From Ed Gorman

My post of a couple of days ago about the book SIN-A-RAMA prompted this email from Ed Gorman (reprinted with Ed's permission):

Speaking of Silverberg's "My Life as a Pornographer," I think it's one of the best pieces on hack writing I've ever read. A real masterpiece.

Silverberg's piece appeared in "Hot Talk," a Penthouse spin off that I thought was going to make me rich. One day this editor calls up and says that he's a big fan of my stuff and would I like to write for this men's magazine. I'd done a fair share of men's stuff and was trying to stop because the pay was lousy and it took months to get paid. Then he mentioned Guccione was publisher and the rate was a thousand a story. He said he needed several stories pronto. You bet I wrote them, six or seven in a week. Then a couple more for which I was paid (as I recall) fifteen hundred a story.

But as I talked to the editor over two or three months (he was a great guy) I realized that as funny as his sarcasm was, it was going to get him in trouble if he ever talked to his boss that way. Which he hinted he did. He left not too long after--before making me rich. His other two faves were Silverberg (who I heard was getting twice as much, understandably, as I was) and John Shirley, who wrote some pretty edgy stuff. I wrote the kind of story that you could shove (excuse the expression) sex scenes into if you wanted to. In fact, after the editor left and they quit doing fiction, I sold three of the stories to regular crime fic markets just by excising the heavy-breathing parts.

BTW, the thousand dollars I got for a one-afternoon story was exactly what I got from Zebra for my second novel.

And as a final note about the seventies and eighties skin mags before they quit doing fiction--this one sleazy mag had owed me money for over a year. When I called for the sixty-second time, the youthful-sounding editor (actually a nice enough kid) said, "Between us, Ed, we're going belly up. So I wouldn't expect those checks. But if you ever come to New York, I'll give you some great grass."

Them were the days. --Ed Gorman