Okay before I start this I just want to throw out that it will be very self centered and whiny so if anyone has beef with that then feel free to see your way out now. For the rest of you, here we go.

I am not sure why it is so goddamn hard to do something as relatively simple as spelling someone’s name correctly or including that person’s name at all. I have reached the limit of my patience on this issue and the next time some bastard website fucks my name up again I may just completely snap.

Before moving on, a little background. Along with my writing partner Katie, say hi you all know her from such articles as Damn You, Paranormal Posers parts one and two as well as that one with the driving video I can’t watch, and I have written three books.

The first two, Scare-Izona and Tucson’s Most Haunted, are on store shelves now. The third, Finding Ghosts in Phoenix, will be out at the end of October. When you collaborate on a book with someone, one of your names will have to go first on the cover. Because we do equal work on the writing of it and are not the sorts of people to get into pissing contests about such things as name order, we decided to go alphabetical. This puts Katie Mullaly’s name before J. Patrick Ohlde’s name. And that is fine. I couldn’t care less which order it is in as long as my name is on there and spelled correctly. It seems like it would be a simple enough thing to accomplish.

Scare-Izona was released in March of 2008 and right out of the gates Amazon.com omitted my name from the listing. Everyone said ‘hey don’t worry about it there guy, your name is on the BOOK and that is all that matters.’ I suppose that is true but it really does take the wind out of your sails when you eagerly look up your first book’s listing online only to find you may as well not exist as far as the website is concerned. Borders and Barnes & Noble followed suit with the omission but this was for pre-order a few months before release so I thought they would get around to it eventually. That my publisher misspelled my name on the promotional post cards they sent us did not help matters terribly much.

I am not really a glory seeker in a general sense but this omission really kind of rankled me a bit. When having a book published is a life long dream you want to be able to have those special first moments that you can cherish forever. I mean it would be like if you went in to a Borders to see your book on the shelf for the first time only to have your shrew-harpy wife sending nasty and hateful text messages demanding to know what you are doing at the time (she was in another state) and completely ruining the experience for you…oh yeah, that happened too.

If it were just this, just this couple of times then I would say fair enough, accidents happen and eventually Amazon added my name to the book. But it wasn’t just a couple of times. Pretty much every time we go to an event for a signing my name is omitted from all signs and generally there is no chair. I has happened time and time again.

The first time was our first major book signing at Borders. We were very excited. We got a block of time during their Halloween festivities and it felt pretty important. My grandma was going to come and we had a bunch of friends who were going to stop by. We got there and there was one chair and a table so small it looked like the sort of table that TV Trays steal lunch money from on the playground.  Apparently the majority of the reasonable tables and chairs were over in the kids section and we were stuck off in a corner where no one would ever think to look for a book signing. My girlfriend walked past the table twice while looking for us.  A second chair was found and my girlfriend brought another table over to make it look like we had something approaching reasonable. Still, it was kind of funny and I didn’t get that disgruntled.

The next time it was a signing event at a hotel we had investigated put on in a joint effort with our then publicist and our contact with the hotel. Again only one chair. Both of them knew there were two of us but for whatever reason there was only a chair for Katie. There was also a much more important fundraiser going on in another room which lead to a guy producing a wad of cash to give to us before realizing we were just goofy ghost authors and he put his money away. I swear to go the world switched to slow motion as I saw the paper disappear back into his wallet and the thing closed with a booming echoy sound effect.

Fast forward to our second book is out and I do the same No-Name Tango with all of the websites before they eventually deign to include me and we are gearing up to do a book signing for Barnes and Noble. Because of some of the mistakes of the past, which have by now become a running joke with us, Katie made a point to make sure the B & N people included me on the promotional stuff and included a place for me at the signing. She was assured that everything would be fine and so we went with hope in our hearts. I got there first and while standing in line for a coffee I glanced over at the table set up for us with a big sign that welcomed Katie Mullaly, author of Tucson’s Most Haunted. And it was right by the one chair. I had a fucking core meltdown. I seriously almost backed out of the signing, not like anyone would have noticed. I sent Katie a text about it and went into the mall to walk around. I was in the Halloween section of Party City when Katie was calling to find out where I was and I was really just fuming. I know, to tell the story I sound like a little baby but holy shit I worked my ass off for these books and gave up quite a lot to be able to do them (including my marriage but that was really for the best in retrospect) I don’t think that it is too much to ask to be acknowledged as an equal contributor to the books I co-wrote.

