I’ve changed a lot over the years.
My name is Anita Cross but my pen name is Lorraine Adair.
Why did I choose to write fiction under a pen name? Mainly because there are established authors with the same name. Or maybe it’s the same author. Anita Cross writes children’s books, and Anita Cross Friedman co-wrote a non-fiction book on activities for children ages seven through twelve.
Then a fiction title targeting teens was released on Amazon by an Anita Cross in January, 2014. Is it the same person? Who knows? Maybe she’ll see this page and come by and set the record straight.
Not wanting to be confused with another author, I created a pen name by combining my middle name with my husband’s middle name. (Okay, I actually did it for another purpose that didn’t pan out, but I already had the domain registered, so it was an easy decision.)
Besides, I’ve spent years branding myself as a photographer over at Call Of The Wild, spent a couple decades immersed in online marketing, had a number of pages over at Squidoo, and otherwise had my name and photo splattered all over the ‘net.
I’m a baby-boomer. I snuck in, (sneaked in, if you’re British,) at the tail end of the baby-boom. I lived through the Beatles invasion of the US in the sixties, the flower child invasion of San Francisco in the seventies, and the new millennium bug scare in late 1999. Like other Americans, I stood watching in disbelief, via television, as the Twin Towers fell.
I’ve worked in retail, was an electronic technician for Intel shortly before IBM released the first personal computer, with Intel inside, and went on to become the Operations Manager for a small electronics firm here in Eugene.
I bought CorelDraw 3.0, just before 4.0 came out, and started creating the company’s advertising by computer. That led to creating their first website, back in late 1995 and an enduring love-hate relationship with the internet and all its lovely ways to lose track of time. Large blocks of time.
I’ve been self-employed since late 2003 as a consultant, helping other people maintain and market their websites. Mostly I was trying to support myself until my photography site started making big money. Bad timing… it was not to be. Now folks can get high quality stock photography for a few dollars from any number of sites. Even Getty now makes images free for non-commercial use.
C’est la vie.
I was twelve years old when I decided I was going to write a fiction book: “A Broad Abroad.” Wasn’t I terribly clever? Of course, I’d never been out of the state, let alone gone abroad, but why should I let that stop me? I was almost a teenager. I was about to know everything!
Through the years, I toyed with the idea about first one book and then another. I dabbled in poetry, badly, (even wrote a song or three… also badly.) In my twenties, as a single parent, I concentrated more on being a damn-good prototype technician. I had someone besides myself to consider. And getting published would take more time and effort than I had. Not to mention, writing the book in the first place.
All that changed, of course, when Amazon released the Kindle and desperately needed books for people to buy for their Kindles. And today, when people can buy, download and read books on virtually any device with internet access, getting published is almost as easy as playing a video game.
How could I pass up the opportunity to pursue a childhood dream? I’ll never be a ballerina, or a famous international singing star, or even the first woman president of the United States.
But, by God, I am a published author.
How sweet is that?
