Page 267 - Gay Pioneers: How DRUMMER Magazine Shaped Gay Popular Culture 1965-1999

Jack Fritscher Chapter 9 249

signed it! So legally he didn’t know if I had received an advance or
not. In the same letter this charming gentleman said words to this
effect [regarding his Blacklist]: “If you don’t give back the $300,
you’ll never again be published in any of the empire’s publications
and there aren’t that many places to publish.”
Can you believe this? I couldn’t. I decided not to answer the
letter. Steven Saylor said I should just wait, since Embry would no
doubt forget about it in a week, just as he forgot about most things.
Needless to say, the Evil Empire began to collapse. What else
do you expect with a demented emperor running affairs of state?
Drummer was sold into new hands, and as a consequence the world
had to be a better place.
The only way he’ll ever get that $300 is to suck it out of my ass.
Then again, maybe he’d like that. But I wouldn’t give him the satisfac-
tion. © 2005 Daniel Curzon

Even though most gay book publishers did not really start up their compa-
nies before the mid-1980s, as soon as Drummer became fully successful as
a brand in 1979, Embry wanted to expand into book publishing. Through
magazine editing and serializing, I helped develop John Preston’s Mr. Benson
as a book, but I resisted Embry’s blandishments to publish my novel Leather
Blues, which he had begun to serialize in Drummer, because I adamantly
refused to sign away any rights to a publisher who would not pay me. Soon
after I left Drummer, Winston Leyland of Gay Sunshine Press bought my
novel and paid properly. Curzon was lucky that he escaped with his manu-
script. He was generous to gay and leather history in writing his profile of
Embry, and then permitting this reprint of his eyewitness experience.

©Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved—posted 03-16-2017
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