I was wrong. Again.
I know you're all shocked to hear this! Ha!
I had a marketing meeting with my publisher - we talked about the fact that I have two different genres under one pen name. Two genres that aren't exactly related. What!? Holiday women's fiction is different than sci-fi? 😂
I've known this could be a problem for a while. Some readers really want to see their preferred content when they follow an author's books, and Amazon's algorithms reeeeally like authors to be consistent. Again, I knew this...I just didn't want to put in the work to change all of my covers and start a new pen name since I DIDN'T know this when I first started publishing. Live and learn!
I'm excited to announce that, instead of waiting until I'm an eighty-year-old woman (I had plans including cotton candy old lady hair) to adopt my full name 'Cynthia,' I'll be adopting it now. My women's fiction books will be published under the name Cynthia Gunderson, and my sci-fi will be staying with Cindy Gunderson.
I thought about changing my sci-fi name to my initials or something, but I didn't want to hide the fact that I'm a woman. I never saw women's names on sci-fi when I was a kid, and I hope that little girls will see mine and realize that science and technology are cool - they can be huge nerds and be more awesome for it.
So don't worry if you see my name changing! It will be short-term annoyance for hopefully a long-term gain in readership. I'm excited for what comes next! Oh, and here's my new cover 😍😍😍 Who DOESN'T want to be a nerd after seeing that!?
