255 ©Palm Drive Publishing, All Rights Reserved HOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOK A UTHOR B IOGRAPHIES Bob Condron Bob Condron is the author of two recently published erotic novels, Easy Money, published by Idol-Virgin and the bear- themed, Sweating It Out published by Zipper/Prowler). His short stories have appeared in numerous anthologies, in- cluding Alyson’s Bar Stories and Slow Grind, Arsenal Pulp Press’ Quickies 2, and Palm Drive Publishing’s Chasing Danny Boy:Powerful Stories of Celtic Eros. He is a trained actor and his work as writer and director for fringe and community theatre has been performed in Ireland, the UK, and the USA with notable success, including the prestigious Edinburgh Festival, Scotland. Born, raised, and educated in the North of England, he first worked as a social worker before returning to full-time education in his late-twenties whereupon he studied Drama at university. Thereafter, he embarked upon a career as a teacher and writer. For the past five years, he has lived and worked in Berlin with his Irish husbear, Tommy. He 256 ©Palm Drive Publishing, All Rights Reserved HOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOK is currently at work on new fiction. Bob says,“‘Santa’s Sackful’ was the first erotic story I ever wrote for publication. It was written, dispatched, and sold directly to Bear magazine who snapped it up. It was that straightforward. And it was at that point that I thought to myself, ‘Bob, you’ve found yourself a new audi- ence!’ ‘Santa’s Sackful’ was an attempt to write something that I personally would want to read; something centered around bear sex for sure, but something a little off-beat, breaking free from stereotypes and formula. The bear cult may well have originated in the States, but the movement is now worldwide. Why shouldn’t erotica reflect that diver- sity? On the other hand, so much erotica is phantasievoll— as they would say here in Germany—in that the scenarios in bear erotica are seldom grounded in reality. I wanted to take this fantasy idea to the extreme and write a modern fairytale or, more accurately, a ‘Beartale.’” 257 ©Palm Drive Publishing, All Rights Reserved HOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOK John Coriolan The Midwestern native who has long been known under the pseudonym “John Coriolan,” author and artist, decided after one year in New York acting school he would never be a movie star and that he wanted to be a playwright. After graduating from the University of Iowa, he returned to New York ready to be a famous playwright. He was “prom- ising” and did all sorts of theatre work, including running a summer stock company and staging drag-shows at Fire Island—until he turned to teaching and settling down to thirteen years of connubial bliss with a six-foot blond teacher. They alternated summers of work on graduate degrees at Columbia with touring Europe. While Senior English master at a boys’ school (established in 1709), “John Coriolan” emerged in 1968 as a gay novelist with his novel, A Sand Fortress . He mounted the barricades of early Gay Lib along with his novelist friends Richard Amory (Song of the Loon, 1967), Sam Steward (his ‘Phil Andros’ stories), and David Merrick (The Lord Won’t Mind, 1969). This Over-the-Barricades Gang of pioneer gay writers was determined to tell explicitly who did what to whom and 258 ©Palm Drive Publishing, All Rights Reserved HOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOK how big it was that it was done with. All of them continued writing into the 70’s and beyond. Coriolan’s later novels were The Smile of Eros and Christy Dancing. His story collections are Unzipped and Dream Stud. Weary of dirty old New York, where gay life was be- coming routine, Coriolan fled to Key West in time for the fabulous Gay Boom. He deserted Key West in 1992 to explore legendary San Francisco where he discovered he liked drawing better than writing and could still center at- tention on a splendid Big Dick. In San Francisco, he could roam the wild reaches of the Nameless Beach. “After all,” this pioneer writer says, “my great-grandmother Chaney was a Shawnee and Indians believe the passing years only make one wise, not less curious and less hopeful.” 259 ©Palm Drive Publishing, All Rights Reserved HOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOK Charles Eldridge “Charles Eldridge” is the nom de bear of this fiction writer well-known to the readers of the popular bear magazines. His specialty is fiction set in such historic periods as the American Civil War, the Crusades, and particularly the Roman Empire. A prolific writer, Charlie has had over 25 stories published since 1995. Charlie was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in June, 1950. His home-life and upbringing were typically suburban and middle-class. Even then he showed a marked interest in his- tory, especially Roman history. Charlie graduated Towson State University in Baltimore in 1973 with a B.S. degree in History, and began his long career in public administration. Charlie was always interested in writing, but never did anything about it. However, in early 1995, a chance visit to the Baltimore offices of Daddy magazine changed all that. During a conversation with the magazine’s publisher and secretary, he was asked the fatal question, “Do you like to write?” He responded that he had always wanted to, and Daddy encouraged him to submit a story for consideration. 