Ravenous Wednesday with Isabel Roman (both of them!)

A lot of writers who work in different genres have split personalities; different pen-names and personas depending on what they're writing at the moment. For instance, yours truly (that's me!) write under the name of Dana Fredsti for mysteries, horror, and miscellaneous, and under the nom de plume Inara LaVey for erotic romance. Basically my mom knows if it's under Inara, she probably won't want to read it. :-) 

And then we have Isabel Roman. You've met Isabel here before. You know her as the talented author of the Dark Desires of the Druids series published by Ravenous Romance (the ones with the absolutely gee-orgeous covers!) and frequent visitor to Un:Bound whether she's the guest author or just visiting to support her fellow Ravenous writers. What you probably didn't know, however, is our lovely Isabel not only writes under a pen name, but is actually two different people! But I'll let Isabel tell you all about it. So settle in with a drink, enjoy the company and welcome to yet another RR Wednesday at Un:Bound!

Who Is Isabel Roman?

I’ve worked very hard on the mysteries for my romantic suspense novels. I’ve worked very hard on many mysteries: including that of my identity. Even Suspense Magazine (pages 16-17), who scoured the internet for clues about me, at first came up empty. And now, on Un:Bound, I’ve decided to unravel that mystery.

When I say I, I mean in the Queen Elizabeth II terms. The Royal We. I am Isabel Roman. And Isabel Roman consists of a We. Several years ago, a partnership developed between Christine Koehler and Marisa Velez where we collectively agreed to be known as Isabel Roman. Isabel for Marisa’s middle name, and Roman as a sexy shortened version of Christine’s grandmother’s maiden name, Romanowski. terms.

Why did we choose a pseudonym? Because we’re a 50/50 collaboration (with the legally binding contract to prove it) and we both wanted to be first. Somehow, over time, we’ve also become one half of the other’s brain.

Many people ask if we work twice as fast, since we’re two people. No. But you’d think we would! But no, we both work on every single scene in every single one of our stories. We’ve just managed to create an odd synergy with each other. It’s our combined voice that creates Isabel Roman—hence the I on everything we do!

So who are you really talking to when Isabel responds? Probably Christine, since she does most of the online stuff. But, since we do talk incessantly, Marisa knows everything that’s going on in Isabel’s world.

So why are we coming out now? Because we wanted our online friends to know the truth. And since we have two Ravenous novels coming out in bookstores this summer, we wanted to stave off the inevitable confusion of “So which one of you is Isabel?”

Honestly, it’s not as hard to write with a co-writer as you think. And there you have it, mystery solved.

Please visit both Isabels at their website!  And now that we've got you here, do you write under more than one name?  Are there more than one of you lurking under the umbrella of a singular pen name?  And if you're a reader, how do you feel when you find out one of your favorite authors write under more than one pen name in totally different genres?