Writer's Block: Where Names Come From

[erastes]

[Error: unknown template qotd]There's no real mystery to "Erastes" - I simply wanted a penname which described what I wrote, and I thought Erastes would "do exactly what it said on the tin" - e.g. people would even know what it was, or might go and look it up.  Being the name for the top in a Greek relationship might give a clue.  Even though Greek men are called that even now, but I think it's in the same way that English girls are being called Clymidia or Chardonnay.

I do admit to choosing a gender neutral or a masculine name - and (probably mistakenly) putting my bio up as male for a while, but I always admitted I was female if anyone wrote to me saying "dear sir..."!  I really didn't think that it would be an issue - it isn't in ANY other genre, just about, so I (naively) thought it would be OK in m/m.  However I learned differently and now state that I'm female out front.

As to my real name - which I'm not prepared to give out - I was named after my godmother who was French, both in my first name and my second name which I tell no-one.

If I'd been a boy, I would have been Hayden Maxwell [surname] which would have been really cool.

Comments

[erastes.livejournal.com]

It's ok to use a male name, but not to actually declare yourself as a man. I can't see why, but so it is. I mean it was ok for Currer Bell, after all. So now I say "Erastes is the penname of a female author " and continue to talk about him as a male.

[dubaiyan.livejournal.com]

I didn't know either...How did you find out that it wasn't appropriate??

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Because of all the flak I got about it, and the numerous numerous discussions about it on this and that list - and here on my LJ - and on my Blog. Certain (only a small minority) people consider that women shouldn't be writing it ANYWAY, and to pretend to be a man is quite beyond the pale. I suppose I agree with the latter, but I never meant to misrepresent myself, and always fessed up if anyone came out and asked me, or addressed me as "sir" - but it was creating a fictional persona, in exactly the same way that Rupert Smith uses James Lear as a different person to him. Lear is in his seventies I believe, whilst Rupert is in his late thirties (forgive me Rupert if I got your age wrong) However - because both personae are gay men, that's ok!

It was torquere, really - they wanted a bio from me when they published my first short story and I said "do i have to say I'm a woman?" and they said "No, you can say you are anything" so I did. However, now of course, they've had a big problem with their author / owners writing and publishing their own books under many different pennames, so I realise now that perhaps I should have checked with someone else first, but what did I know, back then?