JK Rowling Outed As A Father And Ex-Military Soldier

For popular authors, writing under a pseudonym is freeing. 

This was what Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling was doing when in April, she released a crime-fiction novel called The Cuckoo’s Calling. Up until Saturday, it was assumed that the name on the book, Robert Galbraith, was the author –even though on the publisher’s website, the biography of the Galbraith says he married father of two with an army background and experience in civilian security. It also acknowledged that Robert Galbraith was a pen name. 

Still, the book got rave reviews back in April, with many saying that this tale was too good to be a debut novel by some retired military person. Was then just luck, as sometimes happens in the publishing industry, where a debut novel gets such high praise? Perhaps, but I don’t think anyone thought it could be bestselling author Rowling, who released her first non-Harry Potter book, The Casual Vacancy, last September to tepid reviews, even though it sold very well (and will be turned into a limited series for the BBC).

She’s not the first author to write under a pseudonym. Man Booker Prize winner John Banville publishes detective novels under the name Benjamin Black, while Interview With A Vampire novelist Anne Rice released a series of erotic novels under the name of A.N. Roquelaure. And long-time Stephen King fans have known that the author published four novels under the name Richard Bachman, while prolific romance author Nora Roberts created J.D. Robb as way to release her futuristic crime series (though she’s also uses the names Jill March and Sarah Hardesty).  Fantasy author Robert Jordan, who created the Wheel in Time series was really named James Oliver Rigney, Jr., but he also used Reagan O'Neal for historical fiction as well as Jackson O'Reilly for westerns. 

Why novelist do this is for varying reasons. Mostly, though, it’s because they want to shift genres and thus leave the bestselling name behind so the newest book can stand on its own. Still, this sometimes angers fans, but in my years working in the retail book business, I've also seen fans turn away from authors like Rowling and, in particular, Anne Rice, because they don't want their favorite author doing other stuff. Too many of Rice's fans have told me they avoid her work, unless it's a vampire tale. When Rowling released The Casual Vacancy, many were upset that she took such a one-eighty turn, and pondered why she just didn't give the fans what they want: more tales set at Hogwarts. But, of course, for writers of books, it's never what the fan wants, but what the writer has stuck in their heads and that must be excised. To misunderstand this equation is to misunderstand why people write at all.

Meanwhile others, like acclaimed author Joe Hill, used a shortened version of his middle name to hide that he was in fact the son of Stephen King.  But the point was with Hill and now Rowling, they wanted their books to stand separate from other works; Hill because he was writing in the same genre as his dad (and story goes that the publisher of his first collection of stories, 20^th Century Ghost, was unaware of Hill’s lineage until about three months before that book collection was released) and Rowling from her Harry Potter franchise.

But her ruse lasted only three months –and in this day and age of social media, maybe a surprise it lasted this long (it seems, as well, that most in the industry were kept in the dark -Kate Mills, a fiction editor at Orion Books, tweeted that she had turned down the novel. "So, I can now say that I turned down JK Rowling. I did read and say no to Cuckoo's Calling. Anyone else going to confess?"). “I had hoped to keep this secret a little longer, because being Robert Galbraith has been such a liberating experience,” she said in a statement. “It has been wonderful to publish without hype or expectation, and pure pleasure to get feedback under a different name.”

With the news that Rowling was indeed Galbraith, the book shot up quickly to number 1 on Amazon (and they were already out of stock on the title, giving it’s availability a nebulous 10 to 14 day wait. And over at BarnesandNoble.com, they’re also already out of stock on it) and a lot of brick and mortar stores were caught off guard, having only a handful of the books in stock (the three B&N’s close by my house still seem to indicate they have copies on hand). Depending on the print run of the first edition, though, the book should become a collector item much like the first UK and US editions of Rowling’s Harry Potter book has. If B&N stores are out, the next step is to find independents that may have acquired the book, but seeing that the novel was supposedly a debut from an unknown author, they may have passed it up all together or bought limited quantities.

Books: Lexicon by Max Barry (2013)

Lexicon is a clever, often humorous sci-fi thriller that is all about words. Set in some alternate universe –though we’re never fully sure of that, or the year it is set in- where power is wielded by word-magicians known as poets. People are chosen because they’re good with words, and have a knack of persuasion –the ability to make people do things against their own nature, even kill or be told to kill themselves. 

When we meet Emily Ruff, she’s a teenager living on the streets of San Francisco, coning people out of money by playing the old standard of three-card monte. She is whisked away to an academy, though there is no Harry Potter or Professor Dumbeldore awaiting her, just folks named after poets, like T.S. Eliot and Charlotte Bronte. 

