It is a question many, if not all, people ask themselves at some point in their lives. I would suspect that a major life event precipitates this journey of self-discovery, one involving a rather substantial level of soul-searching.

Religion. Politics. Parenting. Loyalty. The list goes on.

My “Who am I?” moment wasn’t related to any of those major topics, thus I mistakenly thought my search for the answer would be short and satisfying.

I was wrong.

It turns out that trying to define myself by a name was legions more challenging than I had anticipated.

You see, I know who I am. I know all of my good qualities, and all of my bad ones, too. I know my talents, my weaknesses, my strengths, my hopes and fears. I know what I like, what I love, what I hate, and what I ignore.

Would all of that knowledge change, be discarded, tossed out the window, if I were no longer me?

What I mean by that is what if the world greeted me by another name? No, not a spy name or a witness-protection name; rather, an author name. What if the soon-to-be-published me choose to greet readers with a name different than the up-until-this-point me.

What am I talking about? A pen name.

Who would she be, that woman who would look like me, talk like me, think like me, write like me—but who wouldn’t actually be me.

Not according to the reading public, anyway.

About eight months ago, when I finally told the people in my life that I was planning to self-publish, I received a rush of well-intentioned, unsolicited advice. Writing under a pen name was one suggestion that, briefly, took on a life of its own. I couldn’t really explain why, but there I was one Sunday morning, sitting at my computer, trying on names.

Names!

It was a first for me. Over the course of several weeks, I went through a reasonably extensive process of building up a list of possible names, and then tearing it down for reasons only I would find indisputable.

“What have you decided on?” and “Need my help picking one?” were questions I was asked with some regularity during those weeks in April.

Stepping back from who I am, from the decades I’ve lived by only one name, to try and see myself in a whole new way, was slow-going, even painful, but I got through it. Finally, the deed was done.

I had chosen the name for my soon-to-be-born author self.

I mocked up a sample book cover and, one busy evening, proudly displayed it for all to admire. Instead of compliments, I received a long and rather loud series of sentences that all pretty much ran together. If memory serves, the jumble of competing voices came out sounding like this: “You can’t…that’s not you…who is that person…why are you doing this…I don’t like that name…why would you choose…that name is nothing like you…I don’t understand.”

But my favorite? It was this one: “Why would you want to use a fake name? What’s wrong with your name?”

Um, excuse me?

Here is what I hadn’t understood until that moment. My decision to self-publish might have been very real to me, might have been the entire focus of the four months leading up to the name change reveal, but it was all still speculative to them, still open to the odds-makers and the gamblers in the room.

Will she or won’t she really self-publish a novel?

At the time, I considered myself to be about seventy percent through the self-publishing checklist I had devised for my business plan. A month deeper into the process, and I would find I was no more than twenty percent of the way there—and that was with a completed novel ready for publication. 

What is that old adage? Oh, yes. “The more you learn, the less you know.” Anyway, the good news about the steep learning curve is that it’s a one-time deal. First book only. After that? The only learning curve is how fast you can research your book, and the only time constraint is how fast you can write that book.

I’m looking forward to earning my M.S.P.B.A. I’m getting close.

In certain respects, I think trying to rename myself was a very healthy, if time-consuming, mental exercise dedicated to exploring the sum of my being. It was an exploration that I had not recently—if ever—undertaken.

The name printed on my books will be the name I was born with, a name that is as much a part of me as is my very own heartbeat. I’m Ashley Barron. Now and forev—well, there is one major life event that could inspire me to change my name, but it has nothing to do with a book cover.

In the end, those who had been enchanted by the idea of a pen name were very relieved to have “me” back, and my character was very pleased to be precisely the woman I had created on paper—a woman far different from the one typing this sentence.

Wait! you say. What name did you choose for the new you before you realized you were going to remain the original you?

Now, there’s a question.

And the answer? I chose the name of one of my characters. A writer can do that if her book isn’t yet published. Yes, I plucked a name from one of my own creations. I chose a Priya name. 

Who are the Priyas? you ask.

The Priyas are members of a secret society in Washington, D.C., and are the central characters in my romantic thriller series that opens with the novel AVA.

Over the coming months and years, each Priya will have the opportunity to introduce herself to you and, if you’d like, to tell you her story.

Here are the names of the Priyas, one of which I chose, however briefly, as my pen name:


AVA will be published in a matter of weeks and, thinking this could be an opportunity to have a little fun with getting to know the characters, I'm adding a little contest. The first three people to correctly guess which Priya name I chose (and to post it below) will receive a complimentary copy of the novel either on Kindle or Nook.

Winners will be announced on the day of AVA’s debut—a day that has been a very long time in the making.