Why I have a pen name.

Several people that know me personally have asked me why I picked a pen name. There are many reasons that authors chose to use a pen name. A common one is to segregate books for different audiences. So if an author published adult novels in the past under their real name, but is now writing young adult or children's novels, they may use a pen name so that kids searching for their books will not find the adult ones.

That is not why I chose to use a pen name. The reasons I opted to do this are as follows:

1. To keep my secret identity... secret. My first novel will be fairly tame. Future ones may be offensive to certain demographics, if I start to push the envelope. I would rather keep my author persona separate from my actual persona.
2. In the unlikely event that I become a recognizable author (i.e. famous), it's best to have a name that can become prominent on the cover of a book. If you look at famous authors in a bookstore, for instance Dean Koontz, you will see that their name is larger than the title on the book. The ideal name, therefore, is only four characters long.
3. I wanted a name that was somehow related to technology or computer science because, well, I'm geeky that way.

So after an exhaustive search I ended up with the name "Cody Leet". Why?

• Each name (first and last) are 4 characters long.
• The word "leet", short for "leetspeak", is a simple technique used for data encryption where you replace letters with similar looking numbers, particularly good for use in passwords but sometimes used just to be trendy, For instance: 43110 (hello). This is basically computer science slang.
• If you say "Cody Leet" fast, it sounds like "code elite", which I just thought was a cool, although admittedly egotistical, effect.
• Lastly, and actually most importantly, the domain name was available. Go figure. This is nearly impossible in this day and age.

So there you have it. That is why I have a pen name. I hope you like it. I really hope you will someday see it very large on the cover a book.

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