And, as you might expect, she does well, moving swiftly up the ladder, to achieve the greatest accomplishment, a Poet (she is then called Virginia Woolf). Still, her rise to top is not that fully easy, as she has  behavioral issues that get her exiled to a small town in Australia. After a four year stint there -and where she falls in love with a paramedic (something poets are not supposed to do)- she is brought back to DC. But her love for Harry is so strong that steals the “barewood," a device of unimaginable power, perhaps biblical in nature, and ventures back to Broken Hill, where she unintentionally is forced to unleash its horrible power.

By setting the novel in some other place, it gives Max Barry a lot of room not to explain what the “barewood” actually is (and mostly, it’s a MacGuffin) so he can write about the power of language and the use of words, how they persuade us, how they engage us, and how they can be used in the most beautiful way, but can also be used in the most ugly way. It’s a well done thriller that will make you a bit less sure of your friends, foes, family and co-workers when they try to convince you they’re right about something.

Books: Tell The Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt (2012)

It’s early 1987 in Westchester, NY and there's really one person who understands 14-year-old June Elbus—and it's not anybody at her suburban high school. Nor is it her nice but boring accountant parents or her older sister, Greta, who has recently "turned mean." The only one who "gets" June—who understands her need to wander the woods wearing Greta's old Gunne Saxe dress—is her mother's gay painter brother, Finn. And he's dying of a disease just starting to have a name. After Finn dies, Junie begins to learn the truth about her Uncle; she learns who Finn really was. And who was the tall man with the sad eyes who was banned from Finn’s funeral? Why is her mother so conflicted and why has Greta become so cruel and so distant? For June these questions and many more need to answered, even though her heart is breaking for the loss of her beloved uncle and godfather. 

There is much to love about Tell The Wolves I’m Home, the authors innate ability at turning a poetic phrase being her great talent. The narrative flows and you kind of can’t book the down because you want to know what happens, even though at times I was annoyed by June. 

And while all the characters are somewhat damaged –except Dad, who remains a cipher through the entire book- the cruelty seems a bit excessive. Hey, families are not perfect, I realize, but June seems to 58 year-old woman disappointed with how her life turned out, even though she’s a teenager. The point is, I was getting a bit tired of her doom and gloom outlook on life by the end.

Still, the novel is an emotionally charged coming-of-age story that paints a vibrant picture of a girl caught between being a child and the unknown aspect of adulthood, and Brunt does a good job painting all of June’s emotions. Despite some maudlin passages towards the end, the book is a worthy debut.

Books: Joyland by Stephen King (2013)

The Hard Case Crime imprint series was founded in 2004 by publishers Charles Ardai and Max Phillips. The series recreates, in editorial form and content, the style of the paperback crime novels of the 1940s and '50s that also features original art done in the pulp style. The collection includes both reprints of novels in that genre along with new titles written for that style. 

In 2005, Stephen King wrote The Colorado Kid for the line and it became the most well-known titles. Still, that book, offered little in the way of actual procedural detective-work, no sex, violence or action, possibly no crime, and no solution to its mystery (and somehow, the cable net Syfy was able to create a series called Haven, which is loosely based on the novella. It’s in its fourth season). 

Now King returns with his second story for Hard Case Crime line-up, Joyland. It’s the story of a college student, Devin Jones who spends summer and fall 1973 working at a North Carolina amusement park. Reminiscent of King’s The Body (the novella from Different Season collection that became the movie Stand By Me), it’s told by its sixtysomething narrator looking back. Devin has arrived in North Carolina after being dumped by his girlfriend and is still mourning the death of his mother four years earlier. So he’s escaping the ghosts of his past and trying to find a future. Joyland Amusement offers some solace, and soon the 21 year-old finds himself one of the most popular new kids there, and making life-long friends with Erin and Tom. He also becomes involved with a single-mother named Anne, and her wheelchair bound son Mike, who King gives his patented variation on physic powers. While Dev is enjoying his time there, learning the lingo and slang of carny-style life at Joyland, he also hopes to see the ghost in the park’s Horror House, which is supposedly haunted by young woman who was murdered there. With help from Erin, he begins to investigate the girl’s death and stumbles upon a possible trail of dead women that have spanned years. 

This novel is also, in many ways, a coming-of age story, and much like King in his later years (though it’s a theme that goes way back), he talks about how all our joys, the sorrows, our tragedies and even our triumphs are bound together and can assert themselves at any given time. 

But, for fans of this imprint, they will discover that not much really happens. The mystery is not that deep; the ghost –which is real-, makes only a fleeting appearance and I got the impression that the book is really an over-long short story. Still, I forgive King for these indulges. I love his work and even his weakest stuff is still worth reading.

