by Dorien Grey
So, you do plan to stick around for a while, then?
Oh, yes! As I told you before, since you’re my only direct link to…to where you are, I’d really like to keep in touch. I’ve never been the type to get lonely, but it is nice to have a conversation with a friend every now and then. I hope you won’t mind.
I’d like that.
Good. I’m glad. Oh, and about Steve, you might try listening to Cessy.
I’ll think about it.
You do that. Well, I should let you get to sleep now. I’m going exploring again, but I’ll see you soon.
Okay.
He felt himself floating downward, like a feather. And just before total sleep enveloped him, he was aware of a voice—a real voice he knew was John’s.
“Thank you, Elliott.”
And then he slept.
About the Author
Dorien Grey started out as a pen name, nothing more, for a lifelong book and magazine editor who wanted to write his own novels as a bridge between the gay and straight communities. However, because he was living in a remote and time-warped area of the upper Midwest where gays still feel it necessary to keep a very low profile, he did not feel comfortable using his own name—a sad commentary on our society, he admits.
But as his first book, a detective novel, led to the second and then the third, he found Dorien slowly became much more than a pseudonym, evolving into an alter ego.
“It’s reached the point,” he said, “where all I have to do is sit down at the computer and let Dorien tell the story.”
Dorien’s “real person” had a not-uninteresting life. Two years into college, he left to join the Naval Aviation Cadet program. He washed out and spent the rest of his brief military career on an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean. The journal he kept of his time in the military, in the form of letters home, honed his writing skills and provided him with a wealth of experiences to draw from in his future writing.
Returning to college after service, he graduated with a BA in English and embarked on a series of jobs that led him into the editing field. While working for a Los Angeles publishing house, he was instrumental in establishing a division exclusively for the publication of gay paperbacks and magazines, of which he became editor. He moved on to edit a leading L.A.-based international gay men’s magazine.
Tiring of earthquakes, brush fires, mudslides, and riots, he returned to the Midwest, where Dorien emerged, full-blown, like Athena from the head of Zeus.
He—and Dorien, of course—moved to Chicago, and devoted their energies to writing. He completed more than 20 books, including the Dick Hardesty Mystery series; the Elliott Smith paranormal mysteries; the YA western, mystery and romance Calico and other stand-alone works of fiction and nonfiction.