I’ll be totally upfront about this: using a pen name, putting it on my books, and creating a Facebook page for this alter ego made me feel like I was going to end up on an episode of Catfish. But I weighed the pros and cons of it, and decided that keeping my works separate would benefit me in a lot of ways, plus–once I got used to it–it was actually kind of fun to be two different people.

The works I’ve published under my pen name so far are a book of short stories, and a YA novel written from the male point-of-view. I do feel like there’s an edge to them that isn’t there in the work I’m doing with Holly. Even the romance/contemporary fiction series that I’m working on aside from all of this stuff is pretty tame, so it felt right to me to really distinguish between work that I don’t mind being linked to my child in some way, and things that I don’t think she’s ready for yet. If it has words, themes, or ideas that aren’t appropriate for my 11-year-old to read, it goes under my pen name, which has its own Amazon page and Facebook page. That’s been my line in the sand so far, and I’m comfortable not stepping over it.

That said, if you’re interested in reading either of them, as always I’d be honored to have you do so, and I’d owe you a debt of gratitude if you’d leave a kind review on Amazon or Goodreads. Both books are only available on Amazon as ebooks, and both are free today, August 16th, until midnight. If you don’t have a Kindle, you can download them using the Kindle app (which is free!), and you can read them on whatever device you prefer.

Tiny Tales: A Book of Short Stories is available here, and @Robertopancake, my first YA novel, is right here.

Hope everyone is enjoying these last weeks of summer!