November 30, 2016 · 6:28 am

Perception Vs. Reality: ANOTHER Unfair Fight

Did you hear the news? Rates of crime, violence, and deviance are skyrocketing thanks to that horribly evil corrupting influence known as pornography! Wait…I may have been mistaken. I think that influence is violent video games now. Hold on, I think it might have been internet harassment.

Or was it violent movies?

Or was it comic books?

Or was it heavy metal music?

Or was it MTV?

Or was it the Simpson/Family Guy/Bevis and Butthead?

Or was it Dungeons and Dragons?

I’m sorry. I just can’t keep up with all these terribly corrupting influence. It seems like there’s a new one every other year. In every case, this latest influence will be the one that turns our culture into an orgy of meth-addicted chimps armed with machine guns.

I’ll turn the sarcasm off now. Hopefully, I don’t need to point out the breadth of the absurdity I just described. If anyone bought into any of these so-called scourges, then we’d all be living in a Martin Scorsese crime drama by now. Since Joe Pesci hasn’t come to break my legs with a baseball bat, I’m going to take a moment to give the terrified masses a reassuring hug and explain that the world isn’t that terrifying.

Sadly, hugs only go so far. Reassuring the terrified masses requires that I fight a losing battle. That battle is between the forces of perception and reality. Unfortunately, it might as well be a battle between a sick kitten and hungry grizzly bear armed with chainsaw.

This is going to sound cynical, but it’s kind of a byproduct for someone seeking a career in crafting elaborate fiction. Perception kicks reality’s ass every, single, goddamn time. Why shouldn’t it though? Reality is cold, callous, and boring. Reality is the reason we don’t win the lottery every week. Reality is the reason we don’t get our dream job, live in our dream house, or marry our dream girl/guy.

With perception, luck is always on our side. We are always the center of the universe. We are John McClane in the body of a young Bruce Willis, living out our own Die Hard movie where countless European thugs with bad accents are out to get us. It’s more exciting and it makes us feel special. Sure, it’s a deluded fantasy that comes dangerously close to requiring therapy, but it beats the hell out of reality.

I’ve tried to paint a less dire picture of the world on this blog. I’ve pointed out that by most objective measures, things are getting better in the world. Poverty is down. Crime is down. Violence is down. Hell, even the divorce rate is declining according to the CDC. That’s objectively good for everyone except family divorce lawyers that charge by the hour.

We, as a society, should be thankful that we actually have to look for reasons to panic. We’ve had to come up with some pretty ridiculous threats to society. Decades ago, it was comic books. A few decades after that, it was dungeons and dragons. These days, it’s violent/sexist video games.

Of course none of these panics led to the downfall of civilization. At worst, it created a lot of annoying arguments on the internet, but let’s face it. There are so many arguments on the web and people have such short attention spans that their impact is on par with light cough.

At the core of these panics, however, is a common misinterpretation about common sense that turns common people into uncommon asshats. It’s this pervasive notion that the media we consume has a major impact on us. One year, it’s Elvis’ hips that were going to turn us into monsters. The next, it’s a hidden sex mini-game in Grand Theft Auto.

Again, it’s worth pointing out that violence and violent crime has been decreasing for decades. We do pay people to keep track of this shit, you know? It’s kind of an important function of modern society. The data is there. We’re actually getting better at this civilization thingy we’ve been working on for 10,000 years.

So why do we still obsess over the effects on media? Well, there is an element of common sense to it. Tell an ordinary, sane person that consuming violent media makes a person violent and they’ll probably agree to some degree. It makes sense. Most people tend to think other people are vulnerable to that kind of crude influence.

The problem is, they still think they’re John McClane in a Die Hard movie. They think they’re the hero who isn’t prone to corruption. They don’t realize that they are those other people and those people don’t go out randomly killing each other because of the movies they see or the video games they play. The data just doesn’t bear that out.

The problem is the perception. Movies, TV, video games, and Twitter hashtags give the perception that violence and sexism are more prevalent than they really are. They trigger this “danger mode” that’s hardwired into our caveman brain, making us think there’s a hungry tiger hiding behind every bush. It’s not real, but our caveman brain doesn’t care.

Even when the perceptions become too skewed to rationalize, even with a caveman brain, we still look for reasons to dread. We still look for something to get outraged over. In recent years, there has been less of an inclination to link violent/sexual media with violence and more a trend towards linking it to sexism.

This has been playing out in arenas like video games, female-centered movies and TV shows, and feminism, which I’ve talked about before. This latest moral panic isn’t that media is making people violent. It’s the idea that media is making people sexist and reinforcing patriarchal stereotypes. I won’t name names, but anyone who does even basic research on it knows who I’m talking about.

