Finding a Pen Name

I need to create a pen name, a pseudonym. My current Local Foods Mysteries contract stipulates that I can't publish a different mystery under my real name (or any name resembling it) during the term of the contract. Kensington Publishing doesn't want the competition, I guess. I agreed to the clause.

I want to publish Speaking of Murder, the first in Speaking of Mystery series with Quaker Linguistics Professor Lauren Rousseau, sometime soon, however. So I have to come up with another name.

My father, Allan B. Maxwell, Jr was a big writer but not a published one. He nevertheless had a pen name he was fond of using: R.J. Nalla. Clever. Pronounceable, spellable, and with logic behind it: Allan Jr spelled backwards. Somehow I don't think LLewxam Htide is going to really catch on with readers. I wish Daddy were still with us so I could ask for his ideas.

So I went looking for guidelines on creating a pseudonym. Jamie Hall's essay on the topic made a lot of sense to me. Besides a name that is pronounced and spelled unambiguously, it should also have the following characteristics:

• Be short (you hope you are going to have to sign it dozen of times in a row).
• Be toward the front of the alphabet, so it's shelved at eye level in a bookstore or library. Of course, with ebooks this loses all relevance.
• Have the URL/domain name available.
• Have few or no existing hits in an Internet or Facebook search.
• Be available as a Twitter handle.
• Be a name you aren't going to mind responding to.
• Sound like the gender in whose voice you wrote the book.
• Preferably have a two-syllable first name and a one-syllable surname.

That's a lot! I was also hoping to work in some kind of family name. Lots of people already call me Max, but I think that a male-leaning name doesn't fit with the voice of my book. Maxie seems perky but perhaps too cute. While the book is a traditional mystery, it isn't a cozy. I'm not really interested in using initials instead of a first name, either.

I'm still working this. I want to come up with name I'm happy with so I can start building that "brand" -- web site, FB page, new photo, and so on (a somewhat exhausting prospect, frankly). Avery Aames did it for her Cheese Shop mysteries, and admirably, successfully (she also got a separate picture taken), so I know I can, too.

What about you? Have you created a pseudonym? Is it working for you? If not, how have you felt when you discovered an author you like was operating under a hidden identity? What kinds of names attract you or turn you off?

(And if you start to see Ruthie Drew popping up here and there, well, maybe she'll seem famliar...)