What’s on my iPod?  Blow by Ke$ha
What am I reading? Crush Control by Jennifer Jabaley
Who was the last person I followed on Twitter?  @bestsellbooks

Pen names have been used in literature for hundreds of years.  In the past, it was a device used to disguise the identity of an author.  Sometimes women would write under men’s names so as to be taken more seriously.  However, it is still quite popular to create a pen name.  Sometimes they’re used when you are writing in opposing genres, like Nora Roberts other times it is because your mother named you after a boy, like Anne Rice.  One of our own clients even writes under a pseudonym.  So this got me thinking, what famous authors (past and present) have written under a different name?  Here is my top 10 list of pen names:

Real Name: Pen Name

Stephen King: Richard Bachman
Anne, Charlotte and Emily Brontë:  Acton, Currer and Ellis Bell
Charles Dickens: Boz
Howard Allen O’Brien: Anne Rice
Joanne Rowling: J.K. Rowling
Theodore Seuss Geisel:  Dr. Seuss
Madeleine Wickam:  Sophie Kinsella
Marsha Moore: Talli Rolland
Nora Roberts: J.D. Robb, Jill March, Sarah Hardesty
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson: Lewis Carroll

I also found this “Pen Name Generator,” it is completely ridiculous, but fantastically awesome at the same time.  Here were the results for the BookSparksPR team:

Christelle Hobby – Spicy Pepper 
Crystal Patriarche – Star Noble
Jessica Hickam – Our Lady BonBons

So tell us what your pen name would be and have a chance to win a copy of Hollywood Ending by Lucie Simone, our pen named client.  Leave us a comment with your pseudonym for a chance to win.