Also Known As - Josh Lacey

Do you recognise these names?

Carlo Lorenzini
Theodore Geisel
Charles Dodgson
Georges Remi
Daniel Handler
Darren O'Shaughnessy

If not, I'm sure you recognise these ones:

Carlo Collodi
Dr Seuss
Lewis Carroll
Hergé
Lemony Snicket
Darren Shan

They're the same people, of course. They wrote children's books under one name and went about their lives under another.

Writers have always used pseudonyms. Jack Higgins, John le Carre, Lee Child - many of the names that crop up constantly in the bestseller list aren't the names by which these writers are known to their families.

When I started writing for children, I decided to use a pseudonym too. It seemed sensible at the time, as most decisions do. I was working as a journalist and I'd just written a book for adults, so I thought it would be a good idea to keep my identities separate.

I've now changed my mind. I still write one series, the Grk books, under my assumed name, Joshua Doder, but I write everything else, for whatever audience, under my real name, Josh Lacey. But I can still see the advantages of using a pseudonym. With a name that isn't your own, you're free to be someone else.

One of my great whitely heroes is Daniel Defoe, who used various names for his books. His novels weren't actually published as novels at all; they were supposedly the autobiographies of Moll Flanders, Colonel Jack and other rakish adventurers. I envy the way that he could conceal his own identity so completely behind the voice of his narrator, hiding himself as entirely as the modern ghost-writers who give voice to pop stars and footballers, letting readers imagine that they're reading an honest autobiography.

If Defoe was writing today, would he be blogging and twittering and delivering regular self-revelatory snippets on his website?

Perhaps.

More likely, he'd set up an online journal, the diary of a man wrecked on a desert island. Daily updates would describe how he hunts for food and builds himself a shelter. One afternoon, he's walking along the beach when he finds a footprint in the sand...

If you read robinsoncrusoe.com, you'd think that you were privy to the private thoughts of a lonely sailor trapped on a tiny island. You'd never know that every word was actually written by a man sitting at his desk in his comfortable house in Stoke Newington, hiding behind the screen of a pseudonym, which allows him to be whoever he wants.

http://www.joshlacey.com