S01E11: When pen names are no more

In this week’s episode, Samantha and Matilda get personal about pen names and personas. Who is using a pen name? Who wishes they weren't? And what does it mean to use an online persona?!

By next week, Sam and Matilda will have given some thought to their plans on any rebranding and relaunching they have on the calendar for this year.

Where to find Sam and Matilda:

SAM IG: @sammowrimo

Website: www.samantha-cummings.com

Book to start with: The Deathless - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Deathless-Frances-June/dp/B0915V5L6F

Most recent book: Curse of the Wild (Moons & Magic Book 1) https://amzn.eu/d/fVXwW3j

MATILDA IG: @matildaswiftauthor

Website: MatildaSwift.com

Book to start with: https://books2read.com/TheSlayoftheLand (book #1 of The Heathervale Mysteries)

Most recent book: https://books2read.com/ButterLatethanNever (book #3 of The Slippery Spoon Mysteries)

Mentioned on the show:

Publishing Rodeo podcast: https://publishingrodeo.wordpress.com/

Transcript:

Welcome to your next step of the Self Publishing Mountain.

I'm Matilda Swift, author of Quintessentially British Cozy Mysteries.

And I'm Samantha Cummings, author of Young Adult Books about Magic, Myths and Monsters.

I've written the books, changed their covers, tweaked their blurbs, tried tools from a dozen ad courses, and I'm still not seeing success.

Now, we're working together to plot and plan our way from barely making ends meet to pulling in a living wage.

Join us on our journey where we'll be mastering the pen to snag that paycheck.

Hello, and welcome to Pen to Paycheck Authors podcast.

I'm Sam Cummings, here with my co-host, Matilda Swift.

We're here to write our way to financial success.

We're two indie authors with over a dozen books between us, and still a long way to go towards the quit the day job dream.

If that sounds familiar, listen along for our mastery through missteps journey.

Each week, we cover a topic to help along the way.

This week's topic is going to be pen names versus personas.

But before that, let's do our wins and whinges of the week.

What is your win or whinge?

You can start.

Okay, I've actually got two wins this week.

So, yeah, I think I never do whinges.

I need to start being more whingey.

My first win is I'm just feeling really smug because it's something I've been working on.

I mean, I've been working on it for several, several months right now, trying to get my life kind of more in order.

And I feel like it's working, which feels really good.

So I have just been like, one thing I really want to do is just get better habits and routines.

I used to be quite good at it.

I used to live in Hong Kong.

I had a very, you know, life there is very easy, like public transport is simple.

I didn't live near any of my family.

So I had, you know, very few obligations.

I lived within walking distance of my work.

Food is there very easy.

There's restaurants everywhere.

You can be pretty disorganized and still kind of quite easily get things done.

I even had a laundry service in my building.

No one has washing machines.

So it would just be like a very cushy life.

Yeah, it's lovely.

And then I came back here during the pandemic.

Obviously, everything was absolutely upheaval, like everything was all over the place.

And then I moved and then I moved again.

And I finally got things kind of back in some sort of semblance of order.

And I was able to write before work and I had, you know, bills paid, milk in the fridge, things like that.

But it really felt like I was just like constantly like one broken or lost thing away from disaster.

It constantly felt like I was just working really hard to do other things.

And I was like, I don't, it doesn't feel right.

This doesn't feel like how I used to feel.

And obviously I've changed my life quite a lot, but I really wanted to figure out a way to kind of get things back in order.

So I've been working really hard on some mindset things and also just on getting back into good habits.

And I just have felt very drained recently with everything feeling like I was having to deliberately do lots of things.

So like decide what to have for breakfast every day.

Find, you know, the right time to do this thing.

Remember to do, put the recycling out and everything felt quite a bit conscious.

I was just feeling really drained.

And in a way that sounds really stupid to complain about, like as in it all sounds really trivial and it just felt bigger than it really was.

Like I'm aware it's very trivial things and I don't have any kids and I live by myself.

So it was all easy things, just feeling bigger than it should have felt.

So I really wanted to get to a stage where I could get it to feel small again.

And I really like having all those kind of responsibility things feeling very small.

That's how I want my life to be.

That's why I don't have a partner and kids.

So I've been working really hard and just trying to get myself back into a place where I feel back in charge about that.

I bought myself, because I'm so super cool, I bought myself a chore chart for my fridge.

And then I bought myself a little whiteboard for my fridge because it went so well.

And I've listed all the meals I've got on my fridge.

I didn't even have to think about it.

I didn't have to open my fridge, open my freezer, open my cupboard.

Nothing.

I just look at the list and I'm like, okay, I'll pick something from there and I will eat it up.

And I've been batch cooking.

Yeah, today at lunch time, I did almost my entire week for the chores.

They all spread out on the charts.

But I was just like, oh, it took like two minutes each.

What have I been doing putting these off for so long?

So that is my number one.

