[1] At the request of Adventure editor Arthur Sullivant Hoffman, Dunn wrote Barehanded Castaways, a novel about people trapped on a desert island which was intended to avoid the usual cliches of such stories.
[2][3] Well over half of his output appeared in Street & Smith pulps, including People's, Complete Story Magazine, and Wild West Weekly.
A number of his novel-length stories were reprinted in hardbound, some under the pen name "Joseph Montague" for Street & Smith's Chelsea House imprint; many of his books were issued in the United Kingdom.
His stories were frequently syndicated in newspapers, both in America and around the world, making him, for a time, a very widely known author.
While living in San Francisco, he worked for the Southern Pacific Company, which published Sunset magazine.
Dunn died, according to friends, of complications from chronic malaria; he had contracted the disease in Honolulu.