What's in a name?

Clare Baxter - novelist. That's who I want to be. But someone else has beaten me to it.

Whilst doing a search for my domain name I found that clarebaxter.com is already registered - to Clare Baxter. How am I going to get people to look at and review my work?

 It is a fairly common surname, and I suppose ‘Clare' is too. But I continually have to spell it correctly for people who ask, ‘is it with an ‘i' or without? Does it have an ‘e' on the end?' But this other Clare Baxter has her name spelt exactly the same as mine.

Apparently Clare Baxter is already a successful novelist - of gay and lesbian crime thrillers. Not my cup of tea at all. You would think that as we share the same names she could at least think like me too.

I feel almost robbed. Cheated. I began my first novel in 1992, the year in which my father died. He was the inspiration for my book. I completed a few chapters, and then got on with my busy life until my mother died ten years later. I then picked up the book and started it again. So perhaps I own the name by right, in that I started to write before Clare Baxter. Her first novel was published in 2000.

Now I am totally at a loss. What do I call myself? My name is Clare Baxter and that is who I am. Will my personality change if I use a different name? Will my style of writing be affected? What do I call my web site? Friends and family won't be able to find me in the bookstores, or on the web. This is a total disaster, and what is worse, I didn't even imagine for a moment there was another Clare Baxter, novelist.

I want to speak to this other me. This name stealer. But what would I gain from that?

Ask her to change her name? Tell her that I am older and I have the right to use my own name? My novels may become more successful than hers, and then she could steal the credit. Or worse still, her books could get poor reviews and then I would be discredited before I even launched my career as a novelist.

This discovery has taken away all of the inspiration I have just managed to regain from moving to a new life in a new country. I am in despair. What's in a name? Everything.