Identity Crisis.

[Adam Colclough]

I have finally done it, or started to do it at least, write a novel that is. It’s going to be called White Oak and is a sort of homage to trench coats, down at heel heroes and all things noir.

Taking this decision prompted me to think about whether or not I want to write it under my own name or a pseudonym.

I’ve always been curious as to just what it is that makes a writer want to take his or her name off the cover of a book. Try as I might I can’t get away from the idea that it implies a certain amount of shame as regards the status of their work at least it does if they’re literary types slumming it in the mean streets of the pulp world.

While it might be quite thrilling for a poet to try to write a detective novel it’s also a good idea to hide that fact from everyone else in the salon.

I don’t much like that way of thinking, granted writing could never be mistaken for hard labour, but any author deserving of the name, even one who will see his first book spring into the world as a self publishing project, puts something personal into everything he writes and so should be brave enough to put his own name on the cover.

After all the worst thing that can happen is the book will get a couple of bad reviews and then everyone will forget about it.

For that reason when White Oak finally sees the light of day, sometime around the end of September, it will have my real name on the cover.