[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by William Maltese

Dennis!

Sorry if this turns out to be a duplicate of something just "sent", in that I'm not sure it was really "sent" at all. The long message I just typed out seems to have disappeared into CyberSpace (something that's always happening to me). Anyway, if this turns out to be a duplicate, my apologies. Rather you receive two than miss out entirely in thanking you for the check-in.

It actually got here, but may have taken a detour along the way.

Ahhhhhhh, the Greenleaf Classic days. It's hard for me to imagine that I actually put out one or two of those a month for close to five years. I've certainly slowed down a pace to be sure.

All sorts of folks did it. Horror bestseller Dean Koontz wrote porno for a bit, back in teh early days of his career. His wife did the first draft during the week. He did the submission draft over the weekend. Off it went, and the $650 per title helped pay the bills while he worked on serious stuff.

He gave a talk at a local SF group I was involved in, and I couldn't help it: I presented him with a couple of the pornos to sign at dinner afterward.

"Out of all the stuff I done, you want me to sign this?"

"Dean, if you were willing to but your name on the cover, you should be willing to sign it on the inside."

His wife just wanted to know how I figured out a couple of their pseudonyms. Not hard: there were characteristic phrases, and when the first chapter of one pseudonymous effort mentions a Hannes Bok painting, and is dedicated to another pseudonym...

He signed, but I lost them years ago in a move. I can only imagine what they'd fetch on eBay.

As for the one-hand read section (my having acquired and received the registered trademark for "one-hand read(R)" , by the way), I'm glad that I've been able to make my little contribution to that particular genre.

It's fitting.

As to what I've been up to, in the world of male erotica, I've actually been pumping (no pun intended), them out quite regularly over the years.
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Thanks for the update.

Surprisingly enough, the male erotica area of publishing has recently seen an influx of women writers and readers (Go figure!) and is found nowadays under the genre term m/m fiction. And, eventually, up the line, I've just been informed, MLR Press will be doing theirs in ebook format; I've been asked and approved of their issuing mine for them in the ebook format, when the big moment occurs.

Not surprising at all to me. I'm an SF fan, and SF fans produce a lot of fan fiction, often set in the fictional universes they read. One prominent sub-genre is "slash" fiction, with gay couplings between protagonists. The arch typical stuff is probably stories featuring a relationship between Star Trek's Captain Kirk and Mister Spock, but anything is fair game. I've seen a recent effort where a grown up Harry Potter struggles to deal with the realization he has the hots for Draco Malfoy, and another with a rather hilarious encounter in a gay bar men's room between Severus Snape and a Nazgul.

So, the male/male erotica is still "out there", even today, if you know where to look for it, even if not mass-distributed by the one-time giants like Greenleaf Classic used to be.

I assumed so. I was never particularly interested in male erotica, so I rather lost track of who was out there in the field.

But no surprise in what you've mentioned. It appears that print erotica has simply changed its name and shifted to a different audience. There was always some surprisingly explicit stuff being published in the Romance genre. A Romance buyer for a major book chain I met said "We call that "smut" in the trade." I see a lot of pretty explicit BDSM stuff aimed at the female market. They just don't call it porn.

Anyway, seems I'm turning this into a novel, and I merely wanted to check in and say thanks for your check-in.

You're quite welcome. Stop back again.
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Dennis