Kiss Carson, Cameo Sunset Brown, Jack Kilborn, and Terry Devane are not real people.

Well, Kilborn and Devane aren’t, that I know. Kilborn is a pen name for Joe Konrath and Devane for Jeremiah Healy.

Kiss Carson could be a real name. She writes fantasy romance novels. But, come on, what father is going to name his little girl Kiss?

Eww.

But Kiss Carson is a great name for a romance writer.

Cameo Sunset Brown? She writes erotic romance short stories and novellas. Nothing in her bio on her blog suggests Cameo Sunset is or isn’t her real name. To me, the name seems a shade too clever. It has the ring of a pen name.

Joe Konrath wrote first as J.A. Konrath – he used his initials – because his Jack Daniels series features a female detective.

J.A. could be a woman. A nice deception because most buyers of books are women, and women tend to like books written by women. When some of those J.A. Konrath fans meet Joe – a big man with a beard – at book signings, they’re taken aback. But they delight in his charm and humor, and they keep buying his Jack Daniels books.

Joe created a pen name – Jack Kilborn – for his series of thrillers. Again, it was a marketing move. He figured his Jack Daniels readers wouldn’t buy J.A. Konrath novels that didn’t feature Jack – Jacqueline – as the detective. So a new series, a new author name.

The same logic guided Jeremiah Healy years before.

Healy first created a P.I. series that featured John Francis Cuddy as his detective.

For the first book in a new series, this time a legal thriller, Healy created a new sleuth – Mairead O’Clare. Would his John Francis Cuddy readers buy a Healy book that didn’t have Cuddy in it? His publisher said no.

So Healy set out to create a pen name for the O’Clare books. He hustled into bookstores to see how they arranged their mystery sections . . . and he found that the books by authors with the last name beginning with “D” were at eye level at the front of the section.

Healy decided that’s where he wanted his new books to be, where casual readers looking for a mystery to buy could easily find it.

Do you write under a pen name or know someone who does? What’s your story? Or their story?

Tomorrow: Bones writes a mystery

Let me say at the top that I have an e-book out there.

Five Star published my crime novel, Early’s Fall, last year as a hardcover book. This year, they signed a deal with Amazon to release it as a Kindle book – an e-book.

I’m new in the business, so I was tickled to have my book come out a second time. Yes, my royalty for the e-book is 25 percent, the industry standard at the moment. The Kindle Store lists my book at $7.99, so I get $2 of each sale.

Would I make more if I had retained the e-book rights and released Early’s Fall on my own as a Kindle book at a retail price of $1.99, a really popular price for self-published novels?

At a dollar a book – my take – probably.

E-book readers aren’t eager to pay $9.99, or even $7.99, for a novel when they can get one for a couple dollars.

So I’m looking at releasing a new crime novel exclusively as an e-book. I’ve lined up a cover designer – gotta have a cover, even for an electronic book – and a computer pro who will tickle my text for e-book production in all formats, from Kindle to iPad.

I was going to front these expenses – about $500 – but then an audio book publisher called. He wanted the audio rights for Early’s Fall if he could also have the e-book rights.

I told him the e-book rights were gone, so he asked, “What else do you have?”

A mystery set in the 1960s in Tennessee, I said.

“I’d want the audio rights, the e-book rights, and the print-on-demand publishing rights,” he said.

Hmm, interesting. The people who come to my book events want to buy real books.

So I could have a real book of my Tennessee mystery. And an e-book. And an audio book.

But the question remains, dollars and cents, will I do better with his deal than I would self-publishing my crime story as an e-book and selling it for the low, low price of $1.99 rather than the publisher’s price of $9.99?

What do you think?

Literary agent Andrew Wylie last month caused an uproar in the executive suites of the big publishing houses.

It wasn’t enough that he said Random House and the others wouldn’t pay the writers and writer’s estates he represents enough money for e-book publishing rights. He said he’d start his own e-book publishing company – Odyssey Editions – and bring out 20 titles this year that have never been released before as e-books, among them Ralph Ellison’s novel Invisible Man, Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead, Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, and Hunter Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Traditional publishers offer a 25-percent royalty to writers for the electronic rights to their books. Wylie and writers’ groups want 50 percent.

