Thursday, July 22, 2010

A change of heart

A few weeks ago I wrote a post where I mentioned I had a love/hate relationship with my in-box. As of yesterday, I fell in love with it all over again. I got not one, but two acceptances in the same day! That has never happened to me before. Two rejections, even three, yes. But acceptances? This is a first.

And with one of them, what I discussed in my last post actually came up. My zombie/erotica story was accepted, and I had to decide if I should publish it under my own name or not. In then end, I decided to err on the side of caution and am going to be credited as Katharine Lark. I did struggle with it for a couple of hours, but in the end, I thought it better not to take the risk. I would hate to lose the opportunity to publish one of my novels because I published a silly little erotic story in an anthology. And it means I now have an alter-ego for any other stories I write that may not be appropriate for a younger audience. I mean, I write picture books as well as YA...

It's not something I like doing, and I will still take pride in those stories because I am proud of them. I can always even list them in my credits as "under the name Katharine Lark..." But it does feel a little odd. I've worked so hard to write the stories, get them out there, it seems wrong to give someone else, even a fictional someone else, credit.

In the end, it's all about building a career. And you don't want to sabotage yourself before you even start.

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