I just feel like light and airy and back in control of things.

Not everything, but I'm just working on getting things back bit by bit, which feels really good.

Definitely part of it that helps is that the weather here is lovely and sunny and warm today.

It felt like the first day when winter is like heading away.

Yeah, it felt amazing.

I took the bin out today.

I was like, oh, the warm sun on me.

It was a lot easier to take the bin out in that than like icy sleet and a chilly wind.

So that was win number one.

Win number two is yesterday we had our monthly meeting.

Absolute winner.

So usually we meet once on a Sunday and then record the podcast straight afterwards.

But I've got lots of family things going on at the moment because my brother's wedding is coming up.

So we couldn't do that so we're recording tonight.

But it's actually been even nicer to have a little bit of time to reflect on all the things we talked about and just still be basking in the glow of that.

We had a great day where we planned the podcast, but we also spent a good couple of hours very selfishly working on my new book, the concept of it.

And I went into it thinking, I've just finished two weeks' work on this.

I finished the first, and in fact got 8,000 words.

I tried to do about the first 10.

I got 8,000 words.

I've got the first, like, the murders done, the inciting incidents done, the call to action is sorted.

I feel really comfortable, really confident in this book.

And then by the end of it, I was like, I need to rewrite everything.

In a great way, though.

In a way that's just like, I 100% think I had got a book that felt very good.

And I wanted to feel excellent.

And I think I know now how to make it excellent.

Which feels really exciting.

And it feels, and I think the three things tied together, those two winds of, like, feeding control of my life, gives me space to feel like I can be more creative and adventurous and upend things by writing more, rather than have to play it safe.

So it just feels like I'm winning.

Winning at the moment, which feels really good.

That's amazing.

I am kind of keeping on top of things.

I feel the same way.

It's all of a sudden, it feels like all of the simplest tasks in the world take the most effort.

So I have not yet at the point where everything is right, but over the next two weekends, I plan on clearing everything out and doing a big clean.

And then one day I'll be able to talk about that as a win.

Yeah.

Right now, that's probably my winch.

My winch is that I haven't cleaned and I'm a terrible person, but I'm also just a real person who does not have time.

So that'll be my winch.

I was going to say, I mean, that is definitely how it has felt and it's just made me feel like a bad person for not being able to like keep one's up of chores.

And knowing that, you know, not big chores, like I don't make that much mess.

I'm one person.

How much mess can I make?

But it was just like you would see, I kept seeing bits of mess everywhere and bits of like untidiness and cleanness everywhere.

And I should be like, oh, I'll catch that lady because I don't have half an hour to spend on it.

Yesterday, as I was out walking out the door to meet you, I realised I got five minutes before my train was due, before I had to go and leave for the train.

I was like, you know what?

On my list of things to do today is clean the stairs.

I just started cleaning the stairs and I didn't finish it.

I got everywhere except the bottom two steps.

But in five minutes, I did most of that chore that I had been looking at for weeks, thinking we need to scrub those stairs and we're going to scrub.

I am a huge advocate for writing a list, not just having it in the back of your mind, writing a list and putting it on your fridge.

Like that's the place where I go to the fridge all the time.

I go to the fridge all the time and I've got a whiteboard on my fridge and everything gets written on there and that's how I know what to do.

It does take me a while to get to them, but I eventually do get to them and it's great and I feel great.

I was just going to say my win isn't as exciting, although I guess cleaning isn't that exciting, but yeah, chore chart.

Yeah, I haven't done that.

I was going to do two wins.

My first win is Manchester and yesterday because I felt like it was such a nice, it was really nice just to not focus on my work and to look at somebody else's work.

That was really nice.

But I also just really enjoyed being in Manchester.

I said this to you yesterday that I have like, I've never really walked around Manchester on my own before because I just go with other people.

Which is to clarify, yesterday is your nearest big city that you've grown up near your whole life.

It is, yes.

And I have, I just always go with other people and I just follow them around.

That's how I get by in life.

I just follow other people.

And I've started walking around Manchester to meet up with you and taking different routes every single time.

And yesterday was the first time I just randomly walked around and found where we meet up without looking at my map to check where I was going.

And I was like, nailed it.

Feel great.

Look at me.

I am Carrie in Sex and the City and I'm just strung around Manchester.

Just got on the Arctic.

Just like where can I not go?

Feels great.

And also for my second win, I started doing the illustrations for the book that I've got coming out at the end of this month.

If I make that deadline, I might have to push it to April.

But every chapter has an illustration at the start and I've drawn them all.

And just need to ink them and scan them.

So I feel good.

I'm like, I'm getting there.

Is the deadline pushing on this because you are making these headers?

No, it's just because I didn't contact my formatter person who, and she's like, I like her to do all my formatting because she just like is really good at consistency, consistency is where I fall down personally in all the aspects of my life.

And so she was like, yeah, I'll squeeze it in because it's just a small book.