Books: In the Night Room by Peter Straub (2004)

Near the end of Peter Straub’s Lost Boy, Lost Girl I discovered he wrote a sequel to the book that was released in 2004, a year after the first one. So I looked up the book at the library by my house –and not a huge surprise- they did not have In The Night Room (when it comes to the books I want to read, my library –a four minute walk from my front door- never carries them), but the San Dimas location did. I was going to go there, but on Friday last week, I went to the local used book store by my house and found a beat-up copy at the Book Rack, so I bought it. 

In some ways, this book seems less a sequel and more a continuation of Lost Boy, Lost Girl. Set a year after those events, Tim Underhill is struggling writing his newest book. Still traumatized by the loss of his nephew -to some Elsewhere land- he begins getting cryptic email messages that tell him that the Dark Man –Joseph Kalendar- is in need of something, and Underhill is the man to do it. Whether he wants to or not. He’s also being stalked by a fan that has menace on the mind. Meanwhile, we meet a woman named Willy Patrick –who after a horrible young life that continued with the murder of her husband and daughter- who is about to marry the perfect man –at least in her eyes. But this award winning author is also drawn into places, like a warehouse, where she knows that her daughter Holly is being held in there, despite knowing she is dead.

But worlds are about to collide for both Tim and Willy, and the doorway between reality and fiction blurs and nothing will be the same.

With In the Night Room, Straub’s recent stab at metafiction comes fully out. Readers of Jasper Fforde will understand what Straub is doing here, by creating a novel within a novel, and mixing in some dark fantasy along with psychological horror, he blends the genres and creates a fast-paced, at times Dickensesque type story. 

Plus, I sense, Straub is not done with this arc.

Books: Lost Boy, Lost Girl by Peter Straub (2003)

Over the years, I’ve read a few Peter Straub books (Ghost Story, Shadowland, Floating Dragon and the two he wrote with Stephen King, The Talisman and The Black House). While he writes a lot of horror, I don’t think its traditional horror like what made Stephen King a household name. His novels have tendency to bit more gothic-like thrillers with supernatural overtones.  Plus he is a bit more florid with his prose, but not in a way that seems to imply any sort of negativity. It’s an interesting style, that’s all. His books are more about atmosphere, about unreliable narrators that include things that go bump in the night.

Now while I’ve been reading books since I was 13 or 14, I’ve remembered all of them. I’ve never re-read a book unintentionally (I was always amazed when working in the book business when I encountered a person returning a book because as they began reading it, they suddenly remembered that, yes, they had read it before). And it was only back in 2006 that I started keeping a full digital record of what I’ve read. For a while, I remember keeping a note book, but for the life of me, I’m not sure what I ever did with them.  

Anyways, the point is I thought I read Lost Boy, Lost Girl before, but that I simply forgotten about it. Which was strange, considering I never forgot what I read. As I began reading the book, I suddenly thought all of this seemed familiar; had I read this? So I racked my brain and came to the conclusion that it was possible to forget a book. But then again, I had just finished reading The Throat back in '03 or '04 and must’ve read a chapter of this book when it came out in hardcover, which is why I remember reading some passages.

But I will admit this is the first time I’m not clearly sure if I have. 

So I rattled on –if I read it before, well so what. 

Beginning in 1988, with his Vietnam novel Koko, Straub introduced us to Tim Underhill, a veteran who has become a successful novelist but continues to be haunted by the atrocities in ‘Nam and encounters with the supernatural. That book formed a sort of loose trilogy called the Blue Rose that included Mystery and the after-mentioned The Throat. While Underhill is mentioned in Mystery, he does not reappear until the third book. 

Tim returns in Lost Boy, Lost Girl and has him struggling to help his brother Philip and his nephew, Mark, cope with the recent suicide of Philip's wife, Nancy. As perplexing as her death is, Tim begins to realize that just before her death, Mark finally “noticed” the empty house that lies just behind his house –as if it wanted Mark to see it. That triggered an obsession with the fifteen year-old to discover the history of the house, only to learn that Nancy was somehow connected to its dark past. But when Mark disappears, it is first suspected that he fallen victim to a serial killer stalking Millhaven. But with no body, no one is sure what happened to him. Timothy and Philip must struggle to connect the threads of this mystery and find Mark before he falls victim to the horrors of the abandoned home; horrors both human and supernatural in nature.

Straub is a good writer and deserves a wider audience than he has. While some say he plays in the same sandbox that his long-time friend Stephen King does (and has stories set in and around the same area that also features Tom Pasmore, another recurring character) his style is certainly different. While King goes for the juggler, Straub takes a different route, one a bit slower, more deliberately paced. 

So in that way, he makes the same genre a little bit different, yet just as creepy.