Ménage á Trois

This was originally written in 1965 when two waitresses at the Shakey’s pizza parlor he was the night janitor at conned him into believing that they wanted a 3-way with him when all they really wanted was the use of his van in the pizzeria parking lot to engage in illicit lesbian sex. They locked Hack out of the van as soon as they got inside and while it rocked violently back and forth, he wrote this novel in his head.

The two waitresses spent twenty years as Catholic nuns and are now married to each other and run a feminist bookstore in Portland, Oregon.

Terrible Shots/The Man No Woman Could Resist

“The Man No Woman Could Resist” was one of the hundreds of short stories Hack wrote about seducing pop legend Linda Ronstadt. In it, the superstar singer stalks a Hack Werker-like writer of pulp fiction novels until she shows up unannounced one night at his penthouse apartment for a night of violent anal sex. He wrote it while defending himself a restraining order placed against him by a 55 year-old singing waitress who he kept badgering to join him in the van that he lives in for a night of violent anal sex.

The Starlet was a Dude

Hack wrote this while nursing a broken heart over “a Hollywood starlet who enjoyed a brief vogue.” In the book, the starlet reveals to herself to be a man in drag after the hero (a thinly veiled depiction of Hack named “Hank Derker”) finally talks her out of her clothes for a night of violent anal sex. Hack refuses to say how much of the story was based on reality but his publisher John Kane (who was close friends with him at the time) insists that the book is an accurate depiction of what happened except that rather than being an up-and-coming film star, the “starlet” was actually a well-known drag queen and that Hack was probably the only person in Los Angeles who wasn’t aware that she was really a dude.

Wonder Woman vs. the Fascist Morons

Hack was coy about his obsession with actress Lynda Carter when he wrote “The Amazon Warriors” that was influenced by her “Wonder Woman” TV series. In this book, she’s actually the lead character although Hack doesn’t seem to comprehend that the actress and her Wonder Woman character aren’t one and the same and has Ms. Carter actually doing battle with Donald Trump and kicking his pudgy orange ass in the process.

A Better Man

Hack was a huge fan of the TV sitcom “Yes, Dear” and fell madly in love with the character Kim Warner. He ultimately became obsessed that Greg Warner, her husband on the show, wasn’t worthy of her and he wrote this novel in an attempt to win Kim Warner’s heart. When he received a letter from network attorneys explaining that Kim Warner was a fictional character and that Jeanne Louisa Kelly (the actress who played her) was happily married in real life to a different man, Hack had a nervous breakdown and was hospitalized for six months.

The Insane Plot of Professor Morlock

Hack wrote a couple of novelizations of the “Professor Morlock” horror film franchise for a few quick bucks and they’re pretty entertaining. As with all the “Morlocks,” the insane professor is obsessed with transplanting somebody’s brain into someone else’s cranium, with a few scares and some gratuitous nudity thrown in before he is gunned down just before he can make the first incision and sent back to hell. It was right up Hack’s alley.

Junior Ranger and the Secret of Mt. Baldy

Hack swore that this would be the last of the “Junior Ranger” saga because he was sick of parents complaining about the graphic sex scenes throughout the book. He wrote it after getting a letter from someone who claimed to be a 12 year-old boy undergoing chemotherapy who wanted a Junior Ranger book which showed that bald guys could get anal sex too. Several months after its publication, he met the correspondent who was really a 65 year-old accountant who suffered from alopecia.

Reefer Whore

A fairly accurate account of when Hack’s reefer habit was at its worst and he became a gigolo to pay for it. When he started, he envisioned himself being put up by gorgeous millionairesses but his only clients turned out to be middle-class men who were desperate to hide their homosexuality from their wives. The novel became Hack’s biggest seller after Oprah included it in her monthly book club although since his publisher John Kane still owned the profits from the contract Hack originally signed with him, he didn’t see a penny. Ironically, he made more money as a gay hooker.

Walk Like an Egyptian

Hack originally wrote this in 1958 as a conventional horror tale titled “The Mummy’s Curse” but when his cover artist Jonny M. told him of his affection for Bangles’ lead singer Susanna Hoffs, he rewrote it with Hoffs and Jonny as the lead characters (since Jonny always depicted himself in the role anyway). When Jonny posted his cover art on his Instagram account, he said said “it resulted in one of the highlights of my miserable life”:

Gamblers of Love


Back in the late 1960s, Hack and some friends of his would sometimes play a game of brackets to decide who was the sexiest celebrity. They ultimately gave it up because every time they played, the winner was Natalie Wood. When Ms. Wood tragically drowned in 1981, Hack had one of his many nervous breakdown and if he death is mentioned to him now, he becomes violent and insists that she is still alive and looks exactly as she did in “The Great Race.” When he does book signings, fans are required to sign a disclosure promising that they won’t bring her up in his presence.