An artist or writer should feel proud to sign their name to their work. Yet when I signed my name at the close of my first few Windstone postings, it seems somehow ill suited to the topic of dragons, unicorns and fanciful creatures.
For the first time in my life, I find myself wanting a pen name. Since my name is Warren and I am writing about dragons, I thought perhaps I would take the nom de plume of Dragon Penn Warren – a literary illusion to one of America’s greatest writers, Robert Penn Warren.
“Nobody will get it,” my wife informed me flatly.
“Really?” I doubted. “People won’t recognize my clever play on the the name of a Pulitzer-prize-winning author?”
She gave me an “oh puh-lease” look.
Back to the moniker drawing board.
Melody Peña at Windstone suggested, “How ‘bout ‘Pendragon?’”
I liked the sound of that, so I took it home and gave it the spouse test.
“That’s much better,” she enthused. “Everyone will get that.”
I was perplexed. “Why will nobody get Dragon Penn Warren, but everyone will get Pendragon?”
She looked at me curiously. “Are you kidding? You do know who Pendragon was, don’t you?”
I searched the mental data base – no matches found. I stared back blankly.
“Pendragon…?” she repeated. “You don’t know about Pendragon?”
In a kind and gentle tone – like a classics professor lecturing on Mythology for Dummies – she explained that Pendragon was the family name of a certain well-known English king named Arthur… King Arthur.
“Oh…”
I decided she was right. Almost everyone in the fantasy dragon world would get that.
(If you are one of us few who somehow missed the whole Camelot, Mists of Avalon thingy, I recommend Wikipedia.)
Just sign me,
Pendragon
I’ll admit I knew the King Arthur reference with Pendragon, although I didn’t think of it at first. At first I just thought “Pendragon – oh a dragon who writes with a pen”. I didn’t however know much about Robert Penn Warren. I had to look him up online to even know what he wrote.
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