Usually I post my new blog on a Friday morning, or possibly on the Thursday afternoon, but today I am posting it on Wednesday 22nd because this is a special aniversary.
On this day in 2021, I 'outed' myself as Maisie Thomas. When the Railway Girls series first came out, I wasn't allowed to tell anyone that I also wrote as Susanna Bavin and Polly Heron. Then, finally, on 22nd November 2021, I made my big announcement that Maisie, Polly and Susanna were all the same person. It was such an exciting day. A very busy one, too - I had to change my websites, my Twitter info and my Amazon author pages info.
Why wasn't I allowed to tell anyone before that? Well, Penguin was keen to establish the series without any other ties, so I was asked to keep quiet about my identity.
It wasn’t always been easy. As Susanna, I was unable to blog about this exciting development in my writing career and I’m sure that readers who were used to me writing two books a year wondered why I had suddenly gone down to one book … whereas I was in fact writing three a year - two as Maisie and one as Polly.
Being Maisie also had some unintended consequences. For example, there was one occasion when, as Maisie, I wrote a guest blog for Jan Baynham about my experience of writing a series. The blog generated quite a few replies and questions … which I was happy to answer, except that the ‘reply’ function on Jan’s site knew full well that I was Susanna and wouldn’t let me call myself Maisie! So I had to send my replies to Jan, who then posted them, pretending that Maisie was having trouble with her internet connection.
But I don’t want to make it sound as if all of it was difficult. A small handful of writer friends and book bloggers were been in on the secret and gave me/Maisie staunch support. I couldn’t have managed without them.
But undoubtedly life and work became a lot easier when I could finally share my secret!
For some pics taken on the day, please see my Welcome page.
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