Tag: Kira Morgana

Enter a new Pseudonym?

Diversification Idea Musing… feel free to comment or ignore as you like…

This is something that has been growing steadily since the summer. As you know, Kira Morgana writes children’s books and up until now, they’ve been illustrated by  Maria K.

So I was playing around with one of my favourite short story forms last summer – the tricky but satisfying “Dialogue only” –  and I inadvertantly created, not only a whole book of stories, but also a set of characters that seems to grow exponentially every time Puff gets bored…

Someone suggested that I get them illustrated. Maria didn’t have enough time to do it – she’s got a full time job and is also busy translating and writing herself… so I had a go at it.

This was the result:

Practise Page: Sleep

Now, I wasn’t all that happy with this one (which is why it’s a practise page) but my friends and family loved it as much as the original dialogue stories, so when I started the new term on my art class, I decided to develop it as a project…

It’s kind of taken on a life of it’s own now and is developing nicely.

And now I have a dilemma.

As I have said, up until now, I have kept all my children’s books under Kira Morgana. But I am enjoying doing the illustration for Author & Muse and would like to expand into doing my own illustration for my children’s books.

I’ve been signing the illustrations of the Author & Muse stories with MEW (Kira Morgana is too long for the space) but should I do that with the illustration for my children’s books, or  should I just use my real name (MEW is my initials) of Mandy E. Ward, or should I just keep it to Kira Morgana?

What do you think?

News:

**Keep an eye out for a new page on the site – I’m going to add my Ilustration work here once I have worked out what name to use!**

Author Identity Crisis…

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Meet one of my favourite artists… click the picture and visit his website…

*grins* That headline makes it sound so dramatic…

It’s not a true identity crisis of course… it’s one of those where my author identity is clashing with the real life me. I have two Pen names – Kira Morgana and A. E. Churchyard – but they don’t get  much notice to be honest.

If you google Kira Morgana, you get  404,000 results. Only the first page (the important one really) will have exact results from me. There will be others scattered through the next 3 pages – mostly because Kira Morgana is the main focus for my publishing.  Any others will be about other people.T
This is completely normal when you’re what the Publishing Industry & HMRC calls a “Hobbyist” Author.

Why do they call me that? Well, it’s because I don’t earn enough money off my books to live on. *eye roll*

If I google A. E. Churchyard, I get 354,000 results. On that one  only the first page will be about me. Again, that’s the important page, but the reason there aren’t many other posts is that Churchyard is less prolific (she’ll have a few more if I can manage to get them edited and get covers…) and tends to deal with darker subjects.

If you google my real name – Mandy Ward – you get everyone and anyone other than me…

This is both a good thing and a bad thing.

Good – it means that I can go for Teaching Interviews without my writing being discovered unless I want to mention it.  This was the whole reason that I started in publishing using pen names. I have a private life this way… not that it’s all that necessary – I don’t exactly have paparazzi wanting to find me to take my picture… *grins*

Bad – I am on a lot of social media as myself. If you become friends with me on Facebook for example, you aren’t friends with Kira Morgana or A. E. Churchyard,  you’re friends with Mandy Ward.
The problem with that, is that if other Publishing Industry people are trying to contact me and they know me from facebook, they don’t tend to know my pen names.
Also, when I mention to a friend that I write and publish books, they tend to look me up through my real name… which doesn’t exist in Publishing (well, unless you go right back to my first publications as a teenager) and then they can’t find my books.

It’s a tricky subject.

All Change!

Welcome to the new look “World of the Teigr Princess”!

I got bored of the old look; it was dark and gloomy, not welcoming in any way. I also got bored of keeping everything separate; it takes such a lot of effort to keep more than one blog going and I am, essentially lazy – show me the easy way to do something and I’ll do it…

…Except when I am making things – I go for quality when I’m designing and making, as well as when I am editing / formatting…

Ahem.

So the last few days have been spent rearranging things on this blog, removing stuff from the other blogs and adding it into the mix here.

If you take a look at the menu bar, I’ve separated the book pages into menus under the pen name (Kira Morgana or A. E. Churchyard) that they are published as. Where a series is listed, each series has a sub menu with a page for each book. Just hover over the menu to explore.

I’ve also added a “Free Stuff to Read” section. You’ll find different pieces of work in here; a serial story called “Confessions of an Unintentional Bartender“, a Doctor Who Fan-fiction and space to expand into; I’m intending on posting some of my poetry and short stories that haven’t been published yet. I’ll also be doing Author Interviews and Book Reviews, so keep your eyes open for that!

The final section (which isn’t up yet) is going to be about my other creative endeavours… as you may remember, I design and make a variety of objects using various different techniques; everything from Cakes, Cookies and Candy to Figurines, Jewellery and Jumpers. I’m going to showcase the best of my work from all of those areas.

And yes, I’ll still be blogging about whatever pops into my head, be it books, bread or babies…

Enjoy!