Again though, reality doesn’t jive with this perception. Despite the fact that video games have gotten much better at rendering beautiful women in undersized thongs, rates of sexual violence against women have declined by more than half since 1995.

Just as a point of reference, the best selling game of 1995 was Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island. Yes, there was more sexual violence in that year compared to 2005, the year Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, complete with its hooker-killing and sex mini-game, came out.

So why do I bring this up? Why do I make a big deal of this issue? Well for one, it does affect me and the industry I’m trying to break into. I deal in the romance/erotica medium. That medium has its own controversies and I’m not just talking about sparkling vampires.

The perceptions about how this media affects people is still there. Back in 2012, the media reported an unusual spike in births, which happened to coincide with the success of “50 Shades of Grey.” It sent a clear message. Reading all this erotica/BDSM fiction was getting people horny and they were making babies. That’s a pretty clear impact, if ever there was one.

Now chances are, this was just the media trying to moisten some panties and get a few extra clicks. Reality probably isn’t that clear-cut. Even if the data did show a spike in births, correlation does not equal causation. Media, especially BDSM fiction, is only every a catalyst, at most, rather than a cause.

This perception surrounding media, especially that surrounding erotica/romance, is bound to affect how I pursue my career in this field. I really do want to make a living writing erotica/romance novels. My goal isn’t just to get couples horny so they can get frisky and make a few babies. However, if that does occur, I will gladly embrace it as a pleasant side-effect.

It all comes back to perception. I don’t doubt my own perceptions are skewed. I’m sure that has shown on more than one occasions with this blog. I never claimed to be objective. I’m not an activist, a reporter, or even an internet meme. I’m just a guy trying to turn his passion for erotica/romance into a career.

My perceptions are only my tools. Reality is still an obstacle, but these are obstacles we must all be willing to navigate. If we don’t, reality has a nasty way of biting us in the ass and not in the way we’ll enjoy.

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November 29, 2016 · 6:25 am

Sex Vs. Violence: An Unfair Fight

It’s horrible! It’s corrupting an entire generation of children! It’s turning good, decent people into snarling beasts! We must do something about it! We must call the authorities, hold rallies, and widely condemn all those who dare introduce something like this into our society!

What I just wrote is a basic summation of everything that angry, terrified, deeply offended advocacy groups feel towards everything from rock music to violent video games to MTV to the Simpsons to Game of Thrones. Pick out any piece of media from any period in history. Chances are you’ll hear these arguments from crowds of angry parents/priests/politicians.

It’s a battle that’s as old as the first cave-painting of an erect penis. Parents, priests, and politicians work tirelessly to guard impressionable children and adults from that which they consider obscene. How do they know it’s obscene? How do they even measure it? Ask 100 people and you’ll get 1,000 different answers.

They’ll claim they have to protect us from that which is obscene. They’ll say that if we spend too much time looking at or pursuing obscenity, it’ll distract us from our social responsibilities like working the fields, paying taxes, pumping babies so that we have more workers, and fighting the wars that powerful political types want us to fight.

Granted, they probably won’t say that overtly, but it is sort of implied. More often than not, there are all sorts of strange and poorly-defined layers towards what some consider obscene. The end result is usually the same. Those who fight it inevitably try to censor it, which can either backfire horribly or inspire a whole host of unintended consequences.

By and large, obscenity often involves two common themes: sex and violence. That’s not surprising. Sex and violence are basically the peanut butter and jelly in the sandwich that is human history. If we’re not obsessing over sex, then we’re violently fighting one another for control of resources, land, and the ability to hump who we want to hump.

While understandable, the debate today tends to be ridiculously skewed. There’s a lot of violence in the world. Nobody denies that. There’s also a lot of sex in the world. The mere fact there are over 7 billion humans on this planet is proof enough of that. However, when it comes to priorities, for some reason sex has gained a more obscene reputation than violence.

The best proof of that occurred a long time ago in a forgotten period known as 2005. It was a strange time. For some reason, America elected George W. Bush to a second term, flip phones were in style, and Yahoo was still relevant. It was a strange time indeed.

It was also a time when we lost our collective shit over the idea that there was a poorly rendered sex mini-game hidden inside a best-selling video game. Yes, it actually happened. Apparently, poorly rendered sex is considered obscene. Try saying that with a straight face for a moment and then get back to me.

It was called the “Hot Coffee” scandal. It emerged from a game called Grand Theft Auto: San Andres, the best-selling game of its time. This game was rated mature and it was already controversial for all the gratuitous violence it had, which included the ability to murder hookers and blow up cars with a machine gun. However, that’s not what put it over the edge. What made it obscene was two characters having consensual sex. The horror!

It’s been over a decade since then and I’m still struggling to wrap my head around it. I get that the game was mature rated. The violence and the plot is not for children, the faint of heart, or anyone who voted for Rick Santorum. However, the notion that consensual sex between two people is that obscene? I need a moment to process that.