Wylie will pay something more than 25 percent to his writers or their estates, but how much more, he has not said.

To add power to his position, Wylie signed a deal with Amazon giving that company the exclusive right to sell all e-books that Odyssey publishes.

All of this may be a bargaining ploy to jack up the royalty the major houses are willing to pay for electronic publishing rights . . . or it may really be a new business for Wylie. He does represent 700 writers, so he could have a hefty catalog of e-books if he wants to pursue it.

Tomorrow: Going electronic, the writer’s choices

July 20 may one day be considered a historic day in publishing.

On that day, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos announced to the world that his company was selling more electronic books than it was the traditional ink-on-paper kind – 143 digital books for every 100 hardbacks during the previous three months.

The sales curve is upward. Sales of e-books at Amazon in the last month of that quarter reached 180 for every 100 hardbacks sold, Bezos said.

Big-name writers are doing well. Both Stieg Larsson and Stephenie Meyer have sold more than 500,000 digital books, and James Patterson 1.1 million to date.

Readers of popular fiction like and buy e-books. Could it be the future is now?

What’s the potential here?

Says Pacific Crest analyst Steve Weinstein, world e-book sales at Amazon could reach $2.5 billion by the year 2012.

To arrive at the number, Weinstein looked at what happened to digital music sales as the iPod and the MP3 player caught on with music fans. In 2003, digital music sales accounted for 2 percent of the U.S. market. Five years later, it was 33 percent. Weinstein doesn’t expect e-books to grow as fast, but he does think the market is off to a strong start and expects the cycle to pick up as the prices of the Kindle and other e-readers come down.

Weinstein also expects book readers to be drawn to the instant gratification that comes with an e-book – I can get it right now, download it in less than a minute, and I don’t have to drive to the bookstore. Also attractive, the lower prices of e-books – from $9.99 down to free.

Several of the bestsellers on Amazon’s Kindle top-ten list sell for as little as $1.16.

Tomorrow: The Wylie Agency gets into the e-book act

Remember, a couple weeks ago, I told you about friend Jean Arnold’s request for advice for her granddaughter on what she should do to become a writer. Granddaughter Hannah McLay Arnold is 12 years old, an avid reader and storyteller. And, yes, she writes.

From mystery writer Pepper Smith: “Keep reading. Keep writing what you would enjoy reading. Know that when people critique your work, they’re not attacking you, they’re trying to help you make it better. Know that it’s going to take you some time to get there, but you’ve got an advantage in that you’ve started young and have plenty of time to grow and learn as a writer.”

Pepper knows about the wisdom of starting early as a writer. She wrote her first mystery when she was in 6th grade.

New Mystery Reader.com contributor Dana King’s interest is that writer Hannah be first a reader. “Learn to read with a discriminating eye. Someone who commits to being a writer can probably never read solely for entertainment again. Some part of the writer’s mind has to be working, noticing a well- (or ill-) turned phrase, how well a choice works, editorial decisions, etc. That doesn’t mean writers can’t read for enjoyment – I enjoy everything I read, or I don’t read it – just that the critical and analytical thinking can never completely stop.”

Mystery writer Jon Loomis got ultra-practical in his advice to Jean. “Tell her [your granddaughter] to have fun, to let her imagination run free, and to not listen to anybody who tells her what she should – or shouldn’t – write about. Technique can always be improved, but her subjects are her own.”

Tomorrow: Amazon sells a mountain of e-books

Fifty years ago – come October 3rd – CBS Television launched “The Andy Griffith Show.” Sheriff Andy, Barney Fife, Opie, Aunt Bee, Floyd the barber, Goober and Gomer Pyle, town drunkard Otis Campbell . . . as memorable a cast as may ever have been assembled for a television series.

Griffith’s Mayberry grew out of his memories of growing up in Mount Airy, North Carolina.

And Mount Airy has capitalized on that in gentle ways.