Katie had to go to war with the manager of the store who took the line that it was no big deal and I shouldn’t be so worried about it and it was Katie’s fault anyway. Apparently it got loud. The manager eventually agreed to fix it, because Katie can be scary as shit when you push her to the ‘getting loud’ stage and I came back and sat down. They brought out the new sign which was now a hand written affair in sharpie marker that proclaimed that authors Kathy Mullaly and J Patrick Ohlde were signing copies of Tucson’s Most Haunted. Then they announced it over the loud speaker. Really? REALLY? Is there some universal law that says that at least one of our names needs to be fucked up?

Not too long after that it came time for the Tucson Festival of Books, an annual event featuring national and local authors. Elmore Leonard, Timothy Zhan, Terry Brooks and many others were in attendance. This was another pretty big deal to get into. Following the proper procedure on the website, Katie signed us up. There was no second slot for a co-author so she wrote in the notes that I would be in attendance as well. No correspondence was sent back to indicate that there was any issue with this. The time came for promotional materials to start coming out for the event and after searching the list with a magnifying glass we found Katie’s name. No Patrick. She got in touch with the people and they said that we would have had to get two slots and that there was nothing they could do about it unless we wanted to take a spot on Sunday at like 4pm when everyone will have already gone home. This seemed to only include the actual promotions so Katie informed them that a second chair would be needed for me when we arrived. Again there was no disagreement.

The day came and I just knew in my heart I was completely boned. We showed up to try to figure out where our booth was and were directed to an authors’ lounge where there were refreshments and booth assignments and people who’s job it was to show authors to their booths. Katie went in to check in and found that our booth was more of a generic local author sort of situation and we just needed to go and claim our seats. We asked where this booth was and we were directed to ask the people outside who were meant to show authors to their booths. So we go and ask them. They hemmed and hawed and no one knew and we were trying to sort it out when one of them very gruffly said ‘Listen you have to clear out of here because we are here to help AUTHORS find their booth.’ We sort of stood there for a second as if she had slapped Katie in the tit and eventually left in disbelief. We eventually found our booth and managed to sort out a spot next to two of the nicest authors I have ever met. Closest to me was Darryl Dawson, author of the short story compilation the Crawlspace, and he was VERY gracious in scooting over and making room for me. It wasn’t at all awkward when the people from the festival came by with author’s signs and there was only one for Katie.

So now here we are today with our third book coming out in October and all of the pre-order pages are going up at different outlets. Amazon acknowledges me right away now because I have an author page there and can link works with my name myself so I thought that everything was right with the world. I wake up this afternoon (I work overnights) and have an IM conversation with Katie where in I have completely lost the ability to type. She makes a joke that it is a day for not being able to type and sends a link to the Finding Ghosts in Phoenix page on Barnes & Noble’s website and I see that my name is listed as Ohlde Mullaly. Further inspection leads me to discover that my publisher has failed to change my bio like we have asked them to three times and has left in ‘lives in Arizona with his family’ and omitted ‘has a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology.’ This is unfortunate as while I still have my degree I no longer have the family in question due in no small part to my having moved down here to do these books.

In order to ascertain who’s screw up the bio was, I went to the Borders website to see what they have as a bio. The bio is the same but apparently to Borders I am H Ohlde Patrick which is so far out of the goddamn ball park it left the atmosphere and achieved orbit. Holy shit.

I really don’t get it at this point. It has been three years. I have written three books and have two more on the way. Is there ever going to be a time when people can do their goddamn jobs enough that I will get the proper credit for my work? It is enormously humiliating and insulting to be constantly treated like an also-ran or even worse a never was. Katie and I share the writing duties on these things pretty evenly and I don’t want to take any credit away from the hard effort she has put into writing them. She has sacrificed and struggled just as much as I have if not more in some cases and I want to make it VERY clear that none of my ire on this issue is directed at her nor does it stem from jealousy or resentment. It is only a desire to be recognized for the work I did which is equal to hers and therefor should be similarly represented.  It may seem like a little deal to people and I may sound like a spoiled douche who should feel lucky to have a book in the first place but I really don’t think it is too much to ask for my work to be accurately attributed to me. And you know, I would really be worried about reprisal from these outlets but at the end of the day I am confident I will not be black balled because they would have to know who the fuck I am first. It might suck for H Ohlde Patrick though.