Bill Lee

Summary: Author of two collections of his own gay men's short stories (Rogues To Remember and Leather Rogues) and editor of two collections by mostly other writers (Rogues of San Francisco and Country Rogues) but including a few new stories of  his own.

He has also authored two bisexual men's novels, Bi Ranchers Bi Mates and Different Slopes, credited for breaking through the bisexual barrier. All are sexually explicit but literate in quality, not the usual trash found in some collections.

Bill began his fiction career with explicit gay pulp novels published as "work for hire" by Greenleaf Classics, San Diego in the early '80s. For gay, erotic fiction, this sort of relationship between author and publisher was similar to the "book mills" for heterosexual romance novels prevalent on the east coast at that time. Bill Lee resisted, however, the tendency to "filler" and gratuitous sex that characterized some novels of that genre; his interest was in exploring the ways in which sexual feelings mirrored the deeper

personality structures of men, especially gay and bisexual men. Later he switched to short stories as a greater challenge where he could encapsulate personality development in a 3000-word vehicle. This allowed the further development of his own wry style, frequently displayed by a unique-twist conclusion especially evident in his leather-S/M stories. It was these stories that gave rise to the trademarked slogan, "One Hand Books for Two Fisted Men" and the now-famous icon of the leather man reading a book.

Anthony F. DeBlase, then editor of DRUMMER Magazine, highlighted this wry quality when commenting on Leather Rogues: "Bill Lee's stories run the gamut of leather experience but focus on slave/Master relationships that persist even when, or perhaps particularly when, the tables are turned..."

There was one frustration that he encountered, he reports: no one would publish bisexual men's fiction. The "rule" of gay fiction writing in those days was to exclude women, "except for a doting mother in a few restricted scenes," or some such; the straight press would not tolerate a man touching another man except with his fists, it seemed. The lesbian community would not accept a man who had sex with women, nor did they accept women who responded sexually to both women and men.

Bisexuals, only beginning to emerge as individuals and to form groups, had no fiction voice. Bill Lee's novel, Bi Ranchers Bi Mates, gathered dust on the shelves until GLB Publishers was established. The historical bisexual novel, Different Slopes, came next. Perhaps the best is yet to come.

Bill Lee can be reached directly for topics relating to   coaching your writing   by e-mail at info@writecoach.biz.