Pelletier seeking readers with McKinnon book

Here in Maine, we’ve been tricked by pseudonymity in the past. Recall when Stephen King so glutted the book market with his horror tales that he wrote under the name Richard Bachman for a while.

The newest player in the fool ’em-if-you-can writer’s game is novelist K.C. McKinnon, otherwise known as Maine’s very own County Girl, Cathie Pelletier. The difference is: She hasn’t glutted the market with her output. Quite the opposite. She’s hoping that with the publication of her first McKinnon book, more readers will go looking for the books she publishes under her actual name.

Unlike her full-blown novels, “Dancing at the Harvest Moon” is a demure story about a woman who loses her husband but finds herself and comes to believe in the magic of coincidence and all that gooey 1990s stuff so popular with books that fit nicely into your purse. And can be read in one sitting. And with only one box of tissue. You get the picture.

Pelletier’s first book, “The Funeral Makers,” is rightfully a state classic, but, it’s true, her other novels haven’t exactly thrust her into world fame.

After this month’s publication of “Harvest Moon,” Pelletier has a writer’s hopes for hitting best-seller lists around the world. When she checked in with us Wednesday to chat about the fictitious McKinnon, Pelletier said the recent book had already made a best-seller list in Italy. We said: “Brava.”

The announcement about Pelletier’s pseudonym was officially made last weekend at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, Tenn., not far from where Pelletier lives with her husband, Tom Viorikic.

“There’s none of that emotional mining of the past that I do with my other books,” she said. “This book was more of an intellectual exercise and I employed my training as a writer. Also, I just wanted to tell a sweet, sentimental story.”

The book took her less than a month to write, Pelletier said, and that was all the time she was willing to give this exercise in marketing trickery.

Turns out to have been a good move, because here’s the real sweetness: Pelletier got $70,000 from Doubleday for the 229-page story. Next year, she will use the pen name again to publish “Candles on Bay Street,” for which she has been paid $1 million. That book takes place in Fort Kent, near where Pelletier grew up.

“I’m so happy about it,” she said. “I just adore it. It’s a celebration of Fort Kent, which I love, and of my Franco-American ancestry. I adore it.”

A third McKinnon book is in the works, too.

In the meantime, Pelletier is waiting to see what happens with increased publicity. With a half-page ad in last Sunday’s New York Times Book Review section, Pelletier is sure to rack up readers. The ad called the McKinnon book “the romance of a lifetime.” We haven’t seen any reviews yet, but we’ll go along with that label and think some readers might be reminded of another unexpected hit, “The Bridges of Madison County.” And, of course, we wish our Home Girl all the luck in the world. Or at least in Italy.