The third installment in our Gay History Month guest author essays comes from the legendary Dorien Gray. Visit
The Untreed Reads Blog to hear about Grey's journey into gay literature.
About Author Dorien Grey:
When Roger Margason, a lifelong book and magazine editor, decided to try his hand at writing mystery novels with a gay detective, he chose the pen name “Dorien Grey” for a specific reason he is more than happy to explain should anyone care to ask. That he thought he needed a pen name at all was based on the reality of living in a remote and time-warped area of the upper mid-west where gays generally still feel it necessary to keep a very low profile–a sad commentary on our society–but one based on harsh reality.
His first book featured a gay detective named Dick Hardesty, and was intended as a tongue-in-cheek version of the classic, hard-boiled heterosexual detective genre. It was written largely with a gay audience in mind. But as the first book led to the second and then the third, and as his readership grew to include mainstream mystery fans, Dorien slowly became much more than a pseudonym, evolving into an alter ego. “It’s reached the point,” Roger says, “where all I have to do is sit down at the computer and let Dorien tell the story.”
It’s not that Roger has had an uninteresting life. Two years into college, he left to join the Naval Aviation Cadet program: washing out of the program, he spent the rest of his brief military career on an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean. The journal he kept of his time in the military, in the form of letters home, honed his writing skills and provided him with a wealth of experiences to draw from in his future writing.
Returning to college after service, he graduated with a B.A. in English from Northern Illinois University, and embarked on a series of jobs which worked him into the editing field. While working for a Los Angeles publishing house, he was instrumental in establishing a division exclusively for the publication of gay paperbacks and magazines, of which he became editor. He moved on to edit a leading L.A. based international gay mens' magazine.
Tiring of earthquakes, brush fires, mudslides, and riots, he returned to the midwest, where Dorien emerged, full-blown, like Venus from the sea.