But I kind of should have emailed her like two weeks before I did.

That is definitely one of my little things I want to make into a process this year is like all the deadlines for contact your cover designer here, contact your editor here.

Because again, that's constant, I'm always thinking about, do we need to do that?

When do we need to do that?

I've got a, I was going to get up and grab it, but I'll probably knock the microphone so I won't.

I've got on my pin board in front of me, which I was just looking at before I started this, I have drawn out a chart of when to do certain things.

And the only thing that it doesn't have in there are things like beta readers and ARC, like sending out ARCs.

But everything else, I've got cover design, typesetting, proofreading, something.

I can't read it from here.

Uploading to Amazon, marketing and publication are all like on this chart.

So I've got that whole process.

I know when I need to start for my next book.

I want to make a sheet where you can put in the first date and it'll tell you all the rest of the dates.

I do need to do that.

I've basically done it for my book that's coming out towards the end of the year.

So this is like that one specifically, but then I plan on automating it.

So I'll send you a picture.

It feels scary looking at it.

Yeah, that's why I want to put it away in a spreadsheet somewhere that I'm not going to look at it all the time.

But maybe I'll go in the fridge.

Maybe I'll go in the fridge with the drawer charts.

Put it on the fridge.

Yeah, because my fridge also includes when I have people come save me for writing retreats, which I have had various different friends come and do, I get a giant piece of brown, like, wrapping paper and we write up a physical timetable of what we're going to do in all the days, like visits to Howarth, where the branch is, they even visit upstairs.

I also live near Sylvia Platt's grave up in Heptas, all above me.

So we'll put in those and we'll put in writing time in different places, also important writing chats.

And these are in my fridge.

And I'm just stacking them all up.

And one day I will have a big, thick wedge of all of them just to commemorate all the retreats I've been on, which is all I've hosted.

That's really nice.

Yeah.

So we've got a very winning week this week then.

But what's your topic that neither of us have done any research for it, and we did a little bit of talking about it yesterday, and I still don't really know what we're going to talk about.

So let's see.

So this week's topic is pen names versus personas.

What did you consider when exploring this?

So for me, this is a completely personal topic rather than something that I put a load of research into.

Because my pen name, which is Frances June, and the persona that goes along with that.

Well, I didn't really do a persona that goes along with that, but my pen name was very much created because I was too scared to tell people I was writing books.

And so I created this like, I guess you could say, a type of persona with when I first started self-publishing, but didn't really carry on with it.

So I kept the pen name, but I didn't create a persona to go along with it.

I just started telling people that that was my pen name.

So from my point of view, I just like, I feel like I understand why other people do pen names and maybe come up with personas to go along with them.

And we'll talk about some people who famously do it very well.

But I am like the worst example of all of that.

I think you're a good example of like, it's interesting to think about what did you choose to do and what didn't you choose to do and why, and then what would you maybe have done differently?

Because I think what's interesting about your pen name is, I think you've got the lightest use of a pen name of anyone that I know.

So like you have one name on the books, but that is the only place you use that name.

Like you have your newsletter comes from your name, your social media is in your name.

And as we talked about a bit before, lots of your online presence is related to kind of your author to author conversations.

So even your like social media handle is, it feels more sort of authory rather than or author to author than necessarily your writing name.

Yes.

So when you made a pen name, did you originally think, oh, I'll set up a newsletter in that name and I'll set up social in that name.

Did you do anything or think about anything in that?

No, I didn't.

I mean, at the time when I first started writing and publishing under a pen name, I was, I had my own separate life online as me.

And I used to do blogging and I had a blog and that was all under my name.

So that's kind of, I think, probably why I also cut them separate.

So there's twofold is I already existed online as me.

I was scared that people were going to know that I was writing books, and I felt like that was a dumb thing to do because I didn't think people thought I was capable of it.

And I, in the back of my mind, also thought if I'm going to write books, I really want to get an agent.

And if I get an agent, I want to publish under my real name.

So there were all these different aspects.

And I think I just hadn't really planned on writing an indie publishing as a career.

I think if I'd have started like if I started now, knowing what I know with the ambitions that I have now to do this as a full-time job, I would just start with my own name.

I would just go at it like wholeheartedly as me, like no persona, no pen name, just the whole like just jumping with both feet.

I don't want to say like I feel like I've tarnished my the works I've already put out.

I do think it is confusing to people.

But I think I don't think the damage that I've done is irreparable.

I think that I'm at a stage where, because I'm going to be, and this will be that move on to next week's topic, I am going to be rebranding and changing my publishing name.

So I don't think I'm, I think if I do that, I think that would make more sense to people.

And I do think that people will be like, oh, yeah, that makes more sense.

Good for you.

You said if you're going to go back, you do under your own name.

If you're going to go back and you really could think about absolutely anything, you still want to keep that option open to maybe publish one day under your own name in a whole different thing.

What would you have done differently in terms of setting up your pen name?

