Horror, Dark Fantasy, Sci-fi author Joseph Hillström King took up the pen name Joe Hill for his name in 1997 out of a desire to succeed based solely on his own literary skill rather than piggybacking off his father Stephen King's fame. After achieving a degree of independent success, Hill publicly confirmed his identity in 2007, the year his first novel came out, after an article the previous year in Variety reported his identity. Not that I have never read eithers' books, but I love this sort of thing as it perfectly displays The Power of Names. It reminds me of how J.K. Rowling secretly published as Robert Galbraith for years without anyone being the wiser, before even The Casual Vacancy was published – which was and is funny since that was the book that got all the publicity of being Rowling's first post Harry Potter and non-Fantasy book. I half suspect she used The Casual Vacancy as a decoy to keep people from wondering what else she might be writing and stumbling on Robert Galbraith.
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