I don’t think there are enough moments in the entire history of the known universe because it still fails the basic tenants of common sense, logic, and the fundamental forces of life. Violence can be pretty damn obscene. Anyone who has any experience with war or crime understands that. With sex, however, there’s a much broader spectrum.

On one end, you have two consenting adults in love, in the heat of passion, having sex in bed surrounded by candles with Barry White music playing in the background. That’s not obscene. That’s how a good chunk of the human race is created. It involves love, passion, pleasure, and the creation of life. You can’t get less obscene than that.

On the other end of the spectrum, however, you have the kind of depraved sex acts that would make even “50 Shades of Grey” fans vomit. There are extreme, perverse sexual proclivities that do leave scars, both physical and psychological. Those kinds of acts can be pretty obscene, but for the most part, they don’t kill or mutilate someone. At worst, they just make some people wish they were dead.

With violence, the spectrum is a lot less broad. There aren’t too many forms of violence that cause pleasure, create life, or make for good Playboy centerfolds. Violence, by definition, hurts people. It can be small and petty, which isn’t all that obscene. A slap in the face is about as obscene as a kiss on the cheek.

However, this is not reflected in media. If anything, the media and the culture surrounding it is downright schizophrenic when it comes to classifying violence and sex. Since I referred to video games earlier, I’ll cite another example.

There are a lot of mature-rated games with horrific violence. It’s not just Grand Theft Auto, but games like Doom, Wolfenstein, and Call of Duty do little to censor the blood and guts. Even so, you can buy most of these games at a Wal-Mart on Black Friday.

There are also lesser-known games that basically just involve players fondling, caressing, and having sex with beautiful woman and/or men. They’re not big on story, but that’s not their core appeal. Nobody dies and nobody gets hurt. There’s just a lot of gratuitous sex.

However, those games can’t be found in Wal-Mart. Those games are rated A for Adult, which means they can’t be sold in major retailers. That’s what it takes to be considered obscene. Kill and maim whoever you want, but God help you if you show two consenting adults having sex.

This schizophrenic disconnect on sex and violent extends to novels, a medium more relevant to my profession. As an erotica/romance writer, I understand that the stories I write are considered obscene, seamy, or dirty compared to your basic Stephen King novel. Even when nobody dies in my novels, they still have that reputation.

It’s a confusing and frustrating dynamic. It also becomes even more frustration when sex and violence become mixed. We see that all the time in slasher movies, which go out of their way to punish any character that dares have sex in a way the Catholic Church doesn’t approve of. We’re seeing it manifest in other ways, especially with the success of Game of Thrones.

If ever there was a perfect storm that embodied this twisted dynamic of sex and violence in media, it’s Game of Thrones. Whether you read the books or watch the hit HBO series, you see plenty of both. There’s a lot of killing, murder, and war. There’s also a lot of sex, nudity, and general depravity. It appeals to both of these primal forces, but one still takes precedent over the other.

This is not lost on author George R. R. Martin. He gets a lot of fan male and, presumably, a lot of pictures of naked women. He doesn’t gloss over the violence and sex in his story. He understands they’re both part of the themes he’s exploring. However, even he sees the distinct difference when people choose to get more upset over the sex and not the violence.

Now this is not to say that society’s concerns about sex aren’t warranted to some degree. As I’ve pointed out before, there were legitimate reasons to be weary of sexual promiscuity throughout history.

Human civilization, particularly the one we crafted when we entered the agricultural revolution, developed around a system where there were strong economic and survival pressures to discourage people form doing too much humping for fun. The system required that we know our kids are biologically ours. The system required that we have lots of babies to work the fields and fight the wars.

Even as we moved away from farms and fields, we still needed to be anxious about sex because too much of it would spread disease. It really wasn’t until the 20th century with the advent of antibiotics and modern contraception that many of these concerns became less dire.

Today, there are still consequences for rampant and unrestrained promiscuity, as various PSAs and sitcoms have shown. However, these consequences aren’t nearly as bad as the rampant violence and crime that still plagues this world. These days, two consenting adults having sex, regardless of their marital status or intentions, does little to no harm to anyone or society in general, but it’s still considered obscene.

I try to be more optimistic about the future of this twisted culture of ours. I try to be optimistic about the future in general. I do hope I live to see the day where erotica/romance novels like mine aren’t considered obscene by a sizable chunk of the population. At some point, even Rick Santorum supporters have acknowledge that gratuitous violence is more obscene than consensual sex.

