JK Rowling Joins The Ranks of Authors Writing Under Pseudonyms

Nora Roberts has done it, Stephen King has done, I do it, and now JK Rowling has experienced the author's life behind the veil, and joined our list. Her pseudonym is “Robert Galbraith”, and while she tried to remain anonymous, JK Rowling couldn’t sustain it. The Harry Potter author was last weekend uncovered as the author of a new detective novel called “The Cuckoo’s Calling”.

“The Cuckoo’s Calling” follows Cormoran Strike, a war veteran turned private eye who investigates the supposed suicide of a model.

One of the professional reviews was from Publishers Weekly, which describes the book ”in a rare feat… Galbraith combines a complex and compelling sleuth and an equally well-formed and unlikely assistant with a baffling crime in his stellar debut.”

One reviewer on Amazon wrote;

This book is so well written that I suspect that some years down the road we will hear the author's name is a pseudonym of some famous writer. Lots of description made one feel like another occupant in the scene. You could feel the weather, the tension, the pain, the atmosphere in the gatherings. 

The spotlight turned on Rowling who published a literary work in her own name last year because she has mentioned her love of detective books in the past. Also, journalists and bookworms had other clues - JK Rowling and Galbraith had the same agent, and Galbraith was the only client who had a silhouette instead of a photograph on the agency’s Web site.

After all this speculation, Rowling finally came clean to the Sunday Times of London, “I had hoped to keep this secret a little longer because being Robert Galbraith has been such a liberating experience. It has been wonderful to publish without hype or expectation and pure pleasure to get feedback under a different name.”

The Cuckoo's Calling has joined the list of No 1 Books on amazon after JK Rowling was outed as the real author. Check out [The Cuckoo's Calling]

Here’s the fictional biography of Robert Galbraith that was given by the publisher:

Born in 1968, Robert Galbraith is married with two sons. After several years with the Royal Military Police, he was attached to the SIB (Special Investigation Branch), the plain-clothes branch of the RMP. He left the military in 2003 and has been working since then in the civilian security industry. The idea for protagonist Cormoran Strike grew directly out of his own experiences and those of his military friends who have returned to the civilian world. ‘Robert Galbraith’ is a pseudonym.

Such a load of a concocted bio. Makes you wonder how many other well known writers are behind the veil, right? Maybe my last anonymous pseudonym guest author is really Chimamanda Adichie? Or since we're switching genders too, maybe it's Helon Habila, or Teju Cole? LOL...