A Letter from J.K. Rowling

This week, author J.K. Rowling revealed she had written a detective novel, Cuckoo’s Calling, under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. For those of you unfamiliar with J.K. Rowling, some might say she is best known as the author of the book The Casual Vacancy. Although many more might say she’s even better known as the author of the Harry Potter books. After her identity was revealed, sales of her book shot up 507,000%.

And because it’s only a matter of time before the press connects the dots, I feel it’s finally time to reveal Paul Johnson is not the author of this blog, but is in fact a pseudonym for myself, J.K. Rowling.

My motivations were simple: I wanted readers to enjoy The Good Greatsby on its own merits and hopefully enjoy my humor writing not because they were familiar with my work as the author of The Casual Vacancy. And also the Harry Potter books 1-4 (5-7 were ghostwritten). My big strategic error in executing this plan came about when I began posting pictures of ‘Paul Johnson’ using a model I found on Craigslist. If I wanted people to love the site purely for the work, what possessed me to hire such a handsome man to play ‘Paul Johnson’? How would I ever begin to distinguish which readers followed The Good Greatsby because of the quality of the humor writing and how many would follow because they fell in love with this incredibly handsome imposter?

For those of you who doubt my story, I ask you this: How come J.K. Rowling and Paul Johnson have never been photographed together?

And what about all those tabloid rumors hinting that J.K. Rowling and Paul Johnson were an item? Turns out The National Enquirer wasn’t so far off after all.

I tried hinting at my identity with Harry Potter themed posts such as Sorting Hat, Please, Please Don’t Put Me in Hufflepuff!

I also hinted at my identity as the author of The Casual Vacancy by posting many, many subpar posts that people only read because they were fans of my earlier posts.

And as long as we’re revealing pseudonyms, you didn’t hear this from me, but Dan Brown and Stephanie Meyer are the same person. I’m not sure which one is the pseudonym but the level of prose and the slack jaws of the readership are exactly the same. You may know Stephanie Meyer as the author of The Host. Also the Twilight books. If you’re not familiar with Dan Brown, you may know him as the singer/songwriter behind the 1993 album Dan Brown, featuring such songs as “976-LOVE.” Seriously. You may also know Dan Brown as the author of The Da Vinci Code.

And for those of you hoping to publish a book, please don’t be discouraged that my book Cuckoo’s Calling only sold 1500 copies in three months despite excellent industry reviews, multiple laudatory quotes from famous mystery writers, high ratings on Good Reads, and outstanding connections in the publishing world. Also don’t be discouraged that multiple publishing houses rejected my manuscript. And if you still feel discouraged, just do what I do and think of your billions in the bank. That always cheers me up.