My name is William Ortiz and I write erotica for most people a who is questioned like who

is William Maltese would be rather easy but William is a very complex character William Maltese is one

of the most prolific authors of gay fiction Possibly ever He's written I believe over 200 novels They began in

for gay characters and gay stories and gay adventures He is a storyteller who does exactly

what good storytellers do which is reel you in at the beginning and keep you from reading

until to the end Well I grew up mainly in the sixties and seventies at

a great time where it was if you were gay and you're even if you

were you know consenting males of age if you had sex and you were gone you were

sent to jail you were arrested you were sent to jail you would get to put

a black mark on your uh career or they were career jobs or if you were

in the workplace and you watch for emotions you could be you you could get screwed for them

too And you know it was just something that you didn't do The sexual revolution generally overlapped

with the gay sexual revolution because all of it was about bringing sexualities that were

not one man one woman you get married you raise a family you don't stray you don't experiment

unduly you do the thing that everybody else is expected to do and you contain your sexual life You know

it's something I grew up with I mean everybody knew that gay was banned as well as

uh being a murderer I mean you could get arrested and go to jail If you committed burglary you

could get arrested and go to jail If you're gay you could get arrested and go to

jail school for me socially and academically was not too different I didn't think of the time I mean

I knew that I had inclinations toward being gay which made me which would you

know make me different but I still haven't done anything gay So I still wasn't

to I wasn't thinking too harshly about it because it was a case of you

know if you think I'm gay you know go ahead and prove it So an

important question is the impact on people of having to repress their sexuality This is something that we

find difficult today in the modern world where particularly in the West Um it looks like people feel very

liberal um about a wide variety of sexual orientations It wasn't that long ago when it was clearly prescribed what

was normal um in terms of sexuality to the extent that a certain amount of um

sexual preferences was actually even illegal Um It was also considered in time to be

a illness The cure for which was aversion therapy which could consist of shock treatment or induced vomiting They could

give you an a lottery In some cases it made it more necessary to keep under wraps

that I even had an attraction for males at the time We know that one

of the keys to human happiness is relationships Um And I've written books and they're very

interested in the notion that we have to become skilled in how to conduct relationships and it's

a core part of human happiness Well imagine you lived in a society where the key relationships that

were going to produce happiness for you are banned and you can't have those relationships in the 19 sixties and

seventies It was still considered mental disorder right So uh reading a book to where it wasn't depicted as a

mental disorder and it was normal and people were having healthy gay relationships Uh really it changed people's own

attitudes about themselves Well when I was in elementary school I remember writing short stories like spring

with the human mind or I remember like where I had a previous story Skeleton that was found in a

jungle k many authors when they when they write it'll take for instance me it might take

a month to two months to write a manuscript Uh Even when I'm totally engaged Wi William is

one of those very unusual fellows who when he's engaged can can knock out the whole manuscript not only in

two weeks but it requires virtually little to no editing My first reading for the Pi pi Code

Writing Club was were three poems and they received 10 de reviews And you know the and three Paul was

a big big deal So the second time I was assigned to writing assignment I wrote about child

sacrifice and cannibalism on a Caribbean island When the volcanic eruption of Mount occurred and killed 29,000

people buried the whole city killed everyone except for one person who was incarcerated in the local jail William

has published so many books and I was well aware of him uh way before I

got to actually know him personally but we've known each other and corresponded for about 15 years Now He uh

helped me with a book that I had submitted to MLR Press And it was William who really

held my hand and transformed me from writer to author I enjoyed writers like Victor Banas like

Wade Michaels and like William Maltese because they were writers who had struck a balance between writing books that

gay adult publishers were happy to buy because they knew that their readers were going to get

what they wanted Pulp it references the paper upon which the book is published I mean it's not

slick It looks like on a sentence like it looks like a newspaper in regard to

Pulp Erotica The difference between erotica and porn is the fact that erotica has always had a plot You

have something to work the sex around If it's uh if it's porn it's just sex for sex

sake Green leaf classics was uh venerable to the decree that you can say that about any of these houses

paperback publisher and paperback publishing in and of itself was a world that was driven

by speed and quantity and cost the way that all those companies worked was that they needed to

get out as many books as possible as quickly as possible and to pay as little as

possible on all counts in order to maintain their bottom line Green Leaf Plastics was more significant

because they published Song of The Loon by Richard Amy which was the mega best

seller of all mega best sellers when it came to gay erotica And since then I think their reputation

continued to improve and they sought novels that were more highbrow more intelligent and more than

just about sex William Maltese published a lot under Greenleaf Uh probably I imagine more than any other publisher especially

in his early days They were the only publisher to really embrace gay characters in gay situations if

you were to take your gay novel to a mainstream publisher they would probably reject it out of fear

of obscenity laws out of fear of public backlash or whatever it might be They didn't want to touch that

stuff At least not the overtly gay mainstream publishers would publish kind of secretly gay novels uh that were very

veiled and maybe the gay characters were villains or evil in some way You know

today I would even say it's a bit it's slightly homophobic Yeah it's this like not very

handsome man who who has this weird bed and it's like you know you see the the

uh the the high heels I mean it's a stereotype of a gay man Like even the gay bookstore in

