Cornelia Quick

I still remember the thrill I felt when the news broke that Stephen King and Richard Bachman were one and the same: I had just grabbed a copy of “The Long Walk” at the local paperback exchange, mixed in with my usual melange of Gothics, bodice rippers, and true crime. I’d already exhausted the Stephen King canon (“The Talisman” with Peter Straub had come out a few months before, and “It” was still months from hitting the shelves), and I was excited to have more of his books to devour.

But I also remember the odd feeling that there was something about those Bachman books that was a little different from the usual King; they were a little looser, a little wilder, and a little meaner than the usual Stephen King, though still comfortably shelved alongside the books bearing his name. It felt like using a different name gave the writer a little freedom, a bit like an actor on the stage inhabiting a new identity, and I imagine that for someone like King, already a bestseller in a category all his own, that freedom must have been a relief.

Much, much later, when I decided to try my hand at writing some short smut for fun and profit (after having had a very brief career under my own name with very different fiction), I knew that picking a pseudonym would give me the freedom to let my imagination roam. It was liberating to become Cornelia; she and I are a lot alike, but different, too: I think of her as sassier and more self-assured than her puppetmistress, a little less likely to put up with the guff of daily life and willing to speak her mind. I like her a lot, though I’m not sure we’d always enjoy hanging out.

It wasn’t until I had put out a bunch of stories as Cornelia that I realized a pseudonym is more than just a mask, though: it’s also a brand. And when I survey Cornelia’s output — gangbang romps and heartfelt romances about pornstars, angsty bi-awakening novels and ill-advised literary erotica — the brand message is … chaos. If you stumble into my catalog by way of Mashed on Moving Day, you will probably be absolutely dumbfounded by Couples Massage. And while I think it’s possible for the same reader to enjoy all of my books — after all, the same writer loved them enough to make them happen! — it’s no doubt confusing as heck for the casual buyer to know where to start.

I’ve put together guides before — by kink, by setting, by romantic fidelity, etc. — and I think those help, but if I’d been smart, I probably would have been more strategic about my pen name, spinning off the things that didn’t fit the original Cornelia brand. I was smart enough to put some things under Quentin Quick’s name — those are definitely something else — and I’ve got a couple of weird Laz Larue pulp outliers — but making sense of Cornelia is a challenge.

Some writers I know have actually gone to the trouble of splitting their published catalogs into new pen names, but let me tell you, that looks like work, and I don’t do this writing stuff to make my life harder than it already is. I’m going to let Cornelia’s odd jumble stand, and I’ll continue to throw chaos on top of the pile; but I’ve decided that a few of the ideas I’ve recently had are poor fits for Cornelia, so I’m going to publish them under new names.

Here’s the guide (so far!) to Cornelia’s pen names; if you see something here that you like, consider signing up for their newsletters. I don’t expect their output to match what I did as Cornelia when I started out (madness!), but there should be enough over coming months to satisfy readers in their niches.

Quentin Quick

You may already have met Quentin. He takes my ideas that are a little meaner and a little weirder, where the characters may not have a good time. There’s a lot of kink and BDSM, some humiliation and dubious consent, though typically with an undertone of playful satire. Many of his reviews boil down to “WTF?” and that, dear reader, is exactly what he aims to deliver.

You can sign up for his monthly newsletter if you want more!

Laz Larue

A few of you (a very few of you …) may have bumped into Laz as well. I dreamed up Laz to let me write some pulpy stories that play on a bigger canvas than Cornelia’s: a little more adventure, a little more sci-fi and fantasy, but still plenty of heat. He’s got a book in the works that’s a historical harem romance — think John Jakes for the MFFF reader — and I plan to do some swashbuckling tales in the future.

You can sign up for his monthly newsletter, too!

Flora Fox

Flora is a recent addition, and you may already have read and enjoyed (I hope!) her first book, Feed Me Your Sausage, Stepbro!, a stepbrother instalove romance. I needed her to take on some filthy stepfamily romance ideas I have, which are absolutely not safe for Amazon.

Her next book, a stepdaddy romance, should be out early next month. You can sign up for her monthly newsletter.

Carson Quick

Meet Carson Quick, my newest secret identity! I recently wrote two short MM smut stories as part of a semiquincentennial project (that’s halfway to 500 years, baby! though I’m not willing to put money on us hitting 251, to be honest …). They were a ton of fun (I read a lot of historical MM romance — KJ Charles is my current favorite), but they were obviously not Cornelia’s style. Also, if I wanted to write a gay pirate romance (which, incidentally, I do), I’d need someone to blame it on.

Sign up for Carson’s monthly newsletter!

And I haven’t forgotten Sabina Lynette and Sylvia Wise, the pen names I planned to use at the beginning of the year, before … well … everything. My mojo was seriously flummoxed in January and February, when I wanted to work on their books, and it’s only now recovering. But I’ve got a solid start on some stories for both of them, and you can sign up for Sabina‘s and Sylvia‘s newsletters if you’re looking for either angsty-kinky romance, reverse age gap love stories, or both!