The last month has been so weird, which is why I missed May’s newsletter. If you recall, I accepted a new job and resigned my old one! I worked a rather long notice period (six weeks) and by the last couple of weeks of it, I’d tied up what I was working on and passed everything ongoing to the other person in the collections department, and was sort of at loose ends.

Then I finished the notice period and had free time — well, not free free, as I’d finally gotten a place to live near Rochester and I was packing, but the attorneys didn’t feel the same sense of urgency as me with regard to the closing and so I didn’t know if I needed to leave in a week or two weeks or three weeks …

It was odd, like being a teenager again and having summer vacation start (an effect probably increased by the weather, as we’d been having a heat wave here in the northeast) — but I also had to contemplate my life being turned upside down once the break was over. I’m a creature of habit with a weekly routine that I alter only when absolutely necessary, and it would be gone! Just gone!

For instance, on the weekend, I walked to a particular cafe and order a London Fog (unless it’s hot out, then it’s an iced tea) and a cookie, and I sat at a table or the bar and wrote. It could be a very productive time for me, since I didn’t have any household chores presenting themselves, knitting or sewing projects nearby, cats deciding to be destructive because they want to be fed, etc. But … the village where I’ve moved doesn’t have the same sort of cafe, and I’m also planning to get involved with some local groups like the Barony of Thescorre (SCA, of course) which might cut into weekend plans.

I do look at this and go, “what are you angsting about?” but nevertheless, I angst.

Anyway, it’s all been quite a shake-up, but it’s starting to even out. I’m very happy in my new job, I’m reasonably happy in my new house, I’m about 33% unpacked — I can turn to writing again. A Run of Better Fortune is crawling along, and at a pivotal plot point right now. (Marriage proposal from the wrong person.)

Something also I’ve been thinking about a lot recently is whether I want a pen name. Really, I should have thought about this before I published The Happy Secret of It All, but at the time my mindset was something like “my museum career isn’t going anywhere, my Regency fashion book didn’t do too well, I’m just writing silly little stories no agents are into, so what the hell — I’ll self-publish my fiction under my real name.”

Following that decision, I:

• wrote a sequel to Happy Secret

• wrote an m/m romance novella that’s a bit sexier than Happy Secret

• finished my book on eighteenth-century fashion and turned it in to Routledge

• felt like my eighteenth-century fashion book was much better than the Regency one and might get a lot more attention

• started writing a For Real Romance Novel

• interviewed for and took a job as a curator, which is a huge step up in terms of public visibility from collections manager

And now I’m going, well, do I want to be using the same name for my scholarly career and my romantic fiction? I feel like both sides of my identity would suffer as a result.

So. I should probably start using a pen name for romance, if not for all fiction. I’ve been considering the possibility for long enough that I’ve got some options in mind!

But then that raises more questions (which is why I haven’t done anything yet): Am I openly both Cassidy Percoco and [pen name] on social media, somewhat negating the whole point of the exercise? Do I start a new identity online for the pen name (and have to start over in terms of building an audience)? I’ve been looking for accounts from writers about doing this and have only been finding blog posts that are essentially primers for the concept, which is not helpful. If you have some experience with being yourself as well as a pen name, please drop me a line and share!

For our fashion history corner in this newsletter, I’m going back to the 18th century as the last … several … have been from the first half of the 19th.

Martha Vinson was painted in the 1760s in a sky-blue satin gown. We can only see her from the front, so who really knows what’s going on in the construction overall, but there’s a very good chance that this is a sacque, or robe à la française. In this period, long, flowing pleats down the back were THE marker of fashion and gentility.

Her stomacher appears to be made of two narrow triangles that button down the center front, which is called a compère. It could be essentially decorative, with the gown pinned to the stomacher under the narrow robings that run down the side-fronts of the bodice, or each side could be attached to its corresponding side of the gown bodice in order to hold it shut.

Martha has a significant amount of lace and fine white linen or muslin on her person. Her cap is edged with lace all around her face; her kerchief (so fine that it’s transparent) is also edged with lace, and it seems to be similar to but not exactly the same as the lace on her sleeve ruffles/engageantes. These are all most likely a needle lace rather than bobbin lace, the latter of which was quicker to make and cheaper to buy.

Around her neck, she wears a necklace made up of three strands of pearls. Their spacing might be to emphasize the length of her neck, or to make sure that viewers notice how many pearls there are.

All right! I have got to go out and do my grocery shopping and, more importantly, get some sort of tea and food and do some cafe writing somewhere. Thanks for reading! If you got here some way other than your email subscription, consider signing up: