Richard Paul Evans: Hi, my name is Richard Paul Evans. My name is pretty simple to pronounce. It did come in a strange way, though. I am the seventh of eight children, and, when you have that many children, I guess sometimes parents run out of names. My mother didn't know what to name me, so she asked the doctor what his name was, and she said, "Okay, we'll name him after the doctor." That's how I got my name, Richard.

My friends call me Rick, and I've gone by Rick for years, and when my first book came out I found out that a neighbor had bought more than a hundred copies of my book, and I went to thank him, and he said, "I don't know what you're talking about. I bought a book from Richard Paul Evans, you know, not Rick Evans." It's been helpful for me, because this way I always know if someone knows me from my real life because they'll call me Rick, or if they don't know me from before my writing life, then they'll call me Richard, and if they're pretending to know me, they'll call me either Dick or Paul. neither of which I answer to.