine (The costume design possibilities are endless – a different label for every mood!)

7. Your Iraqi name:(2ND letter of your first name, 3rd letter of your last name, 1st letter of your middle name, 2ND letter of your moms maiden name, 3rd letter of your dads middle name, 1st letter of a siblings first name, and last letter of your moms middle name) – Aecrlll (I feel like there should be a warning label of the side effects possibly caused if you take me for depression…)

8. Your Witness Protection name:(parents middle names) Delano Carol

9. Your Goth name:(black, and the name of one of your pets) Black Raven, Black Vootie, Black Beezle, Black Bug Bear, Black Foster, Black Maddie, Black Ling Ling, Black Mononoke, Black Scaramouche, Black Taz, Black Tsavo – what? You didn’t think I could choose just ONE of my cats, did you?

And I…Tag…

Helen, Marvin (hah!!! Gotcha again!) and Joanna

An Author By Any Other Name…

I need a pseudonym.

I recently had a short story accepted for publication by Ravenous Romances and just received a contract to expand the story into a 200 page novel. The story is erotica (in my pretentious moments, of which I have a few, I refer to it as ‘literary erotica’) and while I’ve got no problems or shame attached with writing genre erotica (Laurel Hamilton does is all the time and she’s considered mainstream), ‘Dana Fredsti’ is not a name that conjures up the right image. At least not to me. And since I’ve already published MURDER FOR HIRE: The Peruvian Pigeon under my real name, I think it’s better to reserve it for further mysteries. That being said, Fredsti is a unique name and you don’t get a lot of options when you google it. On the other hand, my dad would flip if he found out. On the OTHER hand, my dad doesn’t use Google.com or much else on the computer. Oh, the quandary…

Trying to come up with a suitable nom de plume (there’s one of my pretentious moments for you!) is causing my brain to spit out all sorts of silly names, like: Kiki Dupont; Angelique DuVallon (I like the ‘Du’ prefix, for some reason. You could say I’m ‘du-prefixated.’… BWAHAHAHAH!); Constance Melons; Forest Hill (okay, my Muni train just pulled up into the Forest Hill station); Flame Winthrop (don’t ask). What my brain is NOT doing is giving me anything useful.

I asked a friend at work and she thought I should dig into my family history and use a family related name. Can’t use my mom’s maiden name – it’s already been snagged by another family member as THEIR pen name – and HER mom’s maiden name was Butte. Yeah, that’d make for a great erotica pen name. Dana Butte. Fanny Butte. Dana Fanny?

Sigh.

You can see my plight here.

So I’m soliciting opinions and suggestions here. How many of you think I should use a pen name for my new projects? And for those of you giving a resounding ‘yes’ to that question, what do YOU think a good pen name would be for me?

I have to send my contracts off in the mail tomorrow, so any expedited suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Even the silly ones!