What’s In A Name?
So I’m in my brother’s bookstore, and I’m looking for my latest book, and I’m not finding it. Just as I’m thinking oh really? it strikes me that I’m looking for the wrong name.
I’m not sure how much of a secret it is (none for the people who read the bio at the end of my posts) but besides being Violette Malan, I’m also V.M. Escalada. I have to admit that when my agent first suggested I use a penname, my immediate reaction was unfavourable. There are all kinds of reasons for such a suggestion, however, some of which I touched on in a previous post. Today, I’d like to talk about the actual, practical experience.
At first the idea flustered me more than a little – you know writers, we can always see a worst case scenario. I had plenty of questions, and no one – it seemed – to go to for answers. Don’t get me wrong, my agent, and my editor, had plenty of helpful suggestions, just not for these actual, practical, concerns.
Saturday, July 15, looked like an unusual day for me at Fantasia: I’d mostly be seeing short films. It’d begin a bit after noon, with a set of shorts called SpectrumFest: Films from the Autism Spectrum, a collection of pieces from young filmmakers on the autism spectrum. Then would come this year’s edition of the International Science-Fiction Short Film Showcase, featuring eight science-fictional short films from around the world. Both showings looked fascinating, if in different ways. SpectrumFest was new to me, but I’d seen the SF showcases in previous years, and been impressed both by the individual films and by the way they worked together — if short films are loosely equivalent to prose short stories, the SF short film showcases make excellent anthologies.
