Annotations: Author Page
What’s in a Name?
Andrew R. H. Quinn. Yep, that’s my name. I’m not a fan of the spotlight, and given that I prefer to keep the focus on my work and not me, I kept going back and forth on whether I should use a pen name or not. In the end, I opted to go with my legal name because I have two middle initials (like J. R. R. Tolkien and George R. R. Martin), so I thought that I might as well use them.
Additionally, I felt that remaining anonymous would be nigh impossible if I wanted to promote my book amongst friends and family, as they already knew that I was writing one, and that sort of thing was bound to trickle out (besides, with the magic of the internet, these things aren’t too difficult to determine). Plus, I didn’t (and still don’t) have enough resources to launch a book without the support of local word-of-mouth campaigns.
The only other cautionary tale I have on this topic is that while I was trying to get physical editions on Amazon, I misread their pen name policy. In the haze of overtime, I thought that it said that pen names were not allowed. They are, and all I can do at this point is admit that I was wrong and heartily recommend that none of you work 18.5 hours straight1.
Footnotes
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This deserves its own write-up. Suffice it to say, my understanding is that productivity peaks after four hours and plummets after eight. As such, mistakes tend to pile up faster than improvements past the point of diminishing returns, so take heed and act on this information. Ignore it at your peril! ↩