The name John Cleve first appeared on Slave of the Sudan, published by Brandon House in 1969, an imitation of Victorian pornography so precisely executed that the editor suspected my father of plagiarism. Dad found this extremely flattering. He published four more novels with Brandon House until it folded.
Dad moved to Orpheus Books, which paid thirteen hundred dollars per book. He used three pseudonyms to conceal his prolificity. Two years later, he switched to Midwood for more money. He invented another pen name, John Denis, based on his favorite Reds players, Johnny Bench and Denis Menke. He published fourteen books with Midwood. After a falling-out with an editor over a title change, he returned to Orpheus. The new editor soon became irritated with Dad and stopped buying his work. Desperate for income, my father invented another pseudonym, Opal Andrews, who specialized in “lightweight incest,” and sold eight books to Surrey House.
Curious about the changing market, Dad read a dozen recent Orpheus books, concluding that all were watered-down versions of his own work, his style overtly copied by lesser writers. To him the proof was clear—they’d begun writing about the clitoris. Dad believed he was responsible for the widespread knowledge of its existence in porn, but he couldn’t place a book with Orpheus. Outraged, he devised a plan to prove the editor wrong.
To get a different font, he bought a new ball for his Selectric typewriter. He changed his usual margins, used cheaper paper, and rapidly wrote two books as Jeff Morehead. He asked a friend in another part of the country to submit the manuscripts to Orpheus. The editor bought both. Dad called the editor, told him he was Jeff Morehead, and suggested they get back in business. The editor concurred, and Dad stayed with Orpheus throughout the 1970s.
Over the course of his career, he used a total of seventeen pseudonyms:
John Cleve
Turk Winter
Jeff Morehead
Jay Andrews
Opal Andrews
Drew Fowler
J. X. Williams
Jack Cory
Jeremy Crebb
John Denis
Alan Marshall
Jeff Woodson
Joe Brown
Jeff Douglas
Roscoe Hamlin
Camille Colben
Anonymous
Two are female names and six are variations of his own. Three share the initials of J.C., the same as Julius Caesar and Jesus Christ. Dad never quite clarified how he invented the name John Cleve. It first appeared as a character’s name in a 1967 manuscript for Clansman of Andor. Publicly, Dad claimed John Cleve was a variation of John Cleland, author of Fanny Hill, the first pornographic novel printed in English.
In 1973 Grove Press published his novel The Palace of Venus under the Zebra imprint. Dad sent them a new novel, Vendetta, set during the reign of Pope Innocent III, whom my father characterized as “history’s most misnamed monster.” The editorial staff didn’t want to publish it, and Vendetta never saw print, because according to Dad, “It is a class historical and Class is gone.” Nevertheless, the strength of the manuscript resulted in a phone call from New York. Barney Rosset, Grove’s publisher, wanted a pornographic historical series about a single character during the Crusades. Dad was initially resistant, writing in a letter:
I do not know if this is or could be my thing or not. I have difficulty with series. Like, I get bored and want to go back to creating. It is most difficult for me to write as if cranking the arm of a copy-machine. I am an artist, whether these series books will be “art” or not.
He was equally uncertain about traveling to meet Rosset in New York, a city he called Babylon-on-the-Hudson. Grove offered to cover all expenses and Dad made the trip. He returned to Kentucky with a cash advance, a contract for an unwritten book, and more autonomy than he’d ever had from a publisher. My father had bought Grove books for fifteen years and revered the courage of Rosset for fighting the U.S. government on obscenity charges—and winning. The seventies were financially difficult for Grove, which barely staved off bankruptcy. Dad regarded his new contract as a mission to save Grove Press. The four-book Crusader series sold well, and for the first time in his career, Dad earned royalites.