260 ©Palm Drive Publishing, All Rights Reserved HOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOK Daddy liked his first story, “Decision at Pompeii,” and pub- lished it in the next issue of Daddy 22. Thus was launched his writing career of his “One-Handed Epics.” Charlie has always been interested in bearmen ever since he came out in 1974. So after his writing debut in Daddy, in late 1995 he submitted his first bear story, “The War Is Over ,” set during the American Civil War, to Ameri- can Bear magazine. This story was published in American Bear 13, in mid-1996. Ever since, he has had a very pleasant and successful publishing relationship with American Bear and American Grizzly magazines. To round out his success, his first story published in Bear magazine was “The Hero of the Greeks” in early 1998, Bear 49. Charlie has learned to concentrate on what he seems to do best—bear stories set in historical periods—and has future plans for stories set in Sumeria, England, Japan, Italy, Russia, and India. Charlie lives in Baltimore with his partner of twenty- five years, Jim, who is also a bear. He is an active member of the Chesapeake Bay Bears. 261 ©Palm Drive Publishing, All Rights Reserved HOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOK Jack Fritscher Jack Fritscher is a pioneer founder of the bear movement on page and screen. He wrote the first-ever piece on bears and was the first editor to print the word “bear” on a magazine cover. His article was “Bears: Hairballing at the Hair Fetish Ranch” in the November 1982 California Action Guide, published in San Francisco, five years before the first issue of Bear magazine. No one person created “bears,” but many regard journalist Fritscher as epicentric to the upgraded way lesbigay culture now judges homomasculine men as acceptable new gay archetypes. With a doctorate in American Literature and Criticism from Loyola University, Chicago, he is also the legendary founding San Francisco editor of Drummer magazine into which he introduced in 1978 the butch-romance themes of beards, bellies, and cigars in both “Tough Customers” and “In Praise of Older Men.” He is Drummer’s most protean 262 ©Palm Drive Publishing, All Rights Reserved HOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOK contributor with a record of more than 125 feature and fiction pieces, as well as 400 photographs, including covers and centerfolds, in 60 issues. In 1979, his invention of Man2Man Quarterly set the 1980’s tone for the emerging homomasculinity of bear culture. Bear-magazine founder, Richard Bulger, acknowl- edged Man2Man as his model for Bear magazine first published in 1987. Fritscher was one of Bear magazine’s first writers and centerfolds, and is Brush Creek Media’s most published author. The Bay Area Reporter says “Jack Fritscher is the inventor of the South of Market leather prose style of masculine writing.” He is the deeply established author of 16 books including Some Dance to Remember (1990) which is the first novel to feature a bear as one of the central characters. The main character is named precisely “Ryan O’Hara” for Orion, the Constellation of the Bear. Reviewed as a literary classic by The New Republic, Some Dance spins with some irony the epic story of “men’s men” in San Francisco, 1970-1982. Some Dance is extraordinary memoir for Daddy Bears who remember the 70’s party and for Cub Boys who wish they’d been born to celebrate the Golden Age of Gay Liberation during the window of the Gay Renaissance,1970-1982, after penicillin and before the twins viruses of HIV and politically-correct Marxism. In 1967, as gay-activist founding member of the aca- demic American Popular Culture Association, he insured that homosexual culture be prominently represented. His nonfiction book, Popular Witchcraft: Straight from the Witch’s Mouth, the first book to address gay wicca and gay- witch voices, was published in 1972 as was his first novel, Leather Blues, which critic Michael Bronski hailed as the birth of the gay male romance. His nonfiction titles include his memoir of life with his scandalous lover, Mapplethorpe: Assault with a Deadly Camera, 1994. His collection of “69 Erotic Stories” is in the 263 ©Palm Drive Publishing, All Rights Reserved HOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOK four books: Corporal in Charge of Taking Care of Captain O’Malley, Stand By Your Man, Rainbow County, and Ti- tanic: Forbidden Stories Hollywood Forgot. The series won the 1999 Small Press Book Award for best erotica in the U.S. from a field of straight, gay, and lesbian books. He has written, directed, and photographed more than 130 videos for www.PalmDriveVideo.com. Hundreds of his photographs have appeared as covers and centerfolds of 18 magazines including Bear, Bunkhouse, Powerplay, Checkmate, and Drummer, as well as on the cover of James Purdy’s novel Narrow Rooms; and in The Index of Censor- ship; Gay Sports: The Arena of Masculinity; Edward Lucie- Smith’s Adam: The Male Figure in Art, and Ars Erotica. Gay Men’s Press, London, published fifty-five of his pho- tographs in the coffee-table book, Jack Fritscher’s American Men. Two of his videos regarding the painter-photographer, George Dureau, are in the permanent collection of the Maison Europeenne de la Photographie, Paris. His screenplay, Water from the Moon, the true story of a Chinese woman who became an international politi- cal force, is in pre-production as an international motion picture with the Beijing Film Company, Beijing, China. His 6,000 published pages also appear in more than 30 magazines, as well as in more than 20 anthologies including Camille Paglia’s Vamps and Tramps; Derek Jones’ Censor- ship: An International Encyclopedia (on Mapple thorpe); Richard La Bonté’s Best of the Best Gay Erotica; Winston Leland’s Gay Roots: 20 Years of Gay Sunshine: An Anthology of Gay History, Sex, Politics and Culture; Chasing Danny Boy: Powerful Stories of Celtic Eros, and M. Christian’s The Burning Pen: Sex Writers on Sex Writing. He is also the author of the Introduction to Bear Book II (2001), and the founder of www.BearArchives.com. In 1993, he appeared on Oprah—before Oprah be- came a self-help church—recounting why gay men sleep with straight women’s bearded, blue-collar husbands. His Next >