You won’t find a Mayberry Land theme park there, but you will find Floyd’s City Barber Shop, the Snappy Lunch, Opie’s Candy Store, Aunt Bee’s Barbecue, and the Mayberry Motor Inn with a replica of Andy’s and Barney’s squad car parked out front. Ask the person at the desk to press the button that fires up the siren in the car.

I did.

There is an Andy Griffith Museum, but I’ll tell you true, the Mount Airy Museum of Regional History is far more interesting for the way in which it portrays the history of the region.

But do drop in at the Snappy Lunch and get a fried-porkchop-and-coleslaw sandwich – the restaurant’s trademark. In a first-season episode of “The Andy Griffith Show,” Andy suggests to Barney that they double date for a movie and, afterward, go to the Snappy Lunch for a bite to eat.

George Roberson and Deuce Hodge opened the Snappy Lunch in 1923. It’s gone through four changes in ownership over the years, but the restaurant has never moved from its location on North Main Street.

Griffith – now retired – was far more than an actor and later a director. He also was a writer, but not of books. He was a script writer.

He worked on every script of “The Andy Griffith Show,” but never as a solo writer. So he didn’t ask for a writing credit.

For his later “Matlock” television series, Griffith did write all the scripts for the sixth season, and he did get the screen credit.

He first hit it big as a writer and monologist with his 1953 album What it Was, Was Football for Capitol Records. The album rose to number 9 on the charts.

Tomorrow: Your advice to a young writer

Wouldn’t you just love to sit in a classroom and listen to William Faulkner expound on whatever he wanted to expound on?

It’s a little hard to do because Faulkner died in 1962.

But not impossible.

Faulkner gave a series of lectures at the University of Virginia in the 1957-’58 when he was the university’s first writer-in-residence. The lectures were recorded and the tapes filed away . . . and forgotten.

Until Stephen Railton, an American literature professor at UVa, found them.

He digitalized the recordings and posted them on the UVa library’s website this summer. Here’s the link: http://faulkner.lib.virginia.edu/

Said Railton in a recent NPR interview, “To me the most interesting thing: this is the late-1950s, he’s won the Nobel Prize for literature – that was in 1949 – he’s no longer the young genius trying to remake modern literature like Ernest Hemingway or Gertrude Stein. And it’s clear that in these sessions at the University of Virginia, he’s trying to reach out and make his work and his vision of the human condition accessible.”

Give Faulkner a listen. You will enjoy the experience.

You’ve read family histories. Pretty dry, right?

Not Leslie Huber’s The Journey Takers.

A friend of Leslie, who had read an early draft, handed the manuscript back and asked, “Who am I supposed to be cheering for?”

Georg and Mina Albrecht, Leslie’s Germany ancestors who made the journey to America? Karsti Nilsdotter, Leslie’s great-great-great-great grandmother who came here from Sweden? Or Karsti’s future husband, Edmond Harris, who traveled here from England by way of Australia?

Leslie thought about that for a while and concluded, while Georg, Mina, Karsti, and Edmond were the journey takers, this really was her book, her story of discovery of self as she trekked to distant parts of the world to learn who her ancestors were, what their lives were like, and what prodded them to leave behind everything they knew, everything familiar, everything they loved to come here to a country where they knew no one.

To illustrate, in chapter 3, Leslie has been researching Georg Albrecht’s parents. She learns how many children die young in Germany of that time – 3 in 10 don’t make it to their first birthday.

Writes Leslie, “‘The Lord gave and the Lord hath taketh away,’ they [Georg and Mina] reminded each other when they lost a baby. Small, innocent children, having so little of this sinful world on them, were certain to return to heaven, they believed. And wasn’t heaven a paradise where they could live with God, a much better place for a child than this wretched world of sorrow and suffering? Their faith gave them hope that despite the injustices and heartbreaks of life now, something greater awaited them.”

In the next section of the chapter, the story comes back to Leslie. After she has learned how difficult it was for children in the time of her ancestors’ families, she gets word from the doctor that she’s pregnant – her first child. In world time, this is 150 years later.

