First Name Last, Last Name First

I started realizing a dilemma that I’m going to be facing if I am in the writing realm… It’s actually something I noticed a long long time ago but didn’t think it would have any effect on me because I didn’t know where I was going with things with my life. The fact I am getting into writing and — possibly — going to make a name for myself through fiction and other writings causes one slight, teensie little problem.

My name.

You see, John Fontana is a really popular guy. I mean REALLY popular. Not only was he a bartender in New York (My grandfather — known as Giovanni Petra to his parents, I believe, from what my mom was telling me) and the guy I got my name from… He also is a Senior Editor at Network World Fusion and Linux World, a writer for Infoworld and CRM Daily… Not to mention a baseball coach as well as a thousand other things out there.

John’s a popular guy… Real popular. I mean, he even worked on “Bag of Bones” for Stephen King!

Of course, JP Fontana is a wacky Frenchman writer and that causes me some more grief but not as much as I could be having over it.

I need to make a habit out of calling myself John P. Fontana (or J.P. Fontana — I like that one)… I could see a future where some guy gets a call asking to pen an article for a fiction magazine and they were looking for me the entire time… Or me getting asked “When did you get into writing like that, John? I thought you dealt with only the tech stuff?