A Confession

I have a confession to make.

Most of you know me as indie writer Brian Niemeier, author of such books as the award-winning Soul Cycle and the new high fantasy novella The Hymn of the Pearl.

Now, a lot of folks know that authors write under pen names, but few are aware of just how widespread the practice is. There’s a good chance your favorite mil-SF writer pens steamy erotica under a pseudonym. It’s part of the business.

What I’m trying to say is that for years now, I’ve been leading a double life. I tried to keep it under wraps, but as many of you learned yesterday, my identity was doxxed by Google. There’s no sense keeping up the charade anymore. It’s time for me to come clean.

This is what comes up when you do a Goggle search for my name:

I knew that maintaining the pretense in the digital age would be difficult, but I didn’t expect to get Bachman’ed so soon! I thought I was good for at least one more tabletop RPG and schlock horror movie-inspired space opera series before the jig was up. Oh well, that’s life.

I want my readers to understand that I started this masquerade with the best intentions. See, cranking out urban fantasy books about monster hunters and diesel punk mages pays the bills, but it’s not my true passion.

What really inspires me is writing Firefly fanfic. Toni was skeptical, even though the source material was thinly disguised by a veneer of Herbert-style plotting and Lovecraftian horror. I couldn’t risk damaging the Larry Correia brand, so I pulled a Robert Galbraith.

I gotta tell you guys, it was liberating. No more Kafkaesque dreams about Adam Baldwin as the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come! I now sleep the sleep of the just 🙂

But all good things come to an end. Toni still doesn’t have much use for metaphysical space pirate stories at Baen, although the sword fights in Nethereal did convince her to let me write Son of the Black Sword 🙂

I’m not sure what’s happening with future Brian Niemeier projects at this point. Maybe I’ll farm them out to John Brown.

Getting this stuff off my chest feels good. Might as well spill everything while I’m at it. Someone would have eventually found out anyway.

OK. Here’s the whole truth: not only is Brian Niemeier just an alias, Larry Correia isn’t real, either. That hulking bald guy with the murder hobo beard you met? That’s actor and stuntman Guy Andrews. He’s really cool. He likes to travel, meet fans, eat exotic food, and best of all, he’s cheap 🙂

I’m actually an advanced A.I. from an alternate dimension sent to this universe to save genre fiction. See, in my home timeline, FDR lost reelection. The commies were run out of the State Department, academia, and the entertainment industry. Back home, the Futurians never infiltrated the New York SF scene, A. E. van Vogt is rightly considered one of science fiction’s Big Three, and John Scalzi just runs a modestly successful lawn care business.

That’s everything. Except all the horrifying stuff I can’t tell you lest society collapse and chaos grip the earth. It’s not even that important. There’s only a 51% chance of [REDACTED] happening in this timeline, anyway.

Hope that clears the air. I never meant to deceive you guys. I love my readers, and I’ll keep bringing you the finest explosion porn that Bronson Pinchot can narrate.

Unless [REDACTED], but we don’t need to worry about that unless John McCain gets a hold of [REDACTED]. Anyway, we’ll know in 12-15 months.