So if I had to choose my own name…

Hello everyone, it's Hump Day, and you know what that means, right?

No?

You don't remember a few months back when I said I was going to make a “Hump Day Surprise” post on every Wednesday?

Well, really, who can blame you? I mean, I had the best of intentions but then craziness ensued, and then laziness followed, and I think you get the idea. So, from now on, I think I'm going to put extra emphasis on the “surprise” part and just leave you all guessing as to when I'm actually do get around to doing one of these.

Now, having said all that, onward!

I recently came to the conclusion that I need to choose a pen name. It isn't something I ever thought I would do, but an unexpected need for anonymity has conspired to make me think otherwise. No, it's not that I'm afraid that someday in the distant future some crazy fan will track me down, rather, I need to keep my work life and my writing life separate.

Now, you would think that having a day job and writing on the side wouldn't be mutually exclusive, but you would be wrong. You would also think that your coworkers would be supportive of your extracurricular endeavors in the same way that they are supportive of other people's need to spend time with their families, but you would be wrong about that as well. You may have a different experience, but I have discovered, quite unexpectedly, that having an active, social media presence unrelated to my day job can be a liability.

Hence: pen name.

And now that I'm done bitching, here's the fun part! I need to choose a pen name. Most of the ones I've thought of so far are variations on my own name and mash ups of my last name with my wife's. Here's a few:

Sean Patrick
Patrick Shawn
Sean Raelin
Patrick Raelin

And you can get a whole bunch more variations by switching Sean with Shawn and Raelin with Raelyn.

I think I have a favorite but I'm curious, what do you think?