my first roadtrip wednesday. or, hopping on the bandwagon.

In case you're a stranger to the concept, Road Trip Wednesday is a weekly bloghopthing hosted by YA Highway wherein, uh, they ask a question, and you answer it.

Fun!

*This Week's Topic* If you couldn't use your own name, what would your pseudonym or penname be?

found here.

Well, YA Highway, I'm glad you asked.
Now, I'm worlds away from querying, let alone having an agent/selling a novel/actually having to worry about stuff like this, but it is something that continually picks at my brain.

Because, you see, my new last name?

Is a doozy.
Seriously, let's play a game. If any of you {who don't already know the answer} can pronounce Maughon correctly, using your best phonetic spelling in the comments, I will give you some sort of prize.

And my maiden name? I love it, truly I do, but when you Google "Julie Palmer," this is what you get:

hello.

I'm not even kidding, and that is one of the less-disgusting photos. I mean, I'm all for girl power, but body-building? Kind of looks bad on EVERYONE.

(Amusingly, on page 2 of the Julie Palmer image results, there was my own blogger profile photo. Haha! Things are already looking up.)

So, as you can see, the pseudonym/penname situation is one I mull over a lot. One idea I always go back to: nicknames.

I have a lot of them, and I generally love them. JP Maughon would be a wicked penname, if I wanted to go the initials/gender-ambiguous route. I've also always loved Jules and Jules P, but what would I match either of those with? Other than the enigmatic Maughon, I mean {which, don't get me wrong, would be ideal, just... difficult}. Another nickname I've had since birth is Dodie, but I'm not so attached to this one as a penname. Dodie Smith owns it, and I'll never be as brilliant as she was.

And, of course, my fondest nickname is Julie Bird, which is where Juliemybird comes from {I added the "my" because twitter already had a juliebird, and because of Mine That Bird and Calvin Borel* [hey-oh, Kentuckian here]}. I really, really wouldn't mind being published as Julie Bird... something. Palmer, I guess. Easy to pronounce, easy to remember. Fewer body-building connotations. I would miss the Maughon, though. Worth the confusion? Of course, it didn't stop Maugham... which Maughon doesn't even rhyme with {hey hey, I just gave you a hint}.

*if you have ten minutes to spare, and you don't absolutely hate horse racing, check out that video. The most amazing thing to me is that the commentators don't even see him coming.


So, there you have it. Lots of variations of my name, some easy, some mystifying. It would be fun to teach the world how to pronounce Maughon.

Then again, I could always go all-out pseudonym.

what?

In which case, Ariadne Skunkwater. Definitely.

The end!

this is for my dad.

Happy 60th!

For any of you who don't know, my dad is a rocking dude. There is a lot of him in me. We both love eating grapefruit for breakfast, for instance. I got my thick, wavy hair from him, though his has calmed down a bit since he was my age. I hope my hair grays like his, too, eventually. He has the best salt-and-pepper thing going (you're taking all of this as a compliment, right, Pops?)

My dad has a lot of good things going for him. He's an accountant, which is a job many people are loathe to consider. But he loves it, and he's so good at it. He inspires me to do what I love. My whole life he's told me, "If it doesn't make you happy, Julie Bird, don't do it." My dad has called me Julie Bird since I was a baby. When I was really little, I just about thought "Bird" was my middle name. I sort of wish it was. Julie Bird Palmer (... Maughon).  Perhaps I could use Bird as a not-completely-untrue pseudonym, one day. [Why yes, this is where my online-persona name came from. How did you know? (I added the "my" because "Juliebird" was already taken on one of the platforms. Hence, Juliemybird. And now you know!)]

So, to celebrate my dad's birthday, here's his favorite old cartoon. He still makes himself laugh when he thinks about it. "I love to sing-a, about the moon-a and the June-a in the spring-a, I love to sing-a..."

Love you, Daddy!

(Yeah. That was the post featuring classic cartoons you were looking forward to. Surprise!)