Order Permanent Fatal Error here:
What’s in a name?
Everything, of
course. For an author, maybe more than everything.
This is not complaining, let’s get clear on that up front:
Gaining traction as a fiction writer is no mean feat, and few enough writers
ever earn even a small but loyal following of readers.
Thing is, an author’s name becomes a brand, figuratively and
literally. Readers tend to be very possessive of their authors, and once
they’ve branded them—weighed and labeled them—they are too often loathe to let
their branded writer display any pesky maverick tendencies.
The whole point of branding a calf is to establish ownership
after all, to categorize them and fence them in. This tends to run against the
grain for most creative types.
Chances are, you’ve possibly read one or more of my novels
already. They are very different from PERMANENT FATAL ERROR… very different. And that’s the whole
point of “Hadley Colt.”
Branding—reader or critical categorization—is too nearly
always the cloying killer of creativity. Every once in a while, as a writer,
you just want to be given your head and allowed to stretch your creative legs,
to maybe run flat-out in some crazy new direction (it’s that whole maverick
thing again, don’t you know).
My other novels have traveled far and wide beyond American
shores (I’ll assure you of this much, I am U.S. born and bred) and as my bio
claims, I have indeed established an international readership. I’m doing okay
in that sense, thank you very much.
But I can and do want to write more than just the
books that carry my real name. Yet the publishing gatekeepers don’t share my
enthusiasm for straying outside the established lines they’ve laid down for me.
It’s that Rowling thing, really—if someone hadn’t outed my
Scottish sister and blown her cover all to hell and gone, I think J.K. would be
perfectly happy printing her next comparatively low-selling mystery novel to
enthusiastic reviews and the delight of a small but devoted band of readers who
on their best day would never goose Harry Potter-level Bookscan action for
“Robert Galbraith’s” latest. JKR’s wanting to stretch, to erase that damned
brand and to shrug off the yoke of reader expectation makes perfect sense to me.
My new novel, PERMANENT FATAL ERROR, is essentially about an
author who can’t support the weight of his readers’ expectations and demands,
so he simply disappears. Eventually, we learn he’s still writing, only he’s
doing it under a different name.
In that sense, I guess I’m a little like Mr. Everett Hyde.
I don’t know if there will be a second novel by Ms. Hadley
Colt.
Because there are other stories to tell, stories that aren’t
even a little like PERMANENT FATAL ERROR—let alone the many other novels that
were printed under my given name—I may yet come under your gaze again, in some
other guise, somewhere down the road. It’s that whole “chameleon soul” thing, I
suppose. And for me, at least, that’s fun.
It’s a thrill beyond description to see your name on a book,
make no mistake about it. I still
thrill to my real name on a novel’s cover.
But at some point, you want to protect your story and your
ability to tell the tales that tug hardest at your hand. If that means
sacrificing identity now and again because The
Man just won’t let you go there, well, so be it and let the devil take the
hindmost.
Still, I do enjoy
a good game, and unlike J.K., I’m not necessarily hell-bent on staying hidden
for all time.
So catch me if (and when) you can, my dear reader. Double dare you.