Berlin said what kind of color is this Yeah Well I think that the publishers sometimes

titles that are problematic because they know they're problematic and I think they might be appealing to a demographic that

would you know expect something from that whether they did it or not This is like

the German edition of um um a slip to diaper because they didn't want to

be associated with like this low brow Chavez stuff Yeah Um they made these artsy artsy covers and look at

this like really these covers were made by real artists Yeah they did not really make sellable

covers and a lot of uh our covers looked not not exactly like this but

we had always one author had a special artist and this cover I look at it

today and I think oh my God there was almost the aura if you went

into the military and you served that you were more manly and there's a manly thing to do I mean

you went in you served your service you get in a service is an obligation

and you didn't complain So people had a tendency to look at you more as if you were you

know if a man whether it was true or not they they looked at you

down there he spent a lot of his military career overseas and his experiences being uh being gay

or bisexual entered into a lot of those a lot of those adventures that he had

in Korea But when I was in Korea there were a lot of gays who were obvious And once again

like in basic training I couldn't really decide whether those people were obvious because they never

wanted to discharge They wanted out of the army They got further than the people in basic training but they

finally reach the point They had a breaking point and they wanted out and they didn't

care whether people thought they were gay or not The majority of people in the service who were gay

were people like uh who they were more conservative They stayed in the background They just wanted to get in

get their service over and get on with their lives at the other end of the line

the wars were a big impact on gay men discovering their own sexuality This was a

you know special being drafted You were in a situation where you're surrounded by attractive men Um many of

which were gay and having gay experiences So the wars without the wars I don't know

that we would have gay rights as much as we have right now because people wouldn't have realized as quickly

about their own sexuality It was also a dangerous time to be gay Obviously in the military in terms

of you know you could be discharged and a disarmed discharge was a in some ways kind of

a career death sentence So you didn't want to have that the military discharged people

who were felt that were gay I mean and the people in the military mail marijuana them

then you know so life so if they found out that you were gay or

were gay you get a 21 I discharged you and you show home and checked out there

usually came a time within a 13 month to uh 50 from a 30 month or 15

month period where the the guys who were flamboyantly gay on on the base who just became

too flamboyant for the brass to to excuse I mean whether the excuse was in

one and out of the army but it just reached a point where there were too many gays

and too many army gangs and so they would just round them up and ship them all

home once rather than ship them home one at a time During the course of the year there

was lots of rounding up I mean the police would masquerade as gay men to try to get you to

flirt with them I've seen wanted posters in gay communities from the fifties and it's like if you've seen this

attractive police officer know that he's a sting Like it was a real thing they would

go to the gay bars and get you to flirt with them and then arrest

you for it I read Elvira's autobiography recently She was a go go dancer for the military

paid for by the military at 14 She's like so this was a time where anything

could happen It was absolute nuts Um Thank goodness some things have changed I think erotica

reflects some of the problematic natures Back then One of the things about adult novels in general is that they

were vehicles for writers to explore relationships that weren't necessarily bound by the heterosexual norm by watching

people explore this or reading about people exploring it They can create a new map for a

possibility of maybe actually living out loud or exploring this in the real world I think cultivating uh ability to

be imaginative and have mental imagery is actually um a healthy and protective thing to do

Uh If you think of people who are stranded on a desert island or in these scenarios Um One theme

you'll often hear is that they imagine all the things they'd like to eat and do and see that

they don't have access to and that gives them some proxy experience and some people credit that

with surviving these um you know very extreme scenarios So I do think mental imagery is extremely

powerful for an author What we really want our readers to do is to enjoy a good

read That is it's kind of like sitting back on a nice day a nice summer day in the forest

with a a little clearing and a babbling brook going by And the idea is there's

a little paper boat and you watch it float all the way down the river and you never

have to stop and go back And that's what a good read is That's what a an author really

likes to have adult writing is generally not considered to be a bastion of good writing And that perception is

not always untrue because it is a field that is based on giving people erotic thrills

and everything else for a lot of publishers and a lot of writing writers is just

that other stuff I have to put in there to get the page count out to 100 and

telling a really wide variety of stories that also have erotic content There is something to be said to be

writing for the one handed reader Yeah because it's a skill to get people that aroused that they really

with the written word This is not Playboy with lots of centerfold images or some gay

publication Yeah that would be equivalent some but it's the written word and you have to manage it with

black letters on a white page to get somebody aroused just by the imagery Yeah

And of course there are certain tricks and Williams certainly has them down Yeah Uh how you can do

that People want to read the same but different Yeah And it's a skill to to do that differently Willie

Maltese's first novel Adonis was published by Greenleaf Classics 1969 Uh it became so popular It ended

up being a trilogy Not many books back then received Sequels or series or things like that because they were

kind of temporary amusements You read it you enjoyed its afro qualities and then you kind of threw it away

probably But some of these were really popular and including uh his the Flynn series and the Ad Donna series

kind of generated a whole a whole series of books by him Yes I think

that erotica not porno can at times go too far And that is when you go beyond the

the balance of what the society in which you exist says it's too far I mean if they're going

to make laws arrest you and put you in jail for something you've written and you

write it Then obviously you've gone too far Aside from that you just write anything

people need to be educated so they can consume the material in a more educated manner There is there

is watching a film and having an intelligent conversation about it afterwards with someone else and there's

watching a film and getting completely the wrong message because you didn't watch it intelligently The issue is whether we

like it or not Most people get their edge of sex education from porn not

just kids but adults too In the United States we have a very tense relationship with sexuality where uh there's

a lot of prudishness coming from the Puritan founders of the country but there's also a complete obsession Um And

