in which i sort of talk about myself

[whynot]

I picked my pen-name from a Neil Gaiman short-story about Cthulhu, in which the main character's name is Ben Lassiter. I was reading this particular short-story for an oral interpretation contest, so I read it a lot, out loud, so it got pretty stuck in my brain. It was still on my brain when I was picking a pen-name for the Pit of Voles, and there you have it. A few years back, I was rereading this short-story and I was like, "Oh, fancy that, this character has the same name as me," COMPLETELY forgetting that he is my namesake. That's how much I've latched onto it. I still get weirded out when I see the name Lassiter on things that aren't my fics (like on that TV show, which I haven't seen, but on the flist I scroll past fics that are Lassiter/CharacterX), which is silly, I know. I still kind of goggle, just a little, and am like O RLY? I mean, it isn't a popular enough name that I just automatically tune it out, like if I had chosen Smith for a pen-name or something.

...Hmm, I think I'd rather like having the pen-name Smith. BUT TOO LATE FOR THAT.

Searching for 'lassiter' on Amazon reveals that the name appears to be associated with either cowboys or private eyes. According to Amazon, I am:
---facing a trumped-up murder charge and the gun barrels of a ruthless gang out to get the money for themselves, and unless I find some way out of this mess, the only way I'll be leaving is in a pine box. -from here
---an ex-mediocre Miami Dolphin linebacker and now small-time defense lawyer who is accused of murder when a body turns up in my Miami house. My former lover's name is Jo Jo, and her con-man brother (also my friend and often client) has disappeared. --from -from here
---Double Barrel Lassiter. This is actually my pornstar name.

According to IMDB, I am a handsome jewel thief operating in London in the late 1930s. HOW DID THEY KNOW??

That and the following are tied as my favoritests: "When Lassiter promises to protect his dead friend's son, he never thinks the young rancher will run into such a passel of trouble. Yet before he knows it, there's an all-out range war led by a pack of hired sharpshooters trying to steal the kid's land--and their lives. They figure that one man can't last long, but they haven't reckoned on THE LASSITER LUCK." -from here

DON'T YOU BE GIVING ME NO PASSEL OF TROUBLE OR I'LL CUT YOU WITH MY LUCK, TRUFAX.

So tell me how ya'll thought of your aliases! Now I am mightily interested.

Comments

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Then I totally rec the Island trilogy! It's Island in the Sea of Time, Against the Tide of Years, and On the Oceans of Eternity. And then there's the Dies the Fire trilogy, which is what happens back on Earth -- no electricity! No gunpowder! Complete and total collapse of civilization! And Conquistador, unrelated, which is an AU 'verse where Europe never colonized America, except this WWII vet figured out how to make a doorway from our world to that world, and then there are hijinks.

(I love S.M. Stirling, by the way.)

And then there's Naomi Novik's Temeraire series, which is an AU of the Napoleonic Wars...with dragons.

DRAGONS?!?!?

[twoskeletons.livejournal.com]

omg everything is better with dragons
omg what if ww2 with dragons i don't even know where to start. you wouldn't need kamikazes probably, and the blitz would've been waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay different

Re: DRAGONS?!?!?

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Read Temeraire! 'Tis awesome. The fifth book in the series just came out -- I haven't read it yet, because it's in hardback, and I don't particularly feel like paying for a hardback.