If you were going to, knew you were going to keep it and you were embracing it for positive reasons?

If I was going to go under my name, my actual name?

Under your pen name, so say you were going to have a pen name from the beginning.

I would have...

Do you think there's a way to...

Maybe the question is, do you feel that there is a way to be open about having a pen name from the beginning?

Or do you feel that you have to be committed to it?

I think that...

If I was going to do it under a pen name and happily publish under a pen name for the rest of my life, I would have put everything under the pen name.

I would have used it as part of my branding.

My website would have been my pen name.

My socials would be my pen name.

I would talk to people as that person.

And yeah, I think I would have, at that point, adopted a persona for that business, because that's effectively what it is.

I would be creating my own character for the business that I would have created.

So I think it does work.

Just not for me.

It was just a mistake.

Were you at all influenced by the commonest of pen names in your genre?

Is that a consideration?

No, I don't really care what the people are doing.

I don't know.

Honestly, I don't know in my genre how many people use pen names.

I'm not sure.

I haven't really looked at that.

I think that there are...

Sometimes there's a lot of stuff that you could look into.

There's a lot of stats you can look at.

There's a lot of research that you can do.

But I don't know how relevant it always is.

And for me, it didn't feel relevant to really think about them.

Because I'm such myself online as it is, my social media and stuff is so much me.

There's no point me being somebody else.

Yeah, and I guess...

I think your fantasy genre, in that overall genre, a lot of people are just using initials.

So maybe more than pen names, people are just choosing a form of their name.

Yes.

Whereas I write in Cozy Mysteries, and it is very clear that unless there's a whole town full of people who have incredibly cutesy names that I've not met, a lot of people in Cozy Mysteries are using pen names.

I think partly it's that a lot of people who write Cozy Mysteries, they tend to write, not tend to, many people write similar genres, they'll write multiple, they'll have multiple pen names.

Cozy Mysteries are quite short as well, so many people will publish Cozy's and Women's Fictional and Romcoms, you know, and they'll have several different pen names going on to separate their genres.

And also I think not anybody, it's probably less common, but in the past, definitely anybody who was a man would write under a pen name or initials.

There's now a couple of quite public male names.

So Cozy Mysteries, yeah, people have incredibly unrealistically cutesy names.

Yes.

I write under a pen name.

Even though actually my real name is you would think it's a Cozy Mystery or the name, and there are in fact a number of Cozy writers who have the same first name.

But growing up, it was a very distinctive name.

And I felt a bit conscious of using my own very distinctive name as a writing name.

And definitely part of it was that I didn't necessarily want to use up that name.

A bit like you were saying, you only get one chance to use your own name.

And I thought, what if I publish a bunch of books and they're rubbish and I want to start again?

I would probably have a chance to start again with my real name.

And you kind of always go backwards.

But yeah, I think a big part of it is that it is quite distinctive, and it didn't necessarily feel very comfortable to be that open, especially when Cozy writers are quite often using pen names.

And the person that I think is and I thought about today whether to say it or not.

So obviously it's not very open.

I don't think like everyone who's a writer that I know knows that I have a name and a pen name.

I'm very open about that, but I think nothing in like my writing in my author life is open.

And it feels a bit like a lie to be like presenting yourself as one name, to have people call you to your face one name that you know isn't your name.

But also I like that it gives you a persona.

This is the writer me.

And yeah, the person I was thinking about when I was thinking about whether to be open about it or how much to use it was Sasha Black, who has the Red Bull Author Podcast.

Her name is a pen name.

And she also has an unbelievably distinctive real name, like much, much more than mine.

You know, it's you have never met anyone with this name in your life.

Whereas mine you might have.

Yeah.

So I think it feels like a nice protection in terms of like keeping something that is a bit too personal private.

And also I like that you get to have a separate persona as your pen name.

It makes you maybe make a little bit more of a consideration and decide what belongs in and what belongs out of that.

Because I have, you know, all my separate social media was already separated into my original name.

That's the social media where maybe I've had it since I was a teenager and it's got things on that I wouldn't necessarily consider to be connected to my author staff anymore.

So it was kind of nice to have a fresh start and be really focused on sort of brand specific things.

So yeah, I really like having a pen name.

I think in my genre it's having a pen name.

But I think the interesting thing is that kind of going backwards and forwards over it.

So whether you go into a pen name, whether you come out with a pen name, I think that's maybe the thing that feels appropriate to go out on this podcast because it is something you might decide to change after several books.

So for example, if I were going to urban fantasy now, I would probably have a pen name.

I would have a pen name, really.

Because I don't write paranormal cozies, which are kind of the adjacent genre.

Urban fantasy is a bit grittier, and I would expect my audience not to like it.

So I would add in a new pen name and go through the process of that.

But I think the last common thing to do is come back from a pen name.