It may take a while. We are a slow, cumbersome species that resists change when it’s not convenient. We’ve spent hundreds of years in a prudish, uptight society that still believes we need to pump out babies to work the fields and fight the wars while avoiding horrible diseases. Society isn’t going to lighten up overnight. It’s an ongoing process and one I hope my sexy, non-obscene novels will help.

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November 28, 2016 · 6:28 am

Alternate History Fiction: The Potential And Limits

Contrary to the sentiment I convey on this blog, there are other genres of fiction that tickle my fancy and not in the way that makes my pants feel tighter. It’s true. It is possible for someone to appreciate multiple genres of fiction, even those that are exceedingly different. I’ll give everyone a moment to get over the shock.

While I do consider erotica/romance my specialty as a writer, there is another genre I often contemplate in my quiet moments. It’s a genre that doesn’t make anyone who isn’t an ardent fan of The History Channel horny, but it has a unique appeal and one day, I do hope to explore that appeal in my own writings.

It’s called alternative history. No, I’m not talking about the history of BDSM or alternative relationships that involve multiple partners and/or aliens. I’m talking about elaborate, sometimes exceedingly detailed, scenarios that craft a whole new timeline of our history. From these scenarios, all sorts of stories can emerge. Some are pretty damn successful.

Probably the most recent examples involve Stephen King’s “11/22/63” and Philip K. Dick’s “The Man In The High Castle.” Both of these stories take a seminal event in recent history, namely World War II and the Kennedy assassination, and put a new twist on it. That twist can be pretty intriguing, even if some details would make a historian’s head explode.

Now I like alternative history. It’s one of those guilty pleasures I can enjoy with my pants on. However, there is a recurring theme in these stories and one that tends to undermine the narrative.

It’s an inescapable byproduct of the genre itself. In order to craft stories about alternative history, it’s necessary to make a few too many assumptions that can’t possibly be understood. Until we create a functioning time machine, we just don’t know how changing one detail or another would affect history. There’s a reason why Doc Brown was so uptight about that sort of thing in “Back To The Future.”

What bothers me most when I read historical fiction is how these assumptions tend to fuel certain biases. Those who speculate on the tweaks and alterations on the timelines tend to have an agenda. More often than not, that agenda requires that a good chunk of reality be ignored or, in some cases, spat upon.

By far, the most popular assumptions come from the various “What If” scenarios surrounding World War II. In many respects, World War II is to alternate history what “50 Shades of Grey” has become to BDSM erotica. It is essentially the standard by which all others are measured.

There are already so many flawed assumptions about this period in history and I say this as someone who had relatives fight in this war. Movies, TV, documentaries, and conspiracy bloggers like to craft this flawed image of World War II, as though it was a real battle against an evil force bent on world domination. That makes for great, iconic comic book stories, but it’s about as historically accurate as a Zack Snyder movie.

There are any number of stories that make the same claim. If Hitler had only done this or that, then we’d all be saluting a Nazi flag today and tiny mustaches would never have gone out of style. That’s a tempting and terrifying thought, but thankfully it’s about as valid as a physics lecture by Homer Simpson.

The truth is that the Nazis were never close to winning World War II, America’s involvement had little to no impact on the outcome of the war, and Hitler was an inept basket case who just had more luck than brains. History is rarely that frail because in general, people aren’t nearly as diabolical or heroic as the fiction we craft around them.

The same goes for the JFK assassination. There’s a whole cottage industry around the crazy conspiracy theories surrounding this assassination (see the non-Dan Brown version of the Illuminati). Oliver Stone even made a movie about it, which took so many liberties with proven facts that it would take multiple blog posts for me to list them.

Now I’m not saying these narratives don’t make for great stories. They do succeed in creating a world that’s much more interesting than the one we live in now. Unfortunately, it assumes too much of mankind’s ability to keep secrets, conduct wars, and document their various screw-ups.

For me, personally, I prefer alternative history that just doesn’t give a flying fuck about sticking to the facts. There are some stories that basically just give a big middle finger to history books and craft a less elaborate, but more colorful form of alternative history. For me, the one that really got me into the genre wasn’t a book. It was a video game, specifically this one.

That’s a header for Wolfenstein: The New Order, a video game that came out a few years ago. It’s a bloody, brutal, historically inaccurate shoot-em-up that gives everyone a chance to kill hordes of evil Nazis. It’s as much fun as it sounds.

It also has a powerful story that is, again, exceedingly inaccurate. However, it doesn’t try to be accurate. That’s what makes it fun. That’s what makes it engaging. Nobody outside Alex Jones fans are going to argue the plausibility of the events of this game.

It’s in that overtly implausible spirit that I feel inspired to craft my own alternative history story. However, I don’t want it to be one of those stories that preventing JFK’s assassination will lead to a hippie utopia or that Hitler sleeping in would somehow change the course of World War II. For my alternate history scenario, it needs to be more ambitious. It also needs to be much sexier.

