The toughest thing about running a newsletter when I don’t see much tangible progress in my projects is… coming up with new things to say.
Blood of the Gods will not see its line editor until July, so, all in all, nothing new in that department. Lots of sitting around and waiting. In the meantime, I’ve been chugging along with TDA #2. But even that project is on hold (as antsy as I am to get to the point where I can write the scenes I’m most excited about!!!).
Why put it on hold?
I’ve decided to prioritize a free-to-read short story/novella type deal. I’m not really sure what to call it. I feel like it’s too long for a short story, but will probably be too short for a novella, haha. Anyways, this is a project I’d ideally start posting online BEFORE BotG’s publication, with the intent of drumming up interest. It’s a prequel, and it features a completely different set of characters!
This project is still in its drafting phase, so this’ll be a talking point for another day. So, what to talk about in this newsletter?
My biggest development as of late has been my decision to use a pen name.
If you were to have asked me, even as recently as a few months ago, whether or not I was going to publish under a pen name, I would have said no. Rather adamantly, too. “I don’t want a pen name,” I’d say. “I worked so hard for the name I have—it’d feel disingenuous to not use it.”
As a transgender person, I feel a very deep, strong connection to my name. My name means SO much to me. It symbolizes so much. My struggles, my triumphs, all the support I’ve had over my transition. So… to throw that name away? To publish a book I’ve worked so hard on, under another name? It felt absurd! It felt wrong!
But everyone I’m close with kept pressing the concept of using a pen name into my mind. It’s safer, my mom said. Our name is an easy one to look up. You could put yourself in danger. A fair argument. A correct argument. Especially in the current political climate, where we’ve all slid into the worst, evilest possible timeline. Or, as a coworker told me, you can always retract your pen name and reveal your true identity, but you can’t do it the other way around.
Enough of those conversations led my stubbornness on the matter to fade, and I began the process I never thought I’d need to do again. Name research.
And let me just say. It’s one thing to have picked a name for myself. It’s another thing to come up with names for fictional characters. But to combine those, and pick a fictional name for myself? Something that feels like me but isn’t me? That was a bizarre territory to breach.
I had a doc running. I started off by keeping my preferred first name (which isn’t my legal name, so no harm or risk in using it) and augmenting or changing my last name. My last name is long, and there’s a reasonable way to shorten it, but it was so weird. Uncanny, I suppose. So, I crossed all those out and started fresh. I wrote down every name I stumbled across that I sort-of liked. I rearranged them, switching around surnames like some sort of matching puzzle.
And out of that came Wren Rivers.
I actually didn’t like this name right away. I can’t remember the name now, and I’ve deleted that doc long enough ago that I can’t recover it anymore, but there was another option that I’d actually liked more. Of course, if I've forgotten what that previous name was, it clearly wasn't THAT good.
Upon googling that name, I realized it belonged to another author (what are the chances? It wasn’t a very generic name). So, I went back to my document, dejected. I know there are plenty of authors out there with the same name as each other, but I didn’t want to swoop in and steal someone else’s pen name right out from under them. That would create a whole slew of complications for both me and that author.
That was the moment that I started looking a bit more closely at Wren Rivers.
I started by just repeating the name in my head a bunch, throughout my day. I said it aloud to myself, sometimes, when I was alone. I liked the ring of it. It had a nice cadence.
When I was trying out names from a transgender perspective, I did what people tend to call “the Starbucks test.” Essentially: find a name you think you might like, tell it to the barista at a coffee shop, and if you like hearing that name called out by another person’s voice, then you’ve got a strong contender! And if not, then that’s a sign you need to find a different name.
It’s a bit different when you’ve got a full name to contend with. So instead, my “Starbucks test” was changing my name on all my social media. It was awkward, at first. I felt weird trying to become Wren. It felt too performative, like I had to now fill a role, rather than be myself. There was a point when I worried that maybe I needed to try something new.
But I kept at it, and at some point along the way, it clicked, and I’ve fully committed. I put Wren Rivers on Blood of the Gods’ draft cover, and I liked how it looked in the font I’d picked. It felt official. It felt right.
So, here I am.
Wren Rivers!
@corvidarcana [Bluesky, Tumblr]
@corvid.arcana [Instagram]
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TDA #2 metrics:
Current word count: 24,000
Number of chapters: 13
Kiss count: 0 (they’re both being idiots)
Kill count: pbbbtbttttbbbbbbtbtbt 🤪
Funniest typo: Not quite a typo, but an author’s note. “Brushing sodden strands of hair from his face, Jonah (did something).”
Number of times Jonah has cursed: 8
TDA #0 metrics:
Current word count: 13,000
Number of chapters: 5
Funniest typo: “This had to be the dog.” (Meant to type “god”)