Though I was in the Cozy Mystery Clubhouse group today where we were talking about another cozy author in there who is, for a long time, she lives sort of near me, for a long time was writing under a pen name that sounds like a pen name and is going back into her real name.

And I think part of it, I don't know if this is true, I meant to ask her today, but she wasn't there to talk to.

I think part of it is other people have started using similar names as a way to piggyback on her brand is what I think might be part of it.

She's got, you know, a very good brand.

But she's going back and she's doing it by putting real name writing as pen name on her covers.

Yeah, so that's a good example of someone who's moving.

It's given her a chance to rebrand all of her covers.

It's given her a chance to put out some, you know, newsletters, promotions and comments about it.

So there's a kind of positive to it.

Do you think there's any other positives to going out with pen name?

I mean, like you say, I think it's completely dependent on like how authentic you feel or not authentic at all.

Like you say, if you felt like you're kind of lying, which I don't think you are.

I think it's just like you say, it is a persona.

Particular genres, I think, work better with personas, especially, I'm going to use romance.

We always use romance as an example, but romance authors use pen names.

Yeah, and they have these personas online, which I'm sure that they're not 100% like in real life, because everything's cranked up to 11.

And they have to sell.

They have to sell.

They are selling brilliantly.

And playing that character.

Yeah, to highlight that it does allow you to crank things up to 11.

So I am not as cozy in real life as I am when I'm Matilda Swift.

I don't know.

Yeah, I think I've just I've got more facets to my personality.

So that I think I wouldn't say fit in the cozy branding.

So things I wouldn't post about my social media, that if it were my real personal social media, maybe I would.

And it would sort of dilute the branding.

Whereas focusing on saying like, this pen name just has this job.

Like she does nothing aside from right cozy mysteries.

She never goes on dates.

She never worries about the gas bill.

She never like has to call the roof because the roof's got a leak in it because she, you know, bought an old house and has to complain about that.

Like she never has a bad day.

There isn't some sort of cute and cozy version of it.

Yeah, I think that that's actually a real benefit if you are adopting a pen name and a persona is that it really makes you narrow down what you're posting online and in a way it's you can't complain about real life stuff because it's not your real life social media.

And I see a lot of people who don't use pen names and the things that they post.

I think when you're not posting under a pen name, so this is like a negative opposed to your real name, the line is completely blurred between who you are and your real life and your presentation to the world.

And I do see people falling over that line and sharing too much.

It's not sharing too much.

People can share whatever they want.

And a lot of people love the fact that the people that they follow are more authentic and show bad days and real life stuff and how messy their houses are and stuff.

But you don't want to see how messy my house is.

I don't want to show anybody the state of this office that I'm sat in right now.

Some people might think that it's cute that I'm surrounded by piles of stuff, but it's just not the persona that I want to put in front of my thousand or so followers.

So I think the persona, the pen and persona can be a real benefit because it gives you, it's your shopfront.

you wouldn't hang up your washing in your shop.

if it's your house, then you would.

That's how my brain has just separated those two things.

Yeah.

So I think then, you know, we've kind of been talking about pen and persona as if they're the same thing at the moment.

But when you go to your real name, so you're rebranding later this year, putting everything on your real name, putting your real name on covers of your books going forwards.

What will you, how will you make that author self a persona that is not the dirty washing version of you?

Or clean washing, but like the washing version of you?

I have already been doing it.

So when we spoke about our branding guidelines and things, and I came up with my pillars, my posting pillars, I have already, I mean, I have been doing this for a long time anyway, but I do tend to kind of forget along the way what I've decided like my rules are.

But I have already just started posting my three pillars of social media stuff.

And I don't particularly think I have to change my persona because like I say, I have just been myself, or this like online version of myself for so long.

Even when I was like the blogging version of myself, I have, I've always had this invisible line that I just have, it just was there automatically.

I've never had to worry about sharing too much.

And I feel like I don't have to worry about that now.

I feel like what I post online and my online persona is like the best part of me.

I think it's like the better version of me.

I feel like the person I am online is by far my dream self.

Yeah, I do.

I also think to an extent if you are social media savvy, which I think you are, a lot of what you...

You shouldn't be sharing your whole self online.

We talked about TikTok yesterday, and if you're doing things like following trends recording sounds, it can look really personal.

You're slightly making a confession about something.

You're making a joke about something personal.

But it is within a very narrow scope.

It's within whatever this current trend is.

You might even make a joke about the washing in your house, if that's that week's trend.

But it wouldn't be something that you share every week, and it very much feels like you're part of a collective, a community that makes a certain sort of joke on that.

It's not that you come...

You would never think, you know what I'm going to do today?

Just cry on camera.

That isn't in any way something that would...

Oh my god.

And I don't mean...

I'm not a crier.

Well, I am in some ways.

I do love to cry at TV shows and films.

Obviously, when I look at the TV, which is dramatic.

And I could just think about stuff and cry.

But I'm not somebody who cries to other people.

