GRANTS PASS, Ore. Con Sellers, who wrote more than 100 paperback novels ranging from pornography to historical romance, died Sunday. He was 69.
Sellers was admitted Jan. 24 to Rogue Valley Medical Center in Medford for treatment of a widespread infection from a ruptured intestine, family members said.
Thrown out of the Army for alcholism in 1956, Sellers turned to writing to support his wife and two sons. He sold men's pulp fiction for magazines such as ''Adam'' and ''Gent.''
After selling his first novel, a war story, Sellers moved to the community of Wilderville outside Grants Pass in 1961, where he raised Morgan horses on his Bella Maria Ranch.
''At that time he became a full-time novelist, and we all started starving to death,'' said his son, Leonard Sellers. ''Then he started cranking out these porn books. He got like $750 a book. He'd write one every 10 days. That's how he kept his sons in school clothes and all those horses fed.
''Then he branched out into romance novels, old fashioned gothics, and historical romances. Twenty years after he started he was getting $80,000 advances, still in the paperback market.''
Throughout his career, Sellers held the highest respect for writing that paid money, and instilled his attitude in the students who attended his writing class at Rogue Community College in Grants Pass.
The technique worked. In 12 years, his students sold 27 books, a tally Sellers proudly kept on the outside of his briefcase.
''He was always proud of what he did,'' said Elizabeth Quinn, a novelist who attended Sellers' writing class. ''He used to say, 'When I wrote pornography, I wrote the best pornography in the business.' He used to tell us he was selling emotion.''
Sometimes writing for competing publishers, Sellers used a variety of pen names, both men's and women's.
Sellers' most recent novel was ''The Flames of War,'' the second in a four-book paperback series called ''Men at Arms,'' which followed a family through World War II. Some of his biggest sellers were historical romances, including ''Merillee,'' ''Time is a Lover,'' written under the pen name Barbara Allen, and ''This Promised Earth,'' written as Lee Raintree.
Sellers was hired by the producers of the television series ''Dallas'' to write a novel to accompany the show, which he wrote as Raintree.
Born in Shubuta, Miss., on March 1, 1921, he was named Connie Leslie Sellers Jr., after a Civil War general whom his grandmother had loved, but hadn't married.
He served 17 years in the Army. During World War II, he was wounded twice as an infantryman with the First Division and was awarded the Silver Star, Bronze Star, and Purple Heart. During the Korean War, he was a combat correspondent with the Second Divison. He held the rank of first sergeant when he was discharged while serving in Japan.
