What's in a (pen) name?

And why I use one

Hi, I’m Amber Eve — author of smalltown romantic comedies, and my long-running blog, Forever Amber. If you’d like to know more about me, start here. If you’d like to hear more from me, meanwhile, hit the button below…

A few weeks ago, I was filling in some kind of (non-official) form that required me to give my name, and, honestly?

I hesitated.

Not because I don’t know my own name, I hasten to add. Like, I might be way old, but I haven’t started forgetting things like that.

Well, not yet, anyway.

No, I hesitated because I currently have three different names.

Yes, three.

My pen name is Amber Eve.

My legal (married) name is Amber Miaoulis.

My maiden name — which is the one I still consider my ‘real’ name — is Amber McNaught.

And all of this is … well, confusing, really.

Part of the problem, I guess, is that I actually didn’t change my name when I got married; purely because I’d had my maiden name for a pretty long time by that point, and it felt super-weird to me to change it just because society expected me to. (And also because changing your name is an absolute PITA, really; don’t tell me it isn’t…)

So, it wasn’t until I was pregnant with Max that I decided to change my name; and, honestly, I’m pretty sure it was mostly the pregnancy hormones talking, because my reasons were kind of fluffy, and mostly revolved around things like, “it would be nice for us all to have the same name”, and, “what if I want to take him out of the country on my own, and they won’t believe I’m related to him, though?”¹

I did the name change towards the end of my pregnancy, and I did a really half-assed job of it, because although I changed the important things like my passport and driving license, I didn’t bother to change my name on absolutely everything — partly because it was, as I said, an absolute PITA, but also because the new name didn’t feel like ‘me’ (it still doesn’t), and so I’d just automatically sign up to things² under my maiden name, which was the ‘real’ one as far as I was concerned. The OG name, if you like. To this day, all of my online shopping orders still arrive addressed to my maiden name, and I’m not even going to tell you how long it took me to switch my bank account to the new name because … yes.

Anyway.

So, at this point, I basically had two names. Then I decided to start self-publishing fiction. And I decided I wanted to do this anonymously; for a few different reasons, but mostly because, after two decades of blogging, and being chronically online, I’d reached a stage where it felt like basically everyone even peripherally attached to my life — from my parents to my postman³ — was following me… which is flattering, of course, but which can also feel kind of suffocating, really. Seriously, imagine knowing that every single person you know — EVERY SINGLE ONE of them — is across every aspect of your life, and wants to have a say on it. Imagine going to a medical appointment where the practitioner tells you they’ve been reading your blog. Being approached (on more than one occasion) by children from your village who ask if you’re ‘the blogger lady’, then reveal that they know this because their dad (who you do not know) told them. Having people leave comments on your Instagram saying, “I saw you at such-and-such a place yesterday!” and knowing you’ve been secretly observed.

I wrote a bit about this in my very first newsletter, the jist of which was that it’s … well, a bit awkward, really. And it’s the kind of awkward that you know you can’t really complain about — the whole point of writing, after all, is for people to read the things you write, so it would be crazy to complain that too many of them are actually doing it — but, all the same, as I contemplated launching myself into a brand new career as a romance author, I just really, really wanted to be able to do it without all of the noise that comes with the very public kind of life⁴ I’d been living as a blogger.

Also, if my author career was going to work, I wanted to know that it worked on its own merit, without me having to rely on the audience I’d built up through blogging, or make my family and friends feel like they had to buy my books just to support me.

That last point is a big one for me: I have never related to the authors I see on social media complaining that the people close to them don’t read their books. I mean, I’m extremely grateful that people want to support me, obviously, and if there are people in my ‘real’ life who are genuinely interested in romantic fiction, then great: I’m delighted if they read mine. (More so if they actually like it, obvs…)

But, the truth is that most of the people you know won’t be interested in your book; not because they think it’ll be bad, necessarily, but just because it’s not their thing. And that’s fine. I genuinely hate the thought of someone I know feeling like they have to force themself to read my book just because I wrote it. I also know that if someone I know wrote a book, I’d be absolutely terrified to read it, just in case I hated it, then had to pretend I didn’t⁵ — and I don’t want to put one of my friends or family members in that position either.

So I decided I’d write under a pen name, and tell absolutely no one what it was.

But what WOULD it be?

This was the subject of literal WEEKS of debate. I mean, if I’d thought naming my characters was hard, it was nothing to choosing a name for myself. I mean, seriously.

Another issue is that, although I wanted to initially remain anonymous, and not tell anyone what my pen name was, I also had to acknowledge that, in the unlikely event that the books became mega-famous, I’d probably want to take the credit for them. Yes, yes, I KNOW. This contradicts pretty much everything I’ve said so far, AND makes me sound fairly unhinged into the bargain. But, COME ON, people: don’t try to tell me that if you wrote a book which became the next Hunger Games, say, you’d just sit there listening to people talk about it, while turning down invitations to the movie premiere, so no one knew who you were?