Crying to me is a personal thing that happens in the shower, or in front of the TV, and that's it.

But...

I do...

I often have those days where I think you just want to vent online.

And I think that that's what social media is used for a lot of the time, is people venting online.

And you see people venting, and you want to jump on that, and you want to vent as well.

And this is...

It's such a social media...

Social media 101, I would say, is to never get involved in online arguments, and never go online and say, I'm having such a bad day.

I mean, you can if you're on Facebook, and it's to your friends and family, but I'm having such a bad day, I don't want to talk about it.

But why are people the way they are?

You know, everyone sees those people.

Everyone has those friends, or is adjacent to people who are like that.

And I learned a long time ago to never do that.

And sometimes I will even type things out, and then I'll just delete it.

Sometimes it feels great just to type it and then delete it.

But I think a lesson for everyone is to never jump on an argument online, no matter how good you think your point is.

Just don't do it.

I mean, unless it's like a secret writers group on Facebook, then obviously absolutely jump in there and...

Oh, 100%.

My personal history is that I will, I used to, I used to get into arguments with people on Twitter, on Instagram and on YouTube, and I would just, I would be back and forth with trolls.

And it would stress me out, make me so angry.

And I'd think to myself, why?

I mean, sometimes I did get them to apologize.

I'm that good at argue online.

And it always felt great.

But I just, I just don't think that it's, it's the right thing to do.

And I, because I learned that lesson, I will never, like, I just know I'll never do it.

I'm so happy to just...

Yeah, so do you have then like a, some division of social media?

Like, do you say like your Facebook is just for your friends?

And it is just for, you know, say you do want to, not necessarily rant about something, but like put something on that you wouldn't necessarily want to say to your personal sense.

You have some separate online presence.

I do, I do have separate.

I have a personal Facebook page, which I don't post on other than to share my own stuff.

So I'll share from my author page onto my personal page.

I also run a bookshop, so I share my bookshop posts onto my personal page.

And I just use that to kind of keep up with like friends and family, mostly just like all my older relatives who just like randomly post stuff on Facebook.

My Instagram has got, I have got a close friends group on Instagram.

And that's mostly, in fact, it is only women.

Sorry, guys.

Sorry.

But it's just women.

And I post more women-friendly content about, like, I would say it's quite a lot of period stuff.

Whether it's that time of the month, it's always period stuff.

Which, you know, everyone appreciates.

And I think that it's, for me, that's just like a nice safe place to talk about women problems, and have other people know that I am relatable, and anybody can talk to me about anything.

I think I would worry.

That's a big thing that I appreciate about having a pen name, is like, I would worry that, you know, I end up with 5,000 followers, and at some point I post a very personal post, thinking I've hit my close friend's share, and haven't shared to everyone.

And I think I like that separation, and it means I never have to think about that.

I never have to worry about posting something overly personal, because it's not me.

It's this very specific part of me, and I would never consider sharing something under my writing name, that is personal.

Do you worry about that?

I mean, I think I have in the past posted things, but because I'm really self-centred, once I post something on my stories, I go back and watch it.

Oh, I think everyone does that.

Surely everyone does that.

I know immediately if I press the wrong thing, and then I delete it.

I'm like, oh, I hope no one's seen that.

Yeah, I will just immediately notice that.

What sort of crazy person is not going back to watch?

Just to check, or just to see, yeah, that was a good story.

Yeah, I just want to see myself talking or whatever funny face I've made.

I find myself very amusing, and yeah, I look at all my posts.

I'm my own biggest fan.

But I don't feel bad about posting.

When I post more women-centric stuff on my close friends, because I write for young adults, I feel like writing female young adult.

Characters gives me...

I feel like it's a green light to talk about those things, because I don't ever want to not talk about women's problems or just living as a woman, because I think that young people, young readers and writers that I've got on my close group, need to know that it's okay to have those conversations.

And I do try and put things like that in my books as well, about what it's like to be a teenage girl or a young adult, living in a world made for men.

How do you know what the divide is between your self and your persona?

Because if you post about these things to a select group, and they sort of apply to the whole group, what's choosing whether something goes out as Sam Cummings' author versus Sam Cummings' human being?

I know that my Sam Cummings' author, my worldwide account has men in there.

And I just sometimes choose that.

I just don't want to include them in everything, especially because my boss follows me and male colleagues.

And I'm 100% happy for them to see everything that I post, but I don't think my boss really wants to hear about my period.

He's never wanted to talk about it in the past.

That to me also feels like a benefit to having a pen name.

We are making a podcast literally about how to try and quit your job to be a writer.

And my boss never brings up like, oh, Matilda, how would you love to quit your job one day to be a writer like that?

We all make an impression that we love our day jobs and that we would never ever leave.

Or maybe you don't.

I know I think I'm in a very lucky situation.

My job is just like, it's such a good job and my boss is so good.

He is an ex-musician.

