If you followed me over here from my other name, you know that I’ve made a name for myself blogging for places like Woman’s Day, BlogHer, Mom’s Magazine and on my own platform. I’ve also published a couple of non-fiction books and done a ton of article freelancing.

So I had some street cred when it comes to writing, I had a social media platform, and those two things are usually great for a debut novelist to have. I actually debated just keeping the regular name (I even submitted my novel in the contest under the original name) but after hashing it over with my agent and a few other people in the biz, we agreed on an offshoot of the name.

So Ellie DeLano became L.E. DeLano, YA novelist.

And I want to make it clear that I didn’t go with the initials because I’m hoping to pass myself off as JK Rowling. Let’s face it….nobody but JK Rowling is JK Rowling. I deliberately started a new paragraph here to talk about her so that my name wouldn’t be mentioned in the same paragraph as hers. Seriously.

I am also not a pretentious person, in general. Unless we’re talking about grammar. I can be really prissy about proper grammar.

The pen name was just an easy way for the people who already read me to find me, and it also keeps new readers from getting confused when they look up my books because I do have some non-fiction titles out there that have nothing to do with the YA market, fantastical worlds or young adult and teen heroes.

Of course, this also means more work (particularly in social media) as I manage a new platform, but that’s the price I’m going to have to pay. In the meantime, feel free to call me Ellie, L.E., ‘Hey you’, or any random adverb you’d like to trot out. I’m not liable to make much of a fuss, as long as you read me!