To Anna (Comment #5):

Answer From William Maltese:

Hi Anna:

No reason to be impressed, I take off on my underpants one leg at a time, like anyone else, and… Oh, you mean, you’re impressed by my writing!

Only recently have I been putting out all of my books, no matter what the genre, as “written by” William Maltese; this includes all the books I originally published under pseudonyms, many of which are being released over the next twelve months by Wildside/Borgo. Granted, there will still be a few with the proviso “William Maltese writing as Willa Lambert”, but those will be exception to the rule. I’ve long thought if I’d received credit, from the get-go, for all the books I’ve written, that I’d be more famous (or rich) today. Not that I crave fame and/or riches, mind you. Well, okay, more money is/was always appreciated.

As for my having taken on all of those pseudonyms in the first place— (1) A publisher usually just didn’t want it to look like I was its only author. Actually, I WAS one publisher’s only author, but it looked like he had four in his stables. (2) I’ve been published in so many genres that a conscious effort was made to separate those genres by using different pseudonyms for each. When I wrote a heterosexual sadism-masochism novel as William Mauser (which I have), it might have been confusing for a reader of that book if a sweet romance like HEART ON FIRE came out under the William Mauser name, too. The S&M reader would buy expecting an S&M book but get a nice and innocent love story. Color that S&M aficionado as potentially fit to be tied! Likewise, I wouldn’t publish a gay adventure under my Anna Lambert pseudo for the same reason.

I never chose a new name because of any change in writing style; I never did change my writing style because of any pseudo. In fact, for a long time, I didn’t even think I had a particular writing style, until I was approached by a university professor who wanted to know if I’d written a particular book (with a pseudo), because the style was so “like” mine.

As I’m a firm believer that every guy has his feminine side, and every gal has her masculine side, I never did really try consciously to change my writing style when writing “for” men, “for” women, “for” gays, “for straights”. That said, I do tend to make men more blustery, more aggressive, more apt to use swear words. I do make women more polite, more sensitive, less likely to get angry, less apt to do something without first thinking about it. And (all boasting aside), I seem to have done a good job of “universal” writing, because I never have been called out for writing too “butch”, or for writing “too much like a girl.” I have been accused (by heterosexual women) of being gay; how else could I so “successfully plumb the female psyche” (although what “being gay” and “female psyche” have to do with one another is beyond me).

As William Maltese (writing as Willa Lambert), there will be released, sometime soon, in English-language, all three of my SuperRomances for Harlequin, and all three of the sweet romances I did for Carousel. Also, I’m busy writing, a contemporary romance, THE HEART MUST CHOOSE, which will be published by Wildside/Borgo sometime the first of the year (only because I can’t write it any faster).

Which pen name do I prefer? You know, I don’t think I’m particularly fond of any of them (although I obviously DO like the great name of Anna). This is why I’m finally lumping all of my pseudos under the William Maltese byline, these days, and letting the readers figure out for themselves which of my books are “for” them and which of them aren’t. From the beginning, I would have preferred just one name, but it’s only after long years of writing that I finally have the clout to have a real say in the matter.

William Maltese’s favorite book? (Notice, please, how I avoid the term “masterpiece” — although thank YOU very much). I think I actually like the very fun, very short, no-brainer, gay books: DIARY OF A HUSTLER (just re-issued by MLP PRESS), and SLOVAKIAN BOY (published in English by Green Candy Press and in German by Bruno Gmunder). I just think too many books get too bogged down in angst and in trying to be literate. I love light and frothy, and that’s actually, yes, I do believe, my preference, by way of William Maltese books, too. As for my favorite William Maltese hetereo book, that’s probably my LOVE’S EMERALD FLAME by Willa Lambert (soon to be reissued by Wildside/Borgo as “by William Maltese, writing as Willa Lambert”). I’ve always had a particular fondness for South America, that I think favorably comes out in this book (by the way, just released in m/m format as BEYOND MACHU by Haworth Press).

Of course, I’m particularly fond of my children’s book DOG ON A SURFBOARD AND THE REST OF THE ADVENTURE by Billy Lambert (but that’s another story).

What book would I prefer to have never written? Presently, I wouldn’t chuck out any of them, because they all brought in money and, from the get-go, I have been in the writing business for the money. That said, there was an admitted time in my life, that I regretted having written the heterosexual sadistic-masochistic novel, SS & M. I kept that one in a deep-dark trunk for a good many years, guiltily thinking it was just too sadistic, too horrible, too unpleasant, too channeling-the-Marquis de Sade. It has only been recently, the editors at Wildside/Borgo Press having persuaded me to bring it out of the dark and into the light, that I’ve come to realize the book is so sadistic, is so horrible, is so unpleasant, is so violent, because the time depicted was so sadistic, so horrible, so unpleasant, so violent.

“Lambert” have a special meaning for me? Only in that I know someone who’s a really great person of the same name.