Short Story Market: Pseudonyms

[Aspasia]

So I recently came across a call for submissions that exactly fits a short story I wrote a few years ago. It fits SO perfectly that I am going to sit on my nerves and actually ... *gasp* submit! However, I have an issue. I have an extremely uncommon Real Life name which I, for many reasons, completely divorce from my online identity. Additionally, I'm academically published under RL name and don't want that work to have any association with my fiction.

My whole SFF/writing network and contacts know me under a screen-name which isn't very real-world: Silicon (or here, Aspasia, but I use Silicon almost ubiquitously elsewhere). I'd like to use a pseudonym that connects back to a name people online already know me well as, but of course Silicon is ... not very real-sounding.

Given that I hadn't seriously considered submitting before, this issue hasn't come up. But now that I have a goal ... I want to settle this problem before I start submitting here and elsewhere.

My question to you is: do you think asking to be published under a name incorporating "Silicon" somehow (I haven't thought of a good one yet) would be too weird? Do you have any suggestions for a name that might work? Or do you think I should make up a completely new "real-sounding" name?

 

[Devor]

You can change your screennames if you need to, just shoot for a name your happy with.

It might help to get out of your head. Here: Name this person instead (or, as I spent twenty seconds picking this out, any other picture you feel better represents your onscreen personality).