If you're here, I'm guessing you'd like to know a little something about me. I should warn you, I have multiple personalities. I'm several people. But I'll bet you are, too.
I was born in Colorado as Vivian. (Why would anyone do that to a poor, helpless, tiny little baby? Don't you wonder sometimes what people were thinking??? when they named their kids?) I had a fairly normal childhood. Well, normal if you consider growing up as one of six kids in tiny (population 700) town, on a chicken farm in Kansas normal.
I was Vivian until I went to college and met the man I married. He immediately nicknamed me Alfie--as in "What's it all about...) Then I took on his last name and became Alfie Thompson to him, but growing up Vivian, that's how I thought of myself the first five years we were married. While I was pregnant with our first child, we moved to a new town. I was eight and a half months pregnant when we went to a social event with the people from his office and meeting people in this new town for the first time. I introduced myself to a couple of his workmates as Dan's wife, Vivian, and began to get very strange stares. About half way through the evening, he called me Alfie and the woman we were talking to said, "Oh!" *lights dawning all over her face* "You're Alfie?" and the bulbs went off in my own head. I realized, the earlier looks I'd been getting were pity. PITY! He talked about Alfie at work and then brought a pitiful pregnant-out-to-here wife named Vivian with him to his first public event. They thought he had a girlfriend AND a pregnant wife. And I became Alfie full-time. (Except when I go to my parent's or write Christmas cards. Then I have to figure out whether the addressee is pre-Alfie or post-Alfie so I know how to sign 'em.)
Then I sold my first book. Harlequin, at the time, required all of their new authors to take pen names. But they wouldn't let me use Alfie--too many foreign readers. Most would think I was a man. So I put Vivian and Alfie together and became Val. The last name was simple. I'd taken my husband's last name when we married. I'd just steal his first name for my pseudonym. So I became Val Daniels.
Being three people comes in quite handy most of the time. Vivian is the traditional, responsible, serious one. She was raised that way. She's the one who pays the bills, makes the lists each day, buys groceries, cleans the house. (If you saw my house, you'd know she hasn't been around much lately.) She tries to keep life going on an even keel.
Alfie is the creative one. She writes. She has wonderful and numerous business ideas. She enjoys life--one that wouldn't be at all enjoyable if Vivian wasn't around to keep things on a sane and sensible level. Alfie sometimes lets Vivian help her write, especially when she is doing revisions or trying to write a synopsis.
Val is the 'Author.' She has her very own special, 'official' voice. She doesn't mind speaking in public--once she gets Alfie and Vivian to go sit down and leave her alone. She's the one who makes appearances at booksignings or workshops.
Vivian worries about who she's going to be once the new non-fiction book comes out and she's Alfie at public events, too. It could get very interesting...though Alfie plans to bring Val along and just not tell anyone.
I'll bet you have more one personality, too. Is the person who goes to your job each day the same one who talks to your mother on the phone? And is that person the same one who discusses your day with your kid(s)? Or the same one who has lunch with a friend?
How many people are YOU?