She writes:

For the next two weeks, I attempt to work two jobs full time since I’ve started my new job but haven’t quite finished my old one. David [Leslie’s husband] has gone to Belgium for ten days to present a paper at a conference. For the first nine of those days, I hardly notice he’s gone since I spend every waking hour working. But the day before he comes back, that changes. I have some news to share with him – news that makes it difficult to concentrate on anything else.

As I wait at the airport to pick him up, I think of creative ways to make my announcement. I watch impatiently as his plane pulls up to the gate, my heart beating faster. At last, the doors open and passengers file out into the terminal. Towards the end of the line, David appears, his feet dragging and his eyes glazed. I run up and hug him.

“How was your trip?” I ask absently, my mind on my news.

“I haven’t slept in twenty-four hours. I’m wiped out.”

I don’t even hear him. “Guess what?” I say, completely forgetting my elaborate announcement plan. “We’re going to have a baby.”

He stares at me blankly. I wait, ready for an enthusiastic reaction.

“Oh,” he says after a moment, his voice still dull. “That’s nice.”

I stare at him, stunned.

“That’s nice!” I repeat. “That’s all you have to say. Our entire lives are about to change and you say, ‘that’s nice?’!”

“I mean, that’s great,” he tries again, summoning a little more animation in his voice.

“That’s great?” I narrow my eyes at him before turning to walk towards the baggage claim.

He hurries after me. “Leslie, I’m just really tired,” he says when he catches up.

I stop walking and look at him.

“I’m excited,” he says in a less-than-excited-sounding voice.

I raise my eyebrows.

“I am.”

As we pick up his bags and load them in the car, David continues to profess how thrilled he is. Still, after about ten minutes in the car, he’s sound asleep. I turn and glare at him every couple of minutes, but soon find I get little satisfaction out of being irritated at someone who’s sleeping.

Leslie and her husband now have four children, all healthy, all growing like weeds, not one death – something Leslie’s ancestors, The Journey Takers, could only wish for.

Tomorrow: William Faulkner speaks

Frank DeFord is one of the best sportswriters in the country, if not the best.

In addition to the mountains of sports stories he’s written for magazines and newspapers over a long time in the business, he’s also written 16 books. His latest – a novel – is Bliss, Remembered, set in and around the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin.

No, this isn’t a story of the games. This is a love story – American girl, Sydney Stringfellow, there to compete in the backstroke, and a handsome young German.

An American and a German, right there complications at the outset.

And that, says DeFord, makes for a great story.

“It’s not girl meets boy, boy falls in love with girl, they live happily ever after. The best love stories have impediments. I mean the Montagues did not like the Capulets, right? And that’s what made Romeo and Juliet, not their love,” DeFord told NPR’s Scott Simon in a recent interview.

“The impediment here is that she [Sydney] is a little small town girl from America and he is this German sophisticate, son of a diplomat. But that’s what makes the good love story, the hurdle, the fact that you’ve got to overcome something to find love at the end. Every good love story has that element. If it didn’t, it’s just too sweet. It’s just too good. And, no, we don’t want to read that. We want to read about lovers trying to overcome.”

Good advice for those of us who want to insert a love story in our novels . . . don’t make our lovers’ lives easy.

Tomorrow: A book you wouldn’t know if you weren’t reading this

Walk into Stanford University’s new engineering library – when it opens next month – to get a copy of the latest engineering magazine in whatever field you desire, to read the magazine there in one of the soft chairs, it’s not going to happen.

Most engineering magazines and journals have gone digital. No more paper.

As a consequence, the library’s periodical shelves are almost bare.

And the bookshelves are relatively bare, too. Only 10,000 volumes on them, down from 80,000 in the old library.

Books, too – particularly textbooks – are now digital. Read them on your laptop, your iPad, or your iPhone. And students do.

The librarians went through the records of the old library’s 80,000 books. Those that hadn’t been checked out in five years went into the great recycling bin. That was 85 percent of the library’s holdings.

Shades of things to come for other libraries?

For academic libraries, yes.

For your neighborhood public library, eventually. The next time you’re in, ask your librarian how many e-readers the library has purchased to loan to patrons.

Tomorrow: What it takes to make a love story