I think in other countries there's a little more casualness around nudity and bodies and you know flirty sexuality

that here is is made more taboo And so I think we use it as

a weapon Sometimes taboo is a weapon to authorize people Um And so I think in a healthy environment

um there's more of a sense of humor First of all there's not this automatic um lewd or vulgar

ness to sexuality it can be playful it can be light Um And uh yeah I I think

we're moving taboo and especially something like erotica that um really isn't hurting anyone You don't have the same issues

of the porn industry where some corners of it can be very exploitative And of course you know

sex exploitation is a huge global problem Um I would say that's got to be one of the

more ethical ways to consume kind of fantasy scenarios Every time I think erotica can go too far I log

on to Amazon and see there's dinosaur erotica there's Bigfoot erotica like everything is on the table

I think there are some areas that are even too taboo for the people who specialize in taboo Erotica is

tricky because I want novels to have the freedom to write about sex in lots of different ways

I think we have to explore the dark sides The positive sides Erotica is usually meant to create a

sexual reaction to the reader So it's kind of a tricky area where it wants

to kind of look at sex from a psychological perspective in a lot of cases

but it's also trying to turn us on So there's places for I think sexual content that's

maybe not erotica And I think there is spots where we can learn a lot about

sex only through erotica I'm a little bit afraid with things in the US Uh that there will be censorship

Yeah Um uh and it will be censored and only very clean pornography will go through which I think that's

the death of the death of pornography I mean if it's clean what's the point I think that is

the intelligent consumption of material That's more the important thing I want the audience to be informed

and therefore it doesn't really matter what you show them They'll take something intelligent away from

it And that is the mistake over censorship and regulation The attempt to say that actually

just we need to regulate the material because if we don't um we will um cause trouble uh to people

I don't think anything should be censored I think it should be up to readers

to decide you know what's ok and what's not our dark psyche as well as our happy

psyche All of it needs to be examined and literature is often the only way to do

that What we need to do is create more quality erotica and pornography Not not censor what exists

because then where does that end You end up censoring things that are just that's what's happening today

I mean look at the media and the schools they're so afraid of the word sex If you

say anything explicit they try to censor it They think it's oh it's not family oriented Well how

did families exist if you didn't have sex Erotica is important in from a pure enjoyment perspective We need to

pass our times away with something and it's a great way to do that It's a healthy

way to do that Um erotica is also important to broaden our understanding of sexuality I

mean I bet Kinsey and Freud would have loved the amount of erotica we have today to be able to

pour over and analyze because there's so much that we can learn about ourselves about

what's good and maybe even what's bad um through erotica Well I don't know why they read

it now but when they got the internet but when they read it before it was because

I mean you were you were submitting people to uh types of fantasies that they you

know they really didn't realize and then possibly the other people were other people Have you gave the

the chance to enjoy their own fantasies and other people's fans as well Another interesting idea is that

you're getting a little bit caught up in the idea that erotica is about plot

maybe it's about character and what these um people do very cleverly is they construct characters We

want to fall in love with that don't exist out there in the real world because they I

have an idealized version in erotica You you you use like the building of a relationship

and then the sexuality and the development of a relationship sexually to to have people confront things to have

people confront in interference inner wishes Yeah And you also have to have a certain kind of tension

arc or something even in the most straightforward pornography even the most straightforward like uh there's two

people I mean know exactly they will end up in bed you need a little bit of

story And I think actually for for many readers that's what's interesting Yeah that we

get to know these people and follow them all the way into bed Yeah Um and then see how

to behave in bed You know I don't particularly enjoy writing a book of erotica if

I'm not turned on myself So my aim is to always make sure that the uh the

reader is getting what he's put his money out for as a writer First and foremost I

have to say I am in absolute awe of both how prolific he is and about how

buried his writing is I I really feel So he's one of those people who could

write about just about anything and has written about a tremendous number of things the sheer volume

of books that he has written and the sheer quality of it is extremely impressive for most people

a who is question like who is William Maltese would be rather easy But William is a

very complex character I've also had the chance to know William as a leader in

terms of his doing He he's not the kind of leader that stands up in front of everyone and tries

to bring them to a point of view Instead he simply lives his point of view And I think

through doing that he has a very powerful influence on his readers You know so

many generations have heard the echo of his typewriter in one way or the other

that it it is life changing in its own way I'm very pleased to be pleased and I'm

very pleased with what has happened to get me to where I am now And I'm

even quite pleased that I ended up discovering that I am playing a part of the gay revolution

the the gay reversion because at the time I was really little and aware of that I'm aware

of it now and gays have come a long ways and I'm just pleased that I

was part of them