Today's Colorado Mystery Author Guest: Rebecca Bates

As promised yesterday, fellow Colorado mystery author Rebecca Bates is visiting my blog today. To read her bio and see her photo, please page down to yesterday's post.

Above is the cover photo for her most recent book, Murder in the Dojo, which was published in August, 2011 under her pen name of Sue Star. In the book, Nell Letterly’s dream job as a karate instructor involves a few little first-day glitches. She finds the guy she replaced very dead—killed with her martial arts weapons. The police don’t bother to investigate anybody else. Her boss suddenly disappears. The dojo is a dump and the students know nothing. Plus, she faces foreclosure on her house, and her teen-age daughter hates her. What to do about all this? Line the students up and look positive. After work, find the killer before the killer finds her.

Below is Rebecca's guest post about The Mysterious Case of Pen Names. Please leave a comment for Rebecca to let her know what you think, and feel free to ask her any questions you want about the post, her books, or her life as a writer.

The Mysterious Case of Pen Names

Whatever happened to Alice Sheldon, William Anthony Parker White, Frederic Dannay, and Manfred B. Lee? Today we remember their famous pen names better than we remember their real names.

We writers work hard at this writing business, and one small reward is seeing Our Names in Print at long last. That should justify all the hours we’ve spent, locked away in our imaginary garrets, having to answer our mother/spouse/child who calls up to ask, “What are you doing?” and we have to answer except, “Nothing.” And then comes the day when we can finally point to Our Names in Print and prove that we’re not absolute and utter derelicts. Why should we lose out on that sense of achievement with a pen name?

Lots of writers have used pen names for many reasons. Alice Sheldon felt that she needed to hide her gender to break into a male-dominated science fiction world, and so she became James Tiptree, Jr. William Anthony Parker White wrote and edited both science fiction and mystery — he became Anthony Boucher, a name that spawned Bouchercon and the Anthony Award for the mystery field. Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee wanted to collaborate, and they became Ellery Queen.

There are as many reasons for using a pen name as there are writers who’ve used them.

I never expected to use a pen name. I like my name. As Rebecca Bates, I’ve been fortunate to meet lots of folks in the mystery community through my work with Bouchercon and Sisters in Crime. My friends won’t know me as someone else.

But I write in multiple genres. It helps me grow as a writer to explore the variety of structure and style that readers of different genres expect. I want to keep growing, instead of producing the same kind of story over and over. As soon as I finish a project in one genre, I jump to another (but only the genres I like to read!) I wander all across the board. Readers won’t necessarily follow you there unless, for example, your name begins with an “S” and ends in King. So I’ve fallen into using pen names. Pen names are clues for readers. Pen names point readers to the particular type of story they like to read.

My first novel, a romantic suspense, came out under my maiden name, Rebecca Williamson. Since then my science fiction stories have come out under my married name, Rebecca Bates. Now I’ve written an amateur sleuth mystery, which is a more traditional whodunnit, set in today’s funky world, and it’s part of a series. Fans of such cozies don’t always want their heroines to brood about the mysterious men they’re attracted to. They don’t always want to save humanity through science. I need to separate those types of stories, so as not to lead my readers astray. That’s my reason, why I chose to go with a pen name. I just fell into being Sue Star.

Being Sue is no secret. Keeping a secret like that today would be difficult, unless I moved into a cave (no, thanks!) Sue Star is one of the hats I wear. It’s fun, being more or less anonymous, but at the same time anonymity is challenging in introducing pen names to readers. !Caramba! Who knows if this mysterious case of using pen names will ever be satisfactorily resolved? One thing’s for sure: I’m looking forward to the journey.


Thanks, Rebecca! Now, who has a comment or question for her?

Tomorrow's Guest: Rebecca Bates

Tomorrow, fellow Colorado mystery author Rebecca Bates will be a guest on my blog. Rebecca writes both speculative fiction and mystery. She lives in Boulder, Colorado where she raised three daughters, trained in the martial arts with them, and taught Spanish. Now she writes full time under several pen names. As Sue Star, she is the author of Murder in the Dojo, the first of the black belt mystery series and newly released from D.M. Kreg Publishing. Her novel The Signal, under the Rebecca Bates byline, comes out in January 2012. As Rebecca Williamson, she is the author of The Drowning of Chittenden, a romantic suspense novel set in the foothills of Appalachia. Find out more about her exploits at her blog.

In her guest post tomorrow, she talks about The Mysterious Case of Pen Names and why she writes under three pen names herself. I'm sure you'll be intrigued by what she has to say. Then, feel free to ask her some questions of your own about pen names in the comments.

A Real Basket Case is "Year's Best Mystery"!

I'm thrilled that book reviewer Lori B. Caswell has selected A Real Basket Case, the first book in my Claire Hanover gift basket designer mystery series, as the Best Mystery that she read in 2011! Since she is an avid reader and reviewer of cozy mysteries, this is an especially exciting honor.