Yes, history tends to be pretty repressive when it comes to sex, but it can still be pretty damn sexy. If you don’t believe me, do some research on the antics of Cleopatra, Theadora, and Catherine the Great. Hell, look up some of the massive amounts of erotica produced during the Victoria era. I promise your pants will be tight for a week. It’s no wonder they needed chastity belts back then.

History is full of horny men, horny women, and people trying to thwart horny men and horny women. Most of the time, those trying to thwart horniess are shoveling sand against the tide. In the long run, the desire to hump, hug, and orgasm wins out.

So with that dirty, sexy thought in mind, I feel like there’s potential to craft a different course of history, one where that potential can manifest into something an erotica/romance writer can appreciate. If done right, I can make history the sexiest topic we all slept through in high school.

How would I do that? When in the timeline would it take place? How much will I upset historians with the liberties I take? Well, these are the kinds of detailed questions that I’m still fleshing out. If and when I complete this process, I’d like to build upon this narrative and possibly set the standard for a sexier brand of alternate history. Between our collective fascination with alternative timelines and BDSM erotica, I think there’s an audience for it.

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November 27, 2016 · 8:30 am

More Sexy Sunday Thoughts

It’s Sunday morning. It’s after an official holiday in Thanksgiving. It’s also after an unofficial holiday in Black Friday. So for those of us who love food, shopping, and everything in between, we’re pretty spent. We’re burned out on turkey, pumpkin pie, potatoes, and navigating crowded malls that often lead to fist-fights over parking spots. So how are we going to recover?

That’s not a rhetorical question. I’m serious because at this very moment, I still feel like a a hung over sumo wrestler. I’ve had so much turkey and done so much shopping. Both my stomach and my credit card are turning against me. I’ll recover, but I’m going to need some help.

Being an erotica/romance writer, my skills are somewhat limited in that respect. However, in my experience, such feelings of bloat and burnout are best handled by simpler feelings that even our cavemen ancestors would appreciate. Now I’m not implying that it has to be the sexy kind of feelings, but those are the feelings I have the most experience with. They also happen to work so why argue with results?

With that in mind, I’d like to share another edition of Jack Fisher’s sexy Sunday thoughts. I thought the last entry went over fairly well. If possible, I’d like to make this a regular thing for those who need to recover from a hard week or, in this case, an eventful holiday. So sit back, let all that turkey and pie digest, and enjoy a few sensual musings from an aspiring erotica/romance writer. Enjoy!

When you have a quick fuck in the shower, is it dirty or clean?

Isn’t that the existential question that every frisky couple ponders?

The thought of breasts and the sight of breasts have a similar effect on straight men.

It’s no secret. Men have dirty imaginations. You can pixilate them all you want. Men are still going to respond to breasts in ways the FCC and the Catholic Church don’t like.

Is it physically possible for a beautiful woman to eat a banana in a way that doesn’t seem sexual?

I’ve tried to think of a scenario. Even with my twisted  imagination, I still can’t.

Does the fact that lips can sometimes look like an engorged vagina make gay men feel conflicted?

I’m not gay, but I’m often curious about how they manage their sex lives. There are more than a few issues where I feel they may need to get creative.

We shudder at the thought of our parents having sex, but they also shudder at the thought of their children having sex. That says a lot about how much nature trusts our libido.

I’ve always wondered about this. I think it may be some elaborate way to keep us from humping everything. Then again, it must not work because incest porn is still a thing.

Generally speaking, there’s no such thing as an unsexy rich man.

I’m not saying all women are enamored with rich men, but I do think it’s too pragmatic a way to make use of good looks. It’s also proof that having nice breasts counts as a good investments.

The invention of bikinis and lingerie is proof that people had to get creative in the days before internet porn.

In every society, there needs to be an outlet for horny men. Both necessity and horniess can be powerful motivators that produce amazing results.

Does drinking really make us horny? Or does it just make us realize how horny we actually are?

It’s another one of those existential questions that doesn’t have a real answer. In the end, I think the truth will often lie somewhere in between.

That’s it for now. Hope this helps aid in your post-holiday recovery and/or puts you in the mood, whichever comes first. If you have any other sexy thoughts you’d like to share to cap off this holiday weekend, please do.

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November 26, 2016 · 7:56 am

An Early New Years Resolution

Just thought I’d share a quick personal story from the annual Thanksgiving gathering I have with my family. I try not to get too personal on this blog, unless it involves a certain amount of nudity, but I feel it’s therapeutic to get personal with strangers on the internet. So long as they don’t include pictures of my penis, I think it’s good for me.

Family gatherings at my house are always such a festive and chaotic affair. I come from a big family and, as I’ve said before, we’re big on hugging. I also have a number of siblings, cousins, and relatives who invite their friends over to the house. We stay up late, we drink, we play cards, and we just have a genuinely great time.

