A Brief Introduction

By way of introducing myself, my initial thoughts are on…initials.

I’ve decided if I’m ever to be a writer of any renown I’ll have to ditch my name – not for a nom de plume, but for initials.

Initials have a certain gravitas. They make you sound important. (Just ask the UK.)

They’re also good camouflage for a really awful name. (Just ask PG Wodehouse, or Pelham Grenville, as his mother used to call him.)

An appellation by any other name

My own mother gave me an unusual name, and then decided to have me go by my middle name. This is nomenclature double indemnity (or NDI) – and it means I explain something about my name at least once, and sometimes twice, to any new person I meet.

Initials – simple, clean – they are the way to go. Just look what they did for J.K. Rowling. Or B.B. King for that matter.

J.R.R. Tolkien went so far as to have four of ’em. (He took one from E. Nesbit.) So did that Game of Thrones guy, George R.R. Martin (he has a spare so he can kill one off later).

A.A. Milne, T.S. Eliot and S.E. Hinton are in this club. So are G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis and e e cummings (being all smug with those lowercase letters).

My initial ID

I actually do the A. Lynnell thing nowadays, but readily confess people rarely notice the “A” in their rush to mispronounce the “Lynnell.”

Still, even this partial initialization may be my ticket to status and dignity as a person of letters.

It’s either that or I’ll have to petition the great and powerful Oz. (Just ask L. Frank Baum.)