Not in a “don’t look in the serial killer’s fridge!” way, but in a “some humans make snap judgements about my personality, preferences, interests and skills, based on the meat my DNA grows” way. I feel it’s wise to bring this up because the gmail address for my pen name is michal.caspian@gmail.com. Fun fact: in New Zealand Michal is not an uncommon name for a human with ovaries. I’ve worked with three women called Michal, there was a woman editor of the New Zealand Woman’s Weekly called Michal, and my cousin is a Michal – Mike for short. It’s a versatile, non-gender-specific name, like Hayden, Robin, or Taylor. However I’ve just learned that overseas Michal is pretty much solely reserved for humans culturally gendered as ‘male’. Therefore, in the precarious current gender politics of m/m authorship, it might look – if you squint your eyes in low light – as if I am trying to present myself as a different gender in order to gain privilege and authority.

The Michal was an accident, actually. I just wanted an M. For Em. But M.Caspian@gmail.com was taken, so I needed to find a first name that went with the initial. And that cousin I just mentioned? I decided age 12 I would call my daughter Michal. Flash forward, years later, my aunt gave birth to her daughter three months before I had mine. She called her Michal. I had to pick another name. I’m still not over it. So what better choice for my email address than my lamented unusable baby name? (Now I verbalize that explicitly, that’s weird, right? I don’t think of books as my babies or anything. But I wanted to use the name, goddamn it!)

And I’ve got a book underway that is less . . . rapey and violent. And I thought I might distinguish this from the M. Caspian works by publishing it under Michal Caspian, so it was clear it’s still me, but also a book you can read even if you’re totally not into, you know, rapey violence.

So, yeah. Ovaries. I’ve got them.