One thing in recent years has stood out though. More and more of my siblings, as well as my cousins, have been inviting their significant others over to the house for some holiday fun. I know some may shudder at the thought of strangers participating in what should be a family affair, but my family doesn’t care whether you’re related. If you’re going to contribute to the love and are okay with hugs, you’re welcome to join.

I certainly enjoy the extra company. However, this year made me feel like I really need to make an extra effort of sorts. What do I mean by that? It’s simple. For next year’s big family gathering on Thanksgiving, I want to bring a significant other of my own to the big party.

Think of it as an early New Years Resolution. I’ve been single for a while now and it’s getting to the point where it is somewhat disconcerting to me. I’ve been putting my personal life on hold so I can focus harder on my efforts to become a published author. Some of those efforts are paying off so I can’t keep using that excuse. I need to re-focus my efforts to find a significant other I can share my sexy stories with more intimately.

It feels like something that an erotica/romance writer needs for both personal and professional reasons. I write all these stories about love, sex, and intimacy. All the while, my own personal life is lacking in these departments. If I can find someone who can complement these passions of mine, I think it can only help me in my writing, among other things.

So as of now, the clock starts. By this time next year, I want to have a significant other to bring home to the family. It’s going to be a challenge. I’m in my 30s now and there’s a lot about my life I’d like to share. I’m sure my family will give me all sorts of advice, but at the end of the day, I still need to make the effort. Hopefully, by this time next year, I’ll write a post proudly proclaiming that I succeeded in the most sexy way possible.

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November 25, 2016 · 8:48 am

A Sexy Anecdote About Black Friday

Does everybody feel full, bloated, and somewhat hung over? Good, because that’s a sign you had a great Thanksgiving. Even if you’re a health nut who agonizes over every calorie you ingest, this is a holiday where you punch your diet in the jaw, throw it out the window, and dive head-first into the nearest cheesecake. It’s part of the holiday spirit.

I certainly did my share of gorging yesterday. Yes, I do feel like a beached whale who had one too many glasses of whiskey. No, I don’t regret a goddamn thing. I love Thanksgiving. I love the food, family, and football it inspires. I also love the day that comes after it as well. It’s not exactly a holiday, but it can be just as much fun if you do it right.

Yes, I’m talking about Black Friday, that holiest of shopping days that inspire people to cut their Thanksgiving dinner short to stand in line at a big box store in hopes of saving a couple hundred bucks on something that’ll probably be cheaper in a couple months. It’s commercialism at its most egregious. The Catholic Church wishes it could inspire this kind of hysteria.

Personally, I love Black Friday. I love to wake up early, fight off a hangover, and go shopping. I know that’s not a very guy thing to do. I can’t say I care if it were. I’ve always loved to shop.

My mom actually told me stories about how she took me shopping when I was a baby. She claimed that was one of our favorite pastimes. I imagine it instilled in me a love of shopping that remains to this day. Compared to the other loves my mother could’ve instilled, I’ll gladly take this. For that, I thank her.

However, there’s another reason I’m fond of Black Friday shopping and it’s a much sexier reason. Sorry mom, but as an adult, sexier reasons do tend to resonate more with young men like me. In the spirit of Black Friday, I’d like to share that reason in the form of a sexy little story.

A number of years ago, back when I was still in college, I was dating this girl. She was cute, witty, and had a real dirty mouth, but in the most lovable of ways. We had been together for a while since then so when she had a chance to visit me on Thanksgiving, we jumped at the opportunity.

It turned out to be a lot of fun. She really enjoyed herself and my family certainly adored her company. There are a lot of dirty mouths in my family too so she fit right in. However, it was what happened on Black Friday, the day afterwards, that helped make that holiday extra memorable.

The day after Thanksgiving, my girlfriend insisted we go shopping. She didn’t need to do much to convince me, which I think surprised her. She loved to shop too so what better way for a young couple to enjoy their holidays than to share in their mutual loves?

My parents, being so wonderfully supportive of my love life, lent me their car so I could drive her up to the mall. Naturally, it was very crowded. You couldn’t take two steps without bumping into someone. It was so chaotic and so busy and we loved it. Dare I say, it put us in the mood.

How do I know this? Well, one of the first stores we visited was Victoria’s Secret. As a young man in his early 20s, that’s akin to a topless bikini model on a beach asking you if you’ll rub lotion on her tits. I can’t remember a time as an adult that didn’t involve bacon or chocolate where my face lit up so much.

Together, we ventured into that Victoria’s Secret. We were a couple shopping for sexy lingerie. I swear my heart and my penis teamed up to excite me and I think my girlfriend knew it. She actually let me assess some lingerie for her, which for me was like that same topless bikini model asking me how I would like to be pampered. I really did feel like a kid on Christmas morning.

