While some romance authors also had scholarly careers, there were largely pseudonymous: for instance, well-respected American Shakespeare professor Mary Bly wrote romance, but she did so under the name Eloisa James. Romance fiction is a genre with considerable economic capital (it made over a billion dollars in 2013, according to the Romance Writers of America), but little cultural capital, with romance novels ubiquitously dismissed as “trashy”. There, I studied popular romance fiction, and a large part of studying romance is studying the ingrained stigma against it. I was particularly aware that there was a bias against commercial genre fiction in many spheres of literary studies because this was an issue I touched on in my PhD. That is to say, if we conceive of literary and commercial fiction as a binary (which I don’t, but many do, including those in departments I might potentially have been applying to), then Valentine and Ironheart clearly fell on the commercial end of the spectrum. It, and its sequel Ironheart, which I sold to Penguin at the same time, were young adult fiction, featuring a paranormal plot with a strong romance arc. But Valentine was clearly not literary fiction. A literary novel, on the resume of a literary studies PhD, would be a boon, not a burden.

Likewise, perhaps if I’d written a different kind of novel, then I would not have had to make these calculations. But although I wrote Valentine at the same time I wrote my thesis, it was a respite from, rather than a part of, my higher degree research: I did a fully exegetical PhD, spanning the disciplines of English and History. If I’d done a creative writing PhD, then publishing under my own name wouldn’t even be a consideration. Perhaps if I’d graduated with a different kind of PhD then I would not have had to make these calculations.

I had to ask myself a hard question: was I, by publishing fiction under the same name I used for my scholarship, materially damaging my chances of getting an academic job? I wasn’t employed, but I desperately wanted to be. When I signed that deal with Penguin, I’d graduated with a PhD only a few weeks earlier. I brushed this question off the first time, but when I’d been asked four or five times, I realised that maybe I did have something to worry about. “But aren’t you afraid…?” their voices would trail off, and they would gesture futilely, at what I assume was the bleak landscape of the academic job market.

Misrule jodi mcalister