Chub Yublinsky

Chub Yublinsky is a pen name of Thomas Kirkwood, best known for his Cold War thrillers. Before moving to Amazon, Kirkwood was published by Macmillan, Collier Macmillan (Europe), Donald I. Fine (an imprint of Penguin), Signet (an imprint of NAL), Brilliance (audio), and Stjerne-Spenning (Europe). After many years in the EU, he now makes his home in Denver, Colorado. Kirkwood's novels include "THE SVALBARD PASSAGE," "THE QUIET ASSASSIN," "THE TRADE," "LACKING VIRTUES" and "THE POPPY BROKER," all of which are now available in physical and Kindle editions. Under the pseudonym Tommy Vilar, Kirkwood has begun a swashbuckling series featuring the Italian counterpart to James Bond, Dante Passoni. Volume One, "SAVE ITALY! Forget the Rest," has been released.

That said I'd like to tell you about how Chub was born and about what he did to gather the material needed to write "FAITH". First, however, I want to answer a question many of you are doubtlessly asking yourselves: why do authors bother to use pseudonyms? The answer might vary from person to person but for me the main reasons were the inflexibility of New York's publishing establishment and my wish to let readers know what type of Thomas Kirkwood book they were buying.

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After a couple of "big house" bestsellers, I can explain this to you from personal experience. When an author becomes known as, say, a thriller writer, a mystery writer or a biographer, he or she is almost always stuck in that genre for life. The big publishing houses are businesses like any other whose first concern is with the bottom line. From a business standpoint, it is profitable to establish and promote brand names. Since the commodities being sold in the book business are not books but authors, each of us must be branded as a specific "type" of author. Once this is accomplished, he or she can be sold to a well-delineated readership by name recognition. "Crossing over," or writing in different genres, makes the promotion and marketing of author names almost impossible. It is heresy within a trade driven by the need to simplify and sell.

One sad consequence is that many talented writers, bored with their work, produce what is essentially the same book again and again. Boredom kills the creative spirit, and we've witnessed death on a grand scale in our nation's popular fiction. Writers have become like fast foods sold by name recognition; you, the reader, have become consumers served a standardized and often mediocre product tailored to the lowest common denominator.

Amazon offered flexibility, which explains my decision to bring my new work here. I did not want to be pigeonholed as an author of serious thrillers, though I still planned to write them; I wanted on occasion to produce entirely different types of novels. "FAITH A Secret Life" is an early example.

But I still haven't told you why an author who insists on creating in different genres might need a pen name. The primary reason is simple. I am Chub Yublinsky for this novel so that readers familiar with the bulk of my work do not buy a Thomas Kirkwood book expecting to settle into an armchair with the type of thriller I usually write; I am Tommy Vilar when publishing the "SAVE ITALY!" series so that those same readers do not buy a James Bond type of novel when expecting to read a fact-based nail-biter about a tense international situation.

The second reason authors might decide to use pseudonyms is to be able to write openly about events with which they do not want their real name too closely associated.

Years ago I became curious about the causes of violence in American public schools. I had been both a known thriller writer and a university professor. Applying for a high school teaching job - the only way I could make up-close observations - seemed to hiring committees a strange thing for me to do. I was finally taken on by a school with a program for gifted but troubled students. Within weeks I knew that my assumptions about the magnitude of school violence were off the mark. Problems affecting gifted teens, indeed all teens, were widespread, serious, and often produced tragic results. Within months, I knew that I was living the stuff from which a book should emerge. As a novelist, I thought I could write such a book. It would, however, involve creating composite characters by combining traits of students, teachers, parents and administrators I came to know. It would also necessitate creating fictional versions of events that accurately reflected the real emotions surrounding them. The use of a pen name allowed me to underscore the fictional nature of my work. It allowed the author to remove himself a step further from the reality he observed, something that would not have been possible, had I published "FAITH" as a Thomas Kirkwood novel.

Sometimes fiction is the best way to capture reality. Whether I have succeeded, I'll let you, the reader, decide.

Thomas Kirkwood, a.k.a. Chub Yublinsky

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