The Five-Way

Hack wrote this novel after his cover artist Jonny M. described his plans for the weekend, which were a literal playing out of the circumstances of the title. Hack changed the participants in the orgy to female TV newscasters he had crushes on and jumped out a third floor window immediately after finishing the manuscript. He ended up with only minor injuries while Jonny had to deal with a case of chlamydia.

Larry David: Assassin for Hire

When Hack’s unrequited love for his friend Rosanna De Candia was at its most intense, she admitted to him that she had a crush on “Curb Your Enthusiasm” star Larry David. Consumed with jealousy, Hack wrote this bitter story which ends with David and Rosie suffered a painful death at the hands of a pack of savage, rabid wombats. Hack admitted that he felt much better after writing it.

Too Studly to Die

Hack’s jealousy over his cover artist Jonny M.’s success with women ultimately consumed him so deeply that he made several unsuccessful murder attempts on Jonny. They were such failures that not only did Hack usually injure himself trying to pull them off but Jonny was inevitably unaware that they had even been attempted. Hack ultimately concluded that Jonny was immortal even though the reality was that Hack was just a colossal fuck-up. Anyway, he wrote this book as an act of contrition.

The Vegeance of Madam Rosie

This is Hack’s final book about the stern and passionate Madam Rosie. His friend Rosanna De Candia told him that she’d “slice him from neck to nuts” if he completed it, so the story stops abruptly on page 78 and the rest is filled out by a short story Hack wrote in 1959 about cross-dressers in the US Coast Guard. Strangely, no one seemed to notice.

Savage Bikers From Hell

Hack became obsessed with motorcycle gangs after he bought a used Vespa scooter in 1967 and fancied himself quite the hellraiser. He and some other “biker” friends watched Marlon Brando in “The Wild Ones,” got excited and tried taking over a small town. They spent the weekend in jail until one of his friend’s mother bailed them out. The Vespa was stolen a few weeks later by a gang of roving bicycle thieves.