Authors utilizing pseudonyms is nothing new. In truth, there are nonetheless 5 which might be unknown, with one other thriller writer story contemporary from the headlines this week. They select a pseudonym for a lot of causes: to keep away from the limelight, to stay nameless, to keep away from criticism, or to defend their identification. Some authors write beneath a pen identify after they swap genres or audiences—Sandhya Menon writes as herself for younger adults and as Lily Menon for adults, for instance. But issues get curious when it’s a bestselling writer writing beneath a pen identify and maintaining their true identification a secret.
The bookternet has been abuzz with hypothesis on who might have penned the spicy romance novel Corinne that got here out in July, and it bought me interested by how to turn into a literary sleuth.
The hypothesis started with this Reddit publish that factors to Stephenie Meyer, of Twilight fame, writing as Rebecca Morrow. The writer bio for Corinne merely says “Rebecca Morrow is a pseudonym for a New York Times bestselling author.”
The clues the poster—and different readers—current sound convincing sufficient: The guide is a couple of girl leaving a fundamentalist church, and Meyer is affiliated with the LDS church; Corinne can also be the identify of a metropolis in Utah that was based as anti-Mormon. Stephenie Meyer and Rebecca Morrow are each 3-syllable first, 2-syllable final names. Add in the content material coincidences, like utilization of the phrase “imprint” and common stylistic decisions or plot factors, and it’s much more convincing.
But you may’t name a thriller full based mostly on hunches alone. So I went digging.
Steps to Identify an Author’s Pseudonym
The first sleuthing steps are the apparent ones, and on this case, they led me nowhere.
I checked the Library of Congress catalog itemizing, which had as soon as outed Stephen King as Richard Bachman and Beatrice Sparks as the “anonymous teen” behind Go Ask Alice. Alas, the writer and copyright holder for Corinne is certainly listed as Rebecca Morrow.
Up subsequent, check out the Acknowledgements of the guide to discover a nod to an agent or editor, which might slender down the record of potentialities. A fellow Rioter checked their digital superior studying copy of the guide and located “Acknowledgments [to come],” however there are none in the hardcover version. I’m an overachiever and traveled a number of cities over to the nearest library with a replica of the guide on the shelf to see it with my very own eyes, however viewing the Search Inside the Book preview operate on Amazon might have offered the info I wanted.
Now comes the deeper digging: Check the writer and imprint. While authors aren’t at all times revealed by a single publishing home or imprint, it’s doubtless that they’ve constructed relationships and wish to keep in a single home. This could possibly be a significant clue.
In this occasion, eyeing Meyer as the writer of Corinne could be shut down at this stage. Twilight was revealed by Little, Brown and Company, a division of Hachette, whereas Corinne is revealed by St. Martins Press, an imprint of Macmillan.
Posters on Reddit, TikTok, and Twitter speculated different potential authors, all ladies of their 50s: Shannon Hale, Elin Hilderbrand, Rainbow Rowell, Adrienne Young.
Hale’s books are revealed by Bloomsbury and Random House imprints; Hilderbrand’s by Little, Brown imprints; Rainbow Rowell’s by Macmillan imprints; Adrienne Young’s by Macmillan imprints. This could level us in the path of Rowell or Young, assuming they caught with their earlier writer.
It’s additionally helpful to check out who wrote the blurbs. For Corinne, which means Jodi Picoult and Samantha Irby. Young’s latest guide, Spells for Forgetting, has a blurb from Picoult on the cowl.
Of course, none of those findings are definitive solutions. Things get extra critical once you get text-analyzing expertise concerned.
The Role of Forensic Linguistics
One of the coolest tales to come out of the existence of She Who Must Not Be Named was when forensic linguists—which is a factor I by no means knew existed—nailed Robert Galbraith as the pen identify for the Harry Potter writer, utilizing instruments that analyze writing type and phrase selection.
Smithsonian Magazine broke down the course of utilized by Duquesne University’s Patrick Juola, a professor of laptop science and cybersecurity. The software program he constructed might pinpoint a “linguistic fingerprint” after analyzing quite a lot of snippets of textual content—sequences of adjoining phrases, sequences of characters, commonest phrases, writer’s choice for brief or lengthy phrases—and evaluating them to the suspected writer’s prior works and different stylistically related works in the style.
Similar work was accomplished in certainly one of my favourite phrase nerd books, Nabokov’s Favorite Word is Mauve by Ben Blatt, the place the linguist created a database of books and phrases to join similarities amongst authors. NPR broke down a few of the neatest stats from the guide, like declaring an writer’s favourite phrases based mostly on what number of books the phrase could be present in. Hemingway’s favourite thesaurus together with cognac is simply *chef’s kiss*.
What about armchair detectives?
Unfortunately, I don’t have entry to the expertise required to run these scans, and the individuals who do this I reached out to didn’t get again to me. So we depend on armchair detectives—on this case, individuals who have learn the Twilight books a gazillion instances—to lead us towards the reality.
All of the shout-outs go to the Stephenie Meyer Ruined My Life podcast, who learn Corinne and made voice memos of stay reactions as they learn, stating all the Meyer-esque moments, phrase decisions, pacing, and so on. They additionally famous cases that do not really feel like Meyer, like good, eloquent writing alongside horny intercourse scenes—my favourite quote from the episode is “It gets too spicy to be Stephenie Meyer, and it’s like, from mayo to ranch level spicy, but it’s not something she would write.”
That podcast and the great Beth at @thecool_table on TikTok recommend that Corinne wasn’t really written by Stephenie Meyer.
And that’s the place we land on this case, sadly. But in case you or somebody has entry to the tech to analyze textual content and discover out definitively who the writer is, I’m all ears.
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