One of my colleagues who I work with is a full-time, well, he works with me, but he is like a musician in quite a big band.

So there's a big understanding and also encouragement to not look at the job that we have as our day job as the thing that makes us happy.

And we all talk openly about our goals and ambitions.

And everyone knows that that's what I do.

And that's everyone knows that I remember when I had my interview for this job, and one of the questions in an interview, which is always the question you get is, in the next five years, where do you see yourself?

And I said, writing for a living.

Yeah.

And he was like, great, you're hired.

Love the sound of that.

Because I was because I was just like because because because we love creative people.

I mean, I work in a creative industry anyway.

So the idea of being creative, it wasn't a red flag for them to think that I might have other ambitions.

A lot of corporate companies wouldn't like that.

They'd be like, oh, they're going to leave one day.

I don't like that's not the vibe that we have in our office.

Yeah.

So yeah, I mean, I definitely like that about my job.

And it's quite creative, a lot of my work of writers.

And I've taken a sabbatical before I've taken a year off work to write.

And I do think I'm going to be coming up to that at some point soon as well.

But it does not feel like I'm openly talking about how I can't wait to quit.

There's there's definitely the illusion that we all love working for a living.

Isn't that the most fun?

Capitalism.

It's fantastic.

Just a veneer of it.

Like definitely my company is not a big, you know, money churner.

I work in education.

So we're really just, you know, constantly, if we've got a bit of extra money, like, let's make a book for kids who can't read, and then we're spending all the money on making that.

So there's positives to it.

But yeah, there's definitely the pen name helps me kind of separate that out.

Some people in work, like my pen name is not secret at work.

So some people at work will follow me and I will post on there about, you know, writing and things like that.

I seem to not following super regularly.

I don't listen to the podcast.

I'm not interested in the podcast, which they're missing out because it's excellent.

It's the funniest podcast bell ever here.

The funniest podcast about self-publishing.

Yes.

So I think a pen name for me feels like a right decision.

I've definitely had friends who are writers regret it and want to go back.

But I think going back is easy-ish.

Like it's easier than going the other way.

You cannot really go the other way.

You can't put the genie back in the bottle.

So, yeah, I do think it's a good chance to re-evaluate once you've got a few books out to start thinking, if I had to start with a pen name, do I want to go back from there?

If I do realize that maybe the name I've set up hasn't gone correctly, maybe I have something to touch on as well.

It's like some people I know, they will start.

They will realize I actually didn't do anything correctly at all.

They want to start with a pen name and start again.

There's always questions about that in Facebook groups of, oh, I've made a mess, the algorithm doesn't follow me enough.

It doesn't boost me enough.

Should I start a pen name and start again?

And I always just think, that seems like a lot of work.

Yeah, for me, when I was using a pen name, when I first started, I didn't know anything about it being the industry and stuff.

I didn't really think about posting on social media.

It was just I published some books and just thought that Amazon would do the rest.

I was very naïve, hadn't investigated it.

Did it on a whim because I do everything on a whim.

And look at me now.

I've come so far.

Just vibes only.

Yeah, vibes only.

Good vibes.

And I hadn't really...

I mean, I hadn't even nailed the genre that I was writing.

I've got two ongoing series which are kind of up in the air for what they're doing.

So I've got a young adult, no, middle grade and an urban fantasy series.

So I've kind of...

I just like dipped around and done some different things under this pen name.

And now that I've realized, like it wasn't a mistake, but it was just a very like wishy-washy attempt at writing, making a career.

So now I'll be really happy to just like draw a line under that and say that was baby Sam, but grown up Sam is now claiming her name and her title and her land, and she's going to dominate it.

So you have got multiple genres.

If you decided now like, oh, I really want to keep two very different genres, how do you think you would feel about having a pen name on your real name going at the same time?

I am more than happy to consider that in the future.

And I think I have this kind of like wild dream in the back of my head of writing, like horror, dark horror kind of things.

And that would obviously be under a pen name.

But I really want my young adult stuff to be under my name, because young adult is, my ultimate passion is young adult books.

And writing that under my actual name feels like that is what I, like that's what I would put on the earth to do.

That's how I feel.

That's my calling.

And anything else, I would love the idea of creating a pen name and a persona to write a different type of book.

That sounds really exciting to me.

I can genuinely imagine you, like the persona looks just like you, but she has like different coloured hair and she wears weird makeup.

Yes, I was thinking like, it would be some sort of like Nancy from the craft, like dark persona.

Oh my goodness, yeah.

If I did, you could like float off the ground as well, like with the dress and your legs are dangling down.

Yeah.

By the time I do that, the technology will be there.

Yeah.

I would be that good at photoshopping.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think it's an interesting topic.

Like I think we're not to say we don't have any epiphanies, but I think it is a nice time to reevaluate.

It gathers a lot of things to do with branding and kind of what belongs in the branding and how you decide that.

