Living two lives

As most of you know, I write under two different names. I write women's fiction as Kate Austin and I write erotica as Josee Renard. This makes for an interesting life in all sorts of ways.

Okay, maybe it's more than just interesting. It's also complicated and confusing and often stressful. It's entertaining, busy, and difficult. It's funny at times - like when I'm talking to someone about writing and have to refer to myself - whichever self I'm not in at that point - as another person.

Kate might say (and there I go in the third person right there) Josee's working on Part Time Lovers right now, she's busy, so I'm not writing this week. Or Josee might say, Kate's got some revisions to do but she's going to have to wait until Part Time Lovers is finished.

Or those days when Kate, who works at the day job, might say to Josee, "No writing for you, I've been at the office for ten hours." And Josee needs to meet her deadline for a story and has to work around Kate's work - and life - schedule.

Josee's life is, in some ways, far less complicated than Kate's. All of what she does is writing related - she writes, edits, submits, writes blogs, tweets. What she doesn't do is go to the office or have dinner with friends or pay the bills or buy the groceries. She doesn't have a partner, doesn't go shopping (except to the toy store - wink, wink, nudge, nudge). She doesn't have to find time to do the laundry - Kate does that. She doesn't have to make time to go to the gym or Zumba or yoga - Kate does that.

And if it seems like Josee has all the fun and Kate does all the work - sometimes that's true. And sometimes just the opposite is true. Sometimes Kate's going out to dinner, going for a walk on the beach, watching a movie or reading a great book, while Josee is - well, I'm not sure just what Josee is doing under those circumstances. I guess she's waiting for her turn.

But you know what I love about being two people? I love the fact that I can write two different things. It's true that, just like Josee and Kate are related, so is their writing. But it is different - I can tell the difference when I'm writing as Kate or I'm writing as Josee. When I look at the writing of either of them after the fact, I can see the connections, the similarities, the phrasing and word use and grammar that is similar. But when I'm writing?

Josee writes Josee and Kate writes Kate.

Odd, isn't it?

Kate (and Josee)

P.S. You can also see this post over at Josee's blog on Thursday at http://www.joseerenard.wordpress.com/.