I don’t know how long we stayed in that Victoria’s Secret store. To me, it wasn’t long enough, but we did leave with something sexy to enjoy later. I don’t remember what else we shopped for that day or what we ended up buying, but it felt like we had a more productive Black Friday than anyone else at the mall that day, including the guy we saw loading a 70-inch TV into the back of his SUV.

It only got better the next morning. We had a long night the night before so we didn’t get a chance to make use of the sexy lingerie we brought. My girlfriend, though, was nothing if not opportunistic on the holidays. So at around 5 a.m., she knocked on my door (my parents made us sleep in separate rooms) and gave me the best mourning wake-up call a 20-year-old guy could ask for.

Yes, she was wearing the new lingerie we just bought the other day and while it may have put her on Santa’s naughty list,  it made her worthy of every gift I could give. After I picked my jaw up off the floor, she crawled into bed with me. It was freezing that morning too so we had plenty of reasons to get cozy and comfortable.

Thanks to that lingerie, we warmed each other up pretty damn quickly. Out of respect for a very generous ex-girlfriend, I won’t go into too many details. I’ll just say that our hands, lips, and various other body parts made us feel wonderfully festive.

While I did eventually break up with this girl, she’ll always have a special place in my heart. Thanks to the lingerie I helped her pick out that day, Black Friday will also have a special place in my heart, among other parts of my body.

So with that sexy subtext in mind, I hope everybody out there enjoys their Black Friday shopping. I hope the lovers out there make sexy lingerie a priority. It can only make the holidays sexier and more festive.

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November 24, 2016 · 8:41 am

Happy Thanksgiving!

Is everybody as hungry as I am today? I hope so. Today is a special day. Today, we give thanks to everything that enriches are lives, be it food, family, football, or erotica/romance novels.

I have a lot to be thankful for. I’m not just talking about one of my novels being picked up by a publisher either. I have an awesome family. I have a great life. I also live in an age where I can download a billion pictures of female breasts into my phone on demand. It’s a wonderful time to be alive.

So on behalf of me, Jack Fisher, I wish everyone a safe, happy, and sexy Thanksgiving. Please go out, spend some time with family, watch some football, eat some turkey, and find some time to make love to your lovers along the way. Let us all give thanks to that which makes our loves happy, fun, and sexy!

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November 23, 2016 · 6:47 am

Finding Love Through A Twisted Sense Of “Normal”

I’ve always been bothered by the concept of “normal” and not just because the concept of normalcy makes it difficult to tell a sufficiently sexy romance/erotica story. It’s just a fact of life. Nobody’s boxers are getting tight and nobody’s panties are getting wet by reading about something bland and ordinary.

The characters I write in my books rarely fall under the guise of “normal” and if they do, it doesn’t last or their concept of normal is overtly skewed. Grace Goodwin, the main character in my book, “The Final Communion,” may have been normal by the twisted standards of her surroundings, but from an outside perspective, she might as well be a monkey in a banana factory.

This concept of “normal” has been on my mind a lot lately and not just because I worry about the not-so-normal sentiment I may get by being over 30 and single. Since my pending novel, “Passion Relapse,” finally got picked up by a publisher, I’ve been contemplating ways to follow up the themes that made that book work.

No, I’m not talking about a shameless, Rocky Balboa-style sequel. I’m not looking to build a goddamn Twilight franchise out of one novel. I’m just assessing the elements that worked in “Passion Relapse” so I can refine those elements for bigger, better, and sexier stories. The more pants I can tighten and panties I can moisten, the better.

After revising, editing, and even rewriting certain parts of “Passion Relapse,” I think I’ve gotten a better feel for what makes the characters involved so appealing. Naturally, they are admittedly not normal. In fact, they’re so not normal that their non-normal behavior causes them serious pain and distress. It gets very heated and not just in a sexy sort of way.

This got me thinking and for an aspiring erotica/romance writer, that can lead to any number of crazy/sex/awesome ideas. In this case, I find myself imaging a situation where someone has such a skewed sense of “normal” that most people who survived high school with their sanity intact can’t wrap their heads around it.

I’m not talking about extreme religious cults, like I did with “The Final Communion” or exotic futuristic technology like I did with “Skin Deep.” In fact, there is a very real-world parallel to this idea here. Sadly, it involves the inherently unsexy topic of abusive relationships.

I’ll give everyone a moment to unclench their assholes. I promise, this conversation isn’t going to get that disturbing. There are plenty of real-world examples where abusive romances have become exceedingly disturbing, up to the point where they become annoyingly permanent fixtures in popular culture. Then again, they can also become classic Disney movies so there is room to tell a story.

