Why the pseudonym?
I’ve had some other friends publish books, where they come in with their first book and it’s a work of genre fiction, and then they get pigeonholed as doing that. And this is a fairly modest first effort; it’s not a big publishing deal or anything like that. I hope to write a lot of books, and I hope to do a lot of different things: genre fiction, nonfiction, general fiction.

How did you pick the name?
Michael is my middle name, and McCulloch’s my mother’s maiden name. And I just like pseudonyms even more when there’s some sort of connection or clue, not that anybody’s going to be searching the archives too carefully for the clues.

Was your mother psyched that you used her name?
It’s funny. I think she’s pleased, but I think that had I written a work of historical fiction set in Montana or something, she’d be more pleased than with a very hard-boiled crime novel.

Did you have any runners-up?
I spent a long time trying to do anagrams, but Keir Graff anagrams very poorly. It’s funny, one of the runners-up I’m actually going to be using on a different book that’s coming out later this year. I’m going to be publishing a book under the name Walter Key, and Key is my wife’s maiden name and Walters is her mother’s maiden name.

Wait—two pseudonyms?
I know, it’s getting hairier and hairier. The next book is kind of a speculative political thriller, I guess. So I just kind of thought if I did another book as Michael McCulloch that people would expect a book that was similar to Cold Lessons, and this one will be very different.

Which authors do you think of who use pseudonyms?
In my day job at Booklist I’ve interviewed a couple of authors who have gone from using their own name to using pen names. This guy named Gar Anthony Haywood, who wrote this respected crime series, just couldn’t get over the threshold of sales. So he and his agent decided to turn to a pen name well into his career.

Do you think using multiple names is detrimental to your career, that you can’t build a following?
You know, quite possibly. But on the other hand, it seems to me that there’s so much unfair emphasis placed on the debut, that I guess part of the reason I’m willing to gamble is that I think it might not hurt me. I think that if your first book in the marketplace isn’t a big 500-foot home run, a lot of times by the second or third book people have lost interest, and the author’s kind of gone. The time-honored tradition, of course, is to start small and work your way up and learn your craft and become a better writer. And, you know, your first book is kind of an embarrassing footnote or something, but that’s part of your journey as a writer. Now publishers aren’t as willing to spend time cultivating talent or waiting for people to get better. Not that I think I have to get too much better. I mean, this is a great book.

Are you sick of having to explain it at this point?
Not yet. I’m still grateful that people are interested enough to ask. You say, “Hey, I just published a book,” and people say, “Why are using the fake name?” And you have to go into this whole “Well, it’s not because I’m ashamed of it….”

“Michael McCulloch” will read from “his” new novel on Thursday 15.