A Secret About Ned Marcus

My secret is that Ned Marcus is my pen name. Marcus was the name my mother nearly gave me at birth, and it was one she sometimes used. So it was a natural choice of pen name because I already felt familiar and comfortable with the name. Ned, I just liked.

Actually, it's not really a big secret. I tell people I meet in person, it's just something I've not thought about talking about online before.

By the way, the images are for fun only. I don't look like that, even though I based the second image on a real photo.

An imagined transformation of Mark Chapman into Ned Marcus

The main reason for choosing a pen name was that my name was taken—and extremely common. My name is Mark Chapman and, unfortunately, a notorious murderer has a similar name. He has David in his name. I still have people ask me why I killed John Lennon, and occasionally people become aggressive. I now understand stories I've read about actors playing villains getting attacked in public because some people can't separate reality from fantasy. A quick online search will also find hundreds of pages of him, but apart from him, Mark Chapman is a very common name.

Another imagined transformation—this time an SF version

There used to be a Facebook group for Mark Chapman's with tens of thousands of members, if I remember correctly. A well known British sports commentator is called Mark Chapman. Also, there is a fantasy/SF writer called Mark Chapman, as well as a writer on Anglicanism with the same name.

It's too much.

As Mark Chapman, I run a niche ELT company teaching interview skills to marketing professionals—I also work as a freelance copywriter.

If you meet me, feel free to call me Ned or Mark. At writers' conferences, I go as Ned; elsewhere, I go as Mark.