'African-American writer,' 'gay writer' ... E. Lynn Harris is used to labels. But as he makes clear in his latest novel, he won't be limited by them.

Has it only been two years?

For deprived fans of E. Lynn Harris, it seems longer since the last book. After all, between his 1991 debut of "Invisible Life" and 2006's "I Say a Little Prayer," Harris released 10 books, all steamy, funny and real.

This is the man, after all, who taught many readers about men on "the down low" and the women they betray.

So, on the phone with Harris from his Atlanta home, the conversation feels like talking with an old friend, catching up on where he's been hiding and the juicy gossip he can dish.

The best-selling author is talking now because there is a new book, "Just Too Good To Be True." And Harris, 51, found his inspiration in his absence.

In his two years away, he returned to his alma mater, the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, where he had been the first black cheerleader for the Razorbacks, and taught African-American literature and creative writing.

"I was trying to be the best teacher that I could be. It was something new for me. I have never taught. ... I was only supposed to teach for a semester, but it ended up being six semesters. I liked it so much, and the students were asking me to come back."

Harris' new work is a departure -- its central character isn't gay or bisexual. Instead, there's Brady Bledsoe, a straight college football star, who wears his chastity ring as proudly as his uniform. He and mother Carmyn are close, and she's devoted herself to helping him achieve his dream of joining the NFL. Their close bond is tested as sports agents hover, Brady's cheerleader girlfriend schemes and a secret about his father threatens.

"Every time I wrote about Brady, I thought about my students at the U of A," Harris says. "At the time, my son had just turned 17. And I always wanted to write a book that he would enjoy so I wanted the character almost to be perfect. And you can't really do that.

"I went in there thinking Brady was going to be this different kind of black boy. He was going to be an athlete. He was going to be smart. He was going to be into the church. He was going to save himself for marriage. Believe it or not, there are African-American men out there like that. And we have not seen them in literature."

Yet creating Brady Bledsoe was a real challenge. Harris and his editor fought over whether the character would remain celibate throughout the novel. His editor thought Brady didn't quite ring true.

"So I went back and made him more dangerous ... more three-dimensional," he says.

A former salesman for IBM, Harris first found his audience when he self-published "Invisible Life" in December 1991. The book slowly but steadily caught fire in the early 1990s, fueled by the story of Raymond Tyler, who realizes that even though he had been in a long-term relationship with a woman, he had strong desires for a man.

Harris let the secret out that men from all walks of life and all professions, married and single, sometimes lived a double life. Many women made copies of the book and sent them overnight to their friends, Harris says. "Invisible Life" was reissued in 1994 by Doubleday and is now in its 51st printing. In his new book, Harris explores another term: "GP," meaning "gay for pay" or men who perform sexual acts with other men for money.

A writer of the people

Still, he acknowledges that he deliberately wrote about straight characters in "Too Good" to expand his audience.

"I don't want to be put into a box. I wanted to be able to show that I'm a writer. People like to put in different adjectives to describe me as a writer: an African-American author, a gay author and what have you. And I think to sustain my career, which has been wonderful so far, I've got to be able to do that.

"I also wanted to give people who are uncomfortable reading about the subject matter that I write about, who really like a good author, a chance to give me a chance," he says.

It's not like his success has been terribly hindered. There are 4 million copies of his books in print, and his last nine books were instant New York Times best-sellers.

Yet though readers love Harris' work, he says his real goal in writing was to free himself.

"When I started my career I was just trying to save myself. In terms of finding something that would sustain me and finding something I really wanted to do. I loved James Baldwin coming up, Maya Angelou and Truman Capote ... I loved to read, it was my greatest joy."

His favorite book growing up, was "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," Angelou's groundbreaking memoir. "For some reason, I don't know if it was the Arkansas connection, I connected with that story. ... I went through some tough times. I could relate to that child even though I wasn't female, I hadn't been raped or molested, I still related to longing. Maybe, while I wasn't admitting it to myself then, I secretly I wanted to be a writer because there was so much stuff left unsaid about my childhood that I wanted to say about being different. I think writing was the only way of doing that."

Still, Harris knows he's no James Baldwin. He thinks of himself, instead, as a chronicler of the times.

"I definitely consider myself a commercial writer ... I write popular fiction. I don't try to fool myself and to think that I'm in a class with Baldwin or Toni Morrison or any of those people that write literary novels. I think I write popular fiction."

"I write about what's going on now. What's going on in our lives now? At some point, some people may want to know what was it like living in the year of 2008. I would have chronicled that time, if you will."

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