From now on, I will be going by the pen name “T.Z. Barry.” The website URL will be changing to tzbarry.com. All the links and everything should automatically transfer over. I’ll just be changing the name. It’s kind of a long boring story, and it doesn’t really matter why, but if you’re interested I’ll explain.

For writers, your author name is important. Your name is essentially your brand. The problem for me is there already is a “Tim Barry” who is a somewhat famous rock musician and dominates the search results if you google that name. I had the “Jr.” to distinguish myself from him, but whenever you see a “Jr.” you naturally assume the “Sr.” was someone famous, which would only further add to the confusion. Basically, I wanted a more unique author name that wouldn’t be confused for anyone else. And since I don’t have a big following with any name recognition (yet), it seemed like a good time to make the switch.

I didn’t want to actually change my name legally though, so initials made the most sense. Lots of authors go by initials, including some of my favorites like J.D. Salinger. I always liked the idea of going by initials and thought about doing that years ago from the start, except my middle initial is J and there was already an erotica writer named “T.J. Barry” on Amazon whom I didn’t want to be mistaken for. Also, there’s a “T.J. Berry” who writes science fiction (like me), so we could potentially share the same readers which would also be confusing.

The best option seemed to just create a new middle initial that is unique and not taken by anyone else. (It worked for J.K. Rowling.) So that’s what I did: T.Z. Barry. I liked the way it looked and sounded, and barely anyone else goes by the initials TZ. Plus, the only people who know my middle name are my family and the government, so for all anyone knows, Zachery could be my real middle name (except for the fact that I wrote this). In actuality, the Z doesn’t stand for anything.

Bottom line, I’ll be going by “T.Z. Barry” professionally as a writer from now on, though socially you can still call me Tim. Really, I don’t care what you call me. I know some people get picky about their names, but that never bothered me. You can call me TZ, Tim, Timothy, Timmy, Barry, TB, TZB… you can call me Bob for all I care. But if you’re looking for my work online, or maybe someday in a bookstore, (if bookstores still exist in the future) search for “T.Z. Barry.”

PS: I’ve started to update my ebook covers with the new name, including an entirely new cover for Trick or Zombie Treat. I also decided to change the ending to “I am Invisible” along with the cover. All the links on this website should hopefully transfer over. If for some reason there are any dead links, let me know and I’ll try to fix them.