DON'T FLATTER YOURSELF!

People! Please!

Just because you're rich as Midas, own an island in the Mediterranean, where I visited, for a weekend, one summer, with mutual friends, DON'T mistake yourself for the rich-as-Midas Mediterranean island-owner who I wrote up in I, DEBAUCHEE as having hosted that Bacchanalian orgy. Does your island even have a "Green Grotto"? No! Does your villa even have a fountain that contains "an exceptional grouping that includes Adonis dropped to one knee, his lance stabbed into the flank of a very large rearing boar that has, likewise, fatally gored the young hunter in the vulnerable femoral artery? Not that I ever saw! Were there any studly young men running around stark naked and performing all sorts of lewd sexual acts in the hot sunshine and cool shadows? Don't I wish!

I wrote that scene in I, DEBAUCHEE, purely because I was out to mirror, in the Twenty-first Century, what once went on, way back when, on the isle of Capri, when thoroughly debauched Roman Emperors, like Tiberius, and Nero, amused themselves with prurient fun and games.

Just because you're Oriental, and a male prostitute, and I once met you in New York City, doesn't mean that you're "the" Lee Chou, Oriental male prostitute, in my DIARY OF A HUSTLER, performing with my chief protagonist, Joey, before a West Coast audience of dirty old men.

Just because you're the handsome cowboy, with a damned fine pair of very worn hand-crafted cowboy boots, I once ran across in a Montana bar, don't think that you're Robb Pitt of my short story "Cowboy Boots" in my short-story collection CALIFORNIA CREAMIN', who gets off on sniffing the footwear of his bunk mate, Jim Templeton, every time the latter takes a shower.

If I spent a good deal of time, at one time, mingling with Seattle, Washington's art community, and, therefore, found that locale and subject matter suitable for a murder mystery ... had made the acquaintance of a school teacher in the Bellingham School District ... ran around with an old Army buddy who lived in Burien ... knew a closeted Seattle policeman ... still doesn't mean that my novel THE FAG IS NOT FOR BURNING is a Roman a clef whose characters -- that include a school teacher accused of pederasty ... an Army veteran involved in smuggling drugs into the country via dead-GI coffins ... a closeted Seattle policeman suddenly falling in love with B&D AND with another man -- are based on real people. Why anyone would think that I wrote a story about a good friend of mine, an art gallery owner, who died of natural causes, being murdered, skewered on a spear, and set horribly on fire, I haven't a clue. Why any Seattle art gallery owner would ever think I was writing about him when I wrote about an art dealer who not only slept his way to the top of the Seattle art scene, but, in the process had sex with a priest in order to sell paintings to a monastery, AND beat his wife in the bargain ... if he didn't sleep his way to the top, didn't have sex with a priest to sell paintings, and was a model husband ... has me shaking my head in amazement and wondering, "What in the hell ARE you people thinking?"

In fact, the odds of you ever appearing in any of my novels, however thinly disguised, are very highly stacked against you. You may find your eyes mentioned, if I find them particularly attractive, but they'll be complimented by someone else's nose, mouth, ears, chin, cheeks, dimples, and jaw line. You may have me describe the way your body hair attractively runs from your pubic area, up your belly, around your navel, through your pectoral cleavage, to fan across the top of your muscled chest, but if you have brown hair, the hair I describe will likely be blond; if you're pale, the body I describe will likely be tanned; if you're short, the man in my novel will likely be tall. If anything, I, and authors like me, go out of our ways to avoid portraying real people.

If I have mentioned some of my favorite "things" by name, like Xocai healthy chocolate, that's not because I'm being paid by the company to do so, but it's because I'm a health nut, and I eat or use the products myself, and I can't say enough good things about them to encourage other people to live healthy, as well.

Certainly, you need never fear that you'll pick up one of my books, one day, and find a conversation you and I ever had. Unless, of course, you say something genuinely clever and/or witty (surprisingly, few people say things, these days, genuinely clever and/or witty), in which case, I'll tell you that I may just "borrow that for a book and not give you credit when I do".

If I have mentioned, by name, the candle artist Jfay in several of my books, that's because she's a good friend, an associate, a partner in mutual promotion projects, and, whenever there's a candle involved in any of my plot lines, I figure I might as well give her a plug by having any such candle "made" by her. I mentioned both Jfay and artist Rick Chris in my SUCKS! FIRST OF THE DRAQUAL VAMPYRE CHRONICES, the latter having just painted me "as" the vampyre Vlad Draqual (one of my favorite portraits in my collection). I've mentioned sand-blasting artist Kerry Dikken, because he's been involved in sandblasting custom-jeans, and the vodka bottles, and the tequila bottles, for Draqual merchandising tie-ins. In each of these cases, however, I've asked permission beforehand and required the person to sign a release form. So, if I've not asked you beforehand, and I've not asked you to sign a release form, assume that anyone you think is you in one of my books really ISN'T you, at all, but is just as much a figment of your imagination as of mine.

No author, including this one, is going to risk being sued for libel.