Jennifer Allison: Hello, my name is Jennifer Allison, and I'm the author of the Gilda Joyce Mysteries. Jennifer Allison is both my real name and, in a sense, an author pseudonym, meaning a pen name that an author picks for herself. This is because Allison was originally my middle name, and in fact to this day my full legal name is still Jennifer Allison Brostrom. The name Allison is also a surname from my mom's side of the family. When she was growing up, my mom's name was Paula Allison. When she got married, my mom took her husband's name, which was Brostrom, but she still wanted to pass along her own name to me in some way, so she gave me the name Allison as my middle name.

My mom grew up on a farm, and she came from a very colorful family of story tellers. When I was deciding to use the name Jennifer Allison as my writer name, I think I was remembering some of these very expressive people that I knew in my childhood. There were some tough times, but I remember that when we all got together, we were always laughing. I think there's also something that can be powerful about picking one's own name, deciding this is what I want to be called and this is who I really am. It's like when you decide to tell your friends to call you a particular nickname and you say, "This is what I want to be called from now on."