And I think just thinking about what your name is and what it means to you, whether it's a pen name, whether it's your real name and how that ties into branding can be really helpful reevaluation, just checking where am I at?

Like who is Matilda Swift?

What does she do?

Do I want to still stick with that?

Do I want to go with my real name?

Like why have I chosen this?

And it's just kind of a nice...

And I check in with your few books and to think is this pen name right for me?

And am I right for the pen?

Am I doing it correctly?

Is the persona correct?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because I would have never...

I don't think before we started doing these meetings, I would have never considered changing that because I kind of felt like I'd made a decision and I should have stick to it.

That's how I feel about a lot of things in life, which is both a blessing and a curse.

But I would never have really thought about about leaving that behind and making this big change.

And it's only since we've been talking about it that I realized, actually, I can do that.

So don't be scared to do it.

Mm-hmm.

So Epiphany, but Epiphany has been had off screen just during the process.

Yes, sorry.

Epiphany.

Previously on our Epiphanies.

So yeah, I think that is kind of a good wrapping up of like lots of things we've been thinking about in terms of who we are.

And we are moving on to a slightly different like wrapping up topic next week.

Yeah, so next week's topic is finishing off this series of rebranding and relaunching.

And we'll be talking about relaunching versus rebranding.

So a slightly different variation.

And saying that, what are your thoughts on relaunching and rebranding?

Yes, I think this kind of ties into what we talk about today.

Just thinking about kind of how you consider old series and like new series and tying things together.

I've done a cover rebrand last year.

I didn't make enough of it.

And I think I've learned some things from that and learned some things about how I would do it.

And it also maybe can kind of consider what my brand is.

And then we think about, if you're looking at doing a new pen name, you're sort of relaunching things, or not a new pen name, but a different name on the covers.

Sort of thing about relaunching things.

So I think it is a good time for us to evaluate like how we re-present books to the world or present books to the world and ourselves to the world, and kind of come together in that.

I'm also definitely thinking about it in terms of my new series coming up and how I even just re-think the branding and launch of that.

I don't necessarily have great ideas for it right now because I'm still pondering.

But yeah, what about you?

Have you ever thought about anything to do there?

Yeah, my re-launching and re-branding is coming, so I'm imminently doing these things.

I haven't put it in the diary yet because I don't know, and I'll talk about this next week, I don't know what the best time to do it is, so that is something that I'll talk about.

But yeah, definitely doing all of my branding and guideliney things and thinking about who I want to be presenting myself as in my books as.

This is like 100% where I'm at right now, so my only thought is a big job.

And I'm excited to try and think of all the things that it covers because it is like covers any kind of thing like websites, previous books that are already out, things like inserts and all this stuff.

Like there's so much to think about.

And yeah, this week is going to be going to be a mind-melting week.

This will be the last episode before we do a Q1 review because we will be having been in publishing a podcasting land for the first quarter of the year.

So we're kind of wrapping up a couple of episodes that hopefully should tie everything together and kind of give us our last thoughts on this topic.

And then at the end of this month, we'll be doing an episode, we'll come out at the start of next month, I think, that's just kind of trying to recap everything that we've started thinking about.

And then we have planned our next series of episodes as well.

So it is all looking exciting.

One thing we talked about this week when we were meeting was trying to build our listenership.

So we were looking at the numbers.

It is steadily growing each week, which is fantastic, but I'm just going to take this week's end of episode just to say if you can do one thing this week, it would be tell a writer friend about this podcast.

I know there's the whole like review and subscribe thing.

I'm not sure I know how that works, and I don't think I have ever reviewed a single podcast, even if there's a lot.

I just tell a lot of people.

I'm a real podcast pusher.

I'm constantly about podcasts.

I'm hitting five stars on the podcasts I listen to.

I don't even know where that would go.

So whichever thing you do.

Wherever you listen.

Review it if you know how to do that, but also tell them one that you know.

But at least one person.

You know about the podcast.

As my podcast pushing self is going, I'm also going to recommend another podcast, which is one that I started listening to this week, which is Publishing Rodeo, which is like this podcast, but for traditional publishers.

It's got a pair of hosts who are partway through their publishing journey.

They've had really different experiences.

The podcast is fantastic.

It is a great listen, and kind of they look at things the same way that we do, looking at it from behind the scenes, the mechanics of things.

If you are thinking at all about doing traditional publishing, it is a great podcast to listen to.

I think four or five episodes in now have been binging.

I think they've got about 30 so far.

Give that a listen.

I will put a link in the show notes.

But that is my podcast recommendation.

If in return, you can recommend this to everybody you know.

Yeah, I've built it from one.

Everyone that you know, whether they like publishing or not, they might want to start publishing one day.

Get a sky writer out there.

Like paint the side of your house.

Pen to Paycheck Authors podcast, get recommending it.

We'll be back next week.

And thank you for listening.

Thank you very much.

Goodbye.

You've been listening to Pen to Paycheck Authors.

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