When Penguin handed Dean James a three book contract for his Cat in the Stacks mystery series, it came with one condition: He’d have to get a sex change. Okay, not really. But to connect with the traditional mystery genre’s primarily female fan base, the publisher decided that James should adopt a female pseudonym; he chose Miranda James. For a previous mystery series he’d taken the androgynous no
![5 Writers with Gender-Bending Pseudonyms](https://cdn-ak-scissors.b.st-hatena.com/image/square/22f0d0d1676d923cdc347981e840dd66d673d947/height=288;version=1;width=512/https%3A%2F%2Fimages2.minutemediacdn.com%2Fimage%2Fupload%2Fc_fill%2Cw_1440%2Car_16%3A9%2Cf_auto%2Cq_auto%2Cg_auto%2Fshape%2Fcover%2Fsport%2F126503186-5cf38ac3365ec5b5c8d9c83c3b49fb68.jpg)