The Pseudonym
I want to get business cards printed up that say:
Rune Skelley
Pseudonym
We would hand them out at writing conferences, of course, but also drop them in the drawings that restaurants have for free lunches. The thought of someone drawing that card and wondering about it makes me smile.
Why a pseudonym? It’s not that we are wanted fugitives or anything like that, it’s just that we want to have a single composite identity that represents our work. Our novels and short stories are not “by Jen” or “by Kent” or even “by Jen and Kent.” We work very hard at cultivating a shared writing voice that is not simply a combination of His and Hers. It’s almost like the Rune Skelley voice is a child and, individually, Jen’s Voice and Kent’s Voice are the parents. On our own neither of us can entirely capture the je ne sais quoi of Rune Skelley, and we wanted a nom de plume that embodied that.
Our peculiar belief in the genetics of authorship led us to immediately rule out “Jen Lastname and Kent Lastname,” as well as “Jen and Kent Lastname.” We considered “JK Lastname,” but JK Rowling pretty much screwed us on that option. And we both feel that KJ is an awkward combination of initials. Apologies to all you KJs out there!
We dismissed “Jennifer Kent” and “Kent Jennifer” because we decided we preferred a gender-ambiguous name.
After much discussion and many lists we hit upon “Rune Skelley.” We like it because it’s unusual, but not too weird. The name Rune evokes writing in its earliest form. Skelley, according to some baby name book or other, means Storyteller. Put them together and you have something that’s memorable and easier to pronounce than our real last name.
We originally planned to keep our true identities a secret, even the fact that there are two of us. That doesn’t work very well with book tours and speaking engagements, though, so we have finally settled where we are now: Hey, world, there are two of us. We write together. Pretty cool, huh?
If we ever decide to write epic fantasy we will call ourselves Rune RR Skelley.