The State of Things

(Or: What I’ve Been Writing, What I’ve Been Feeling, and a Question for You)

The Static is out.

It came out March 26th, which means by the time you’re reading this, it has officially existed in the world for a little while, and I am still in the phase where I refresh my dashboard more than I’d like to admit and then feel vaguely embarrassed about refreshing my dashboard more than I’d like to admit.

Here’s the honest version of where I’m at: I’m not selling a lot. The Static is out, A Haunting Before I Do is out, and the numbers are small. Not catastrophic, not heartbreaking — just small. And I have to keep reminding myself, in the way you have to remind yourself of things you already intellectually know but can’t quite feel yet, that this is new. I am new at this. These books are new. The audience hasn’t found me yet, and that’s a different thing than not existing.

Still, I find myself reassessing the first book more than I’d like — going back to A Haunting Before I Do with a different kind of eye now that I have a second one out. Is it the right entry point? Is it doing what I need it to do? I don’t have clean answers yet. I’m sitting with the questions instead, which feels appropriately uncomfortable and probably correct.

What I do know is that I’m proud of both of them. I meant them. That has to count.

Meanwhile, in the other room of my brain:

The Museum of Ephemeral Arts is officially with my editor.

She is also, full disclosure, one of my closest friends. Which is either a completely brilliant arrangement or a spectacular way to ruin a friendship, and I genuinely don’t know which yet. What I do know is that she’s one of the smartest, most thoughtful readers I’ve encountered — which is exactly why I wanted her eyes on this manuscript — and I trust that if something isn’t working between us, we’d have a real conversation about it instead of letting it quietly curdle. She’s not the type to let things curdle. Neither am I.

So I’m curious. And a little nervous. But mostly curious.

And now: a question I’d genuinely love your thoughts on.

I’ve been thinking about a second pen name.

I write a range, as it turns out. There’s the Harlo Malone stuff — the supernatural fiction, the cozies, the found families navigating haunted houses and complicated feelings. And then there’s the other stuff. Spicier. More explicit. The kind of content that probably deserves its own home so nobody accidentally picks up a cozy mystery and gets a very different story than they bargained for.

So here’s the actual question: do you think dual pen names are worth the work?

Because it is work. Maintaining two distinct author identities means two sets of social media, two websites, two subscriber lists, two brand voices you have to keep from bleeding together. It means answering to two names, building two audiences from scratch, and hoping that neither one undermines the other. The upside is clean reader expectations — people know exactly what they’re getting, and you get to write in entirely different registers without anyone feeling misled. The separation can be freeing, creatively. It can also be exhausting.

I’m genuinely undecided, and I’d love to hear from you. Have you ever maintained separate identities for different kinds of work? Do you care, as a reader, whether an author’s spicy content lives under a different name? Does it feel authentic or does it feel like a mask?

Tell me. I’m reading everything.

— Harlo