Because I? Would not.

Oh, and, even if the book wasn’t a massive hit, I still thought it would be weird to get emails or whatever addressed to “Jenny” or “Samantha”, or whatever my fake name happened to be … which is why I decided to keep my own first name, and just change my last name for the book cover.

So I started trying to find a surname I liked, and which went well with my first name. This should’ve been fun, but it actually managed not to be, because it wasn’t a case of just coming up with a name I liked; I also had to try to find something no other romance author was using … because while you obviously CAN have the same name as another author, it’s a good idea to avoid it if at all possible, just so people don’t get confused. And therein lay another problem, because ever single name I liked turned out to be already in use by someone else. Every single one. There are SO. MANY. AUTHORS, folks. Just … so many. And most of them seemed to be called ‘Amber’ into the bargain.

I searched and I searched. I tried family names, and names that had meaning to me: all taken. I tried names I just liked the sound of: also all taken.

It turns out that there are very few surnames out there that I actually like.

That was also a problem.

Finally, with just days to go before the book was uploaded to Amazon, I came up with ‘Amber Eve’ — which has no meaning to me whatsoever, but which was the only name I even vaguely liked that wasn’t already in use.

I uploaded the book under that name. I created a whole range of social media accounts under that name, so I could keep my ‘author life’ completely separate from my ‘real life’.

Then, just a few weeks after book one was released, I posted a Story about it to my ‘main’ Instagram account rather than the ‘author’ one … and, because I was on holiday at the time, it took me several hours to realise what had happened and remove it again.

So I’d effectively ‘outed’ myself as Amber Eve.

By the time I took the photo down, it had been viewed by a few thousand people (Trust THAT to be the ONE story Instagram actually decided to show to people…), several of whom had already bought the book. (It was actually the sudden spike in sales that made us realise what had happened…)

There was really no going back after that. The genie was out of the bottle. Everyone knew I was Amber Eve, so there wasn’t much point in denying it, or trying to pretend it hadn’t happened. And, honestly, it’s been a bit of a mixed blessing. By the time I posted that photo, I was already sick of trying to juggle multiple social media accounts. I was struggling to find things to write about on my blog, because so much of my life revolved around either promoting book one, or writing book 2, that it didn’t leave me with much else to talk about.

And it has to be said, there’s absolutely no denying that those first books sold better than they would have done if I’d remained completely anonymous, and never told a single soul what my pen name was. That’s just a fact. What’s also a fact, though, is that, once the initial curiosity had died down, the books didn’t sell THAT much better … for the simple reason that the majority of the people who were following my blog or Instagram were following it for the fashion and beauty content I used to post, and weren’t remotely interested in reading romance books.

So there hasn’t been a huge crossover in audiences … and I have had to deal with everyone who knows me knowing about the books, which is the thing I was most hoping to avoid. It is, however, much easier for me to manage one set of social media accounts than multiple ones (I got rid of all of my ‘author’ accounts earlier this year and changed the name on the original ones to reflect the fact that I’m now an author.) Plus, although I don’t particularly enjoy talking about the books in ‘real’ life (I find it a bit awkward, really, especially when it’s obvious that the person asking about them isn’t a romance fan…), I DO enjoy being able to talk about writing and author life here on my newsletter, and elsewhere online, and, me being me, I know that, even if I hadn’t inadvertently ‘outed’ myself when I did, I’d probably have struggled with being truly anonymous anyway.

So, would I recommend new authors use a pen name?

Honestly, I think this is one of those question that really depends on the person and their circumstances — and possibly even the name. Even without all of the considerations I’ve listed above, for instance, my legal name is Greek in origin, and tends to be almost completely impossible for non-Greek speakers to pronounce. (It’s MEE-OW-LIS, in case you’re wondering.) So I probably wouldn’t have gone with that in case; and my maiden name just doesn’t sound particularly ‘author-y’ to me, so I think I’d have wanted to pick something else even if I hadn’t originally intended to be anonymous.

Similarly, if I was writing something controversial, or likely to upset or embarrass my child at some point in the future (More than he’ll already be embarrassed by me, I mean…), I’d definitely have wanted to use a pen name for that, and would most likely have gone with something completely different from my real name, too.

So, ultimately, I think it depends on the author: and the one piece of advice I’d give you is that, even if you DO decide to use a pen name, be aware unless you’re very, very careful, there’s always the chance of it being found out. Especially if, like me, you tend to post stuff to Instagram without stopping to check which account you’re logged into first…

Until next week,

1. Which, yes, was kind of silly, really, because obviously there are tons of parents in this position, and they all presumably manage to leave the country with their kids…

2. Non-official things, obviously: don’t worry, I wasn’t trying to lie to the government or anything

3. OK, I don’t actually know if the postman is following me…

4. I feel like a bit of an asshole for saying that, because it’s not like I was ever one of the ‘famous’ bloggers, but I can’t think of a better way to describe it.

5. Pretty sure I’d just fake my own death in this situation, tbh