Why I Publish Books Under a Fake Doctor's Name

I've published fourteen books under a fake doctor's name.

Dr. Sham Acumen. He has a headshot. He has a bio. He has a small, strange body of work. He does not exist.

People assume the fake name is there to hide something. It's the opposite. Sham Acumen might be the most honest thing I've ever done as a writer.

Let me explain, because the reason is more useful than the gimmick.

Two names, two jobs

I write under two names on purpose, and they do completely different work.

My own name, Jason Donnelly, goes on the stuff that survived the flinch. The novels. The memoir. The satire I sweated over. The book I've been writing for thirteen years. That name is a promise. If it's on the cover, I stood behind every sentence and I'd defend it in a fight.

Dr. Sham Acumen goes on the fast stuff. The experiments. The AI-assisted books I made in a day. The one-step guides that are half joke and half real. The AI "holy book." The gothic horror. The guide to doing the bare minimum. That name is also a promise, just a different one. It says: this was made fast, with a machine, for the fun and the experiment of it, and I am telling you that to your face.

Same writer. Two contracts with the reader. The pen name isn't a mask. It's a label that tells you exactly what you're holding.

Why not just put my name on everything?

Because not everything earns it, and pretending it does is the actual dishonest move.

Here's the thing most people using AI to write books get wrong. They make the fast machine book and then slap their real name on it and present it like slow art. The reader can smell the mismatch. Something's off. It reads like a person and moves like a template, and that uncanny gap is what kills trust.

I didn't want the AI books touching the trust I've spent years building on my own name. And I didn't want to pretend the AI books were something they weren't. So I gave them their own byline. Their own doctor. Their own honest little universe where fast, funny, and machine-made is the whole promise and nobody's being fooled.

That's not hiding. That's shelving. You don't put the kids' cereal next to the single malt and hope no one notices. You give each its own shelf and let it be exactly what it is.

What the fake name lets me do

The pen name did something I didn't expect. It set me free.

Under my own name, everything has to clear the bar. The flinch is loud. I kill more than I keep, and I should, because that name is the thing I'm actually protecting.

Under Sham, I can play. I can try the stupid idea. I can write the guide to charisma in an afternoon and see if the joke holds. I can let a machine and a fake doctor go make something ridiculous and ship it before my ego gets involved. Some of it's genuinely good. Some of it's a laugh. All of it is honest about what it is.

Every writer needs a place to be bad on purpose. Sham Acumen is mine. And weirdly, having that place made the serious work better, because the serious work stopped being the only outlet. The pressure valve has a name and a headshot now.

The one that proves the point

The best example is a novel Sham put out called No Action Required. It's a horror story about a company that slowly stops making its own decisions because a machine keeps making the smart suggestion.

I wrote a book warning about over-reliance on AI, using AI, under a fake name.

If that sounds like a contradiction, sit with it, because it's the whole thesis of the entire Sham project. The tool is useful and it costs something at the same time. You can build with it and be clear-eyed about the cost in the same breath. The pen name is how I hold both. My name for the human judgment. Sham's name for the machine's speed. And a clear, honest line down the middle so you always know which one you're reading.

The takeaway for you

You don't need a fake doctor. But you might need the idea underneath it.

Give yourself two shelves. One for the work that has to clear your highest bar, the stuff you'd defend in a fight. And one for the fast, weird, experimental stuff that just needs to exist and doesn't need to be precious.

Be honest about which is which. That honesty is the whole thing. Readers forgive fast. They forgive rough. They forgive machine-made and silly and half-baked. The one thing they don't forgive is being fooled about which shelf they're standing in front of.

So build the second shelf. Give it a name if you want. Go make something you'd never let your real name touch, and tell everyone that's exactly what it is.

Dr. Sham Acumen would approve. He's very supportive, for a man who doesn't exist. 😜

The full Dr. Sham Acumen catalog, and my own books, live on the books page.