Authors may choose to write under a pseudonym for a variety of reasons. Author Naomi Brett Rourke chose to do so because as a teacher writing about murder, crime, and the supernatural, she found it necessary to separate her professional persona from her writer persona. Rourke gave a lot of thought to what her pen name would be: it includes the name her birth mother was going to give her and the maiden names of her adoptive grandmother and adoptive mother. Rourke was able to honor these women with the pseudonym. While going by a different name was sometimes confusing at first, it’s no longer a problem for Rourke years later.