See the whole list of her year's best picks on her "Escape with Dollycas Into A Good Book" blog.

A Real Basket Case was re-released in trade paperback and ebook in 2011, and is also available in hardcover and large-print editions, so you can pick your favorite format. And I hope that anyone who hasn't read it yet does indeed pick it up and read it! A Real Basket Case was a finalist for the Best First Novel Agatha Award when it came out in hardcover, and it has been well-reviewed by Amazon and Goodreads readers as well as by professional reviewers.

To Resolve or Not to Resolve, that is the question

I recently went back and looked at my post at the beginning of 2011 that contained my New Year's Goals and Resolutions. Oh boy, was that sobering!

For my writing goals, I did pretty well. I did indeed heavily promoted my two releases, Deadly Currents and A Real Basket Case. And I edited Wicked Eddies (and turned it in) and Basketful of Troubles (third book in the Claire Hanover Gift basket Designer series), though I haven't done a final pre-turn-in edit for Basketful of Troubles that addresses my agent's comments on the manuscript. So that's an incomplete goal. Another incomplete goal was to write the rough draft for Cataract Canyon, the third book in the RM Outdoor Adventures series. Instead of finishing, I'm about 3/4th's done and hope to finish in January.

One out of three goals met? Not so good. But at least the other two goals are both at least 3/4ths done.

Now, on to the resolutions. My writing-related one was to spend more time on writing and editing and less on promoting and networking. I think I did accomplish that, though I still spent more time on promoting and networking than I would have liked. If I'd been able to cut back more on those, maybe I would have finished those two goals. Sigh!

My non-writing-related resolution was to shed a few pounds. I did do that, but of course, I'd like to shed a few more. I just can't seem to get under my post-baby weight after my son was born 21 years ago. I gained ten pounds with each pregnancy, and that extra twenty pounds has very stubbornly hung on. I guess I should be grateful that I've managed to periodically lose extra pounds that I gained on top of those. My hope now is that moving to Breckenridge, Colorado will encourage me to adopt more of an outdoorsy, active lifestyle that will show positive results in weight loss.

So, given the mixed results on this year's goals and resolutions, my quandary now is whether or not to even bother to set some for 2012. What do you think? Should I? Are you? What are your goals and/or resolutions for the next year?

Third Time's the Charm

Today I'm blogging over at Inkspot, the blog for Midnight Ink authors, about rewriting a crucial scene three times until I got it right and it was neither underripe or overripe. Find out what went wrong each time and why I felt I had to fix it before moving on.

If you're a writer, have you had to rewrite a scene multiple times before you felt its flavor was perfect? If you're a reader, have you read a scene that you felt should have been rewritten until it tasted better? Please share!

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year!

In the hustle and bustle of moving, Christmas traditions in the Groundwater household got kind of shoved aside. Now that we've unpacked most, not all, of the boxes in the house (the garage is a whoooole different story), I've had a chance to breathe in some of that holiday spirit.

The big tree and all of its ornaments are still in boxes, but I set up a miniature tree on the table with a few gifts around it. And I've got butter softening on the kitchen counter for a batch of Christmas sugar cookies. It just isn't Christmas Eve, in my mind, without a mess of dough, cookie cutters, and sugar sprinkles in the kitchen! And tonight we'll be attending a candlelight Christmas Eve service at the local Methodist Church. I feel like we're back on track, pausing for a moment to remember what the winter holiday is all about--peace, love, family, charity, and hope.

I hope that all of my blog readers who celebrate Christmas have a very merry one! For those who celebrate other winter holidays, may yours be special and cheerful, too. And for everyone, here's my wish for a very Happy New Year, in which all your dreams come true. See you next year!

PS. C. Goold, email me at my website, bethgroundwater.com. You've won something!

Mystery Conferences

Well, I've done it. I made the commitment. I've paid my registration fees for the Malice Domestic and Bouchercon mystery conferences in 2012. I'm looking forward to seeing fellow mystery lovers in Bethesda, Maryland, April 27-29 for the Malice Domestic conference and in Cleveland, Ohio, October 4-7 for the Bouchercon conference.

I'm also planning to include some appearances at whitewater festivals and various Colorado bookstores in my 2012 event schedule, and I hope to be invited back to the Festival of Mystery in Oakmont, PA. That's about as far as my writing travel dollars will stretch, but if my husband and I do some personal traveling (Oregon to see our daughter?), I may be able to add on a bookstore appearance or two to that. Stay tuned to the Appearances page of my website, which I'll update as plans firm up.

In the meantime, I'd like to wish all of my blog readers a Happy Holidays! I hope you enjoy celebrating whatever winter holiday you embrace, and if you're traveling, may your travels be safe and uneventful.