If one can have a dual personality without being schizophrenic, I think I'd qualify. Born Roger Margason, Dorien Grey emerged first as a pen-name when, after a career as a book and magazine editor, I began writing mystery novels. However,  as the first book led to the second and then the third, things just got too busy between writing and daily life that Dorien slowly took on a life of his own. The Roger part of the team took on the responsibilities of daily life....eating, paying bills, doing laundry. It's reached the point, where all I have to do is sit down at the computer and let Dorien tell the story.

It's not that the Roger part of me hasn't had a rather interesting life of his own. After two years of college, I left to join the Naval Aviation Cadet program in order to qualify for the G.I. bill to finance his last two years of school. Washing out of the NavCad program, I spent the rest of my two year military career on an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean. The journal I kept of my time in the military, in the form of letters home, honed my writing skills and provided me with a wealth of experiences to draw from in my future writing. (If you're interested, you can read these letters at http://www.doriengrey.blogspot.com . They'll be appearing in book form sometime in 2009.)

Returning to college after service, I graduated with a B.A. in English, and embarked on a series of jobs which worked me into the editing field. While working for a Los Angeles publishing house, I was instrumental in establishing a division exclusively for the publication of gay paperbacks and magazines, of which I became editor. I moved on to edit a leading L.A. based international gay men's magazine.

Tiring of earthquakes, brush fires, mudslides, and riots, I returned to the midwest to begin writing novels, and Dorien emerged, full-blown, like Venus from the sea.

I've recently moved back to Chicago after a many, many year absence, where Dorien and Idevote "our" energies to writing. I've now got 12 books in print, with three more waiting at the publisher for release. And I'm happy to say that of the currently-eleven Dick Hardesty books, four of them have been finalists for a Lambda Literary Award.

If you'd like to know a little bit more about me...and about yourself, since I suspect we're not all that different...I invite you to visit my website (http://www.doriengrey.net) and my various blogs, listed elsewhere here on Booksie.

Thanks for taking your valuable time to read this. I hope I've piqued your interest sufficiently to encourage you to read more.