K. M. McKinley

K. M. McKinley is a pen name used by English author Guy Haley for The Gates of the World, a secondary-world fantasy trilogy (The Iron Ship, The City of Ice, The Brass God) published by Solaris between 2015 and 2018. Haley has explained in interviews that the name was adopted for commercial reasons common in publishing -- his original fiction under his own name had not sold strongly enough at the time for booksellers to take on further titles under it, so a separate name gave the new fantasy series a clean sales history of its own. Unlike Barbara Michaels/Elizabeth Peters, where two long, roughly equal-sized bodies of work grew up under each name, McKinley is a single completed trilogy sitting alongside Haley's much larger science fiction and Warhammer output under his own name. Readers who enjoy Haley's original fiction (Champion of Mars, Crash, Richards & Klein, Dreaming Cities) may also enjoy The Gates of the World, but it is a distinct, self-contained fantasy work rather than connected to any of them.