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When I was starting to write Kirk/Spock fanfic, I didn't feel that strongly about using a pen name, versus my real name. However, I didn't want to get in a situation where, after a few years, I was wishing I'd used a pseudonym, so I thought it was better to be safe than sorry.
My first criteria for a name is that I didn't want it to be something dorky, and therefore obviously a pen name. I wanted it to sound like a regular person.
My second criteria was that, since I was most interested in writing warm and fuzzy stories, I wanted the name to be something soft sounding. One name I strongly considered was Candice Price. However, there was a very popular K/S author, who had tragically been killed in a car accident, named Toni Cardinal-Price, and I thought that could be a problem.
I liked the tone of the name Charlotte. For a surname, I drew upon my boyfriend's name. His last name was Snow, so that's how I decided upon Frost. There were a few poems in Star Trek genzines with a byline of Donna Frost, but I didn't think the shared surname would be much of a problem.
So, the pseudonym of Charlotte Frost was born. I've always liked it, and have never desired to change it.
I only used Charlotte Frost as a byline for stories, and did all my other fandom participation under my real name. It was fun, for a while, when corresponding with various other fans, to say that I wrote fan fiction "under a pen name" and leave it at that, so they could wonder under which byline I'd written stories.
At one point, the editor of a Kirk/Spock newsletter accidentally referred to Charlotte Frost regarding a post I had written under my real name. So, I was "outed", but I wasn't upset, because I knew it was inevitable that it was going to come out eventually.
When I was in Sentinel fandom, I intended to stop writing fanfic altogether. But after a few months, I decided to write some more stories, but I wondered how they would be received with an unknown byline. So, I chose the name Southy, which was the nickname of a racehorse (official name Seventyfivesouth) owned by a large partnership that I was a member of. I posted stories on an LJ with the same Southy name, and the response was very nice, though very limited.
At one point, during the "Southy" period, I wrote a story that I thought felt like a Charlotte Frost story, so I posted it under that byline. (Someone had once referred to the Southy stories as rather edgy.)
Eventually, I let it be known that Southy and Charlotte Frost were the same name, and there wasn't a single bit of reaction on either LJ. It really don't think there could have been a more resounding response at just how disinterested the readership was in either name.
The Southy stories are all included on the Charlotte Frost website.
The only other time I've considered using another name for a fanfic story was when I wrote the SH novella "Sanctuary". I knew that people who normally expected warm and fuzzy from Charlotte Frost stories would have a difficult time with that one. Ultimately, though, I decided to go ahead and use the CF byline. There was indeed a lot of reaction similar to what I had predicted, but also some surprisingly positive reaction. Now, I almost never hear anyone say, "I like your stories, except for 'Sanctuary'." For some, "Sanctuary" is the story they mention the most enthusiastically.
After nearly three decades, and some 150 stories, I'm proud to be Charlotte Frost.