In this case, the story I’m interesting in telling has to do with someone who sees an abusive relationship as normal. No, I don’t mean the kind of abuse that makes for fun BDSM roles, which can actually be healthy. I’m talking about the really bad kind of abusive relationships that makes nobody horny in any capacity.

It is a real issue. There are women (and even a few men) who end up in abusive relationships, but become so accustomed to them that they seem normal. It’s that twisted sense of normalcy that skews our perspective that creates situations where people stay in these relationships or struggle to leave them.

A couple years ago, Time did an article about women who stayed in abusive relationships. The reasons were varied, ranging from concern about children to this twisted sense of responsibility that they had to be the ones to help. There are all sorts of sad, tragic, and distressing stories here. How can anyone make a story like that sexy?

It’s a good thing I love a challenge. I especially love a challenge that gives me a chance to create a novel, unique form of romance that’ll stand out in a sea of vampires, princesses, and male strippers. This won’t be a story that involves aliens, unreal technology, or supernatural forces either. This will be as raw, real, and sexy as I can make it.

Are your assholes unclenched? Good because this is a story that, like “Passion Relapse,” will emphasize romance more than the sexy stuff. Make no mistake, the sexy stuff will be there. You will need dry panties at one point. However, I want to focus on the emotional undertones for this story.

How will I do this? Once again, it requires a thought experiment. I know I ask my readers to do a lot of those on this blog, but I promise it’s for a good reason. It may not always make you horny, but it will get you thinking for the right reasons.

Picture somebody, male or female, who comes from a family in which being somewhat abusive and controlling is considered normal. Their parents have an abusive relationship. Their siblings have abusive relationships. This is just how their family is. This is how they’ve been. Since we do tend to adopt our parents’ beliefs and attitudes, it’s not wholly unrealistic.

Now, picture that same person, be they male or female, encountering something (or someone) that shakes their world. It completely undermines their understanding of what it means to be in a relationship, to love someone, or even what constitutes abuse. It’s so profound and so jarring that it overwhelms someone into completely reassessing everything they thought they knew about themselves.

I’d love to reveal more, but this is a developing idea. This is a concept I’m still fleshing out. However, there is one theme I want to emphasize here. Someone who sees something so harmful as normal sometimes needs a really jarring event to shake them out of this mindset. Some won’t even question their idea of normal until it’s shoved in their face.

This can be (and often is) traumatic. This is why admitting your wrong is right up there with dental surgery and rectal trauma in terms of unpleasantness. Our brains aren’t wired to constantly change and rethink things. It’s wired to remain consistent so we can focus on surviving bear attacks long enough to reproduce.

So how does someone escape that twisted idea of normalcy? How do they avoid the same tragedies they’ve seen in family and loved ones? For this story, there will definitely be obstacles and some of those obstacles can make fists. It’s a real challenge, but one that can bring out the best and worst in some people.

Working on “Passion Relapse” has given me a renewed sense of energy in confronting that challenge. I feel like this is a story worth telling. It’s a story that may be more relevant now than ever with issues like spousal abuse and harassment being such hot-button issues. If I can confront that issue and make it into a sexy story, then I feel like I’ve done my job.

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November 22, 2016 · 6:40 am

Breaking Down The “Creepiness” Factor

Have you ever had a man or woman in your life that makes you so uncomfortable that you wish you’d go out of your way to be in a different time zone? What was it about them that made you so uncomfortable that you were poised to become an Olympic sprinter if they got within 10 feet of you? Would you describe them as “creepy?”

Chances are, calling them “creepy” would probably be the most polite way to describe such people. Everybody’s concept of “creepy” may be different to some degree, but like bad porno, we all know it when we see it. In biological terms, it’s our “fight or flight” instinct going into overdrive for reasons that have nothing to do with facing a hungry grizzly bear.

Even if we all have an idea of what constitutes “creepy,” it’s one of those ideas we don’t scrutinize that much. Again, it’s one of those “I know it when I see it” type feelings and unlike bad porno, it can affect our lives in pretty profound ways. It’s led to a plague of creepy clown sightings. I’d say it’s more serious now than it has ever been in recent years.

What does it mean to be “creepy” though? This is one of those concepts for which a dictionary just doesn’t do the trick. It’s so subjective and personal that one person’s phobia is another person’s fetish. Those who are into clown porn probably understand this more than most.

It’s also a serious question for a guy like me. Recently, I talked about some of the strange looks I get when people find out I’m in my 30s and still single. While I don’t dress like a clown and collect hairs of young women, that does evoke a certain “creepiness” factor for some people. They see a single guy in his 30s and a part of them thinks that’s just wrong somehow, even if there’s nothing on the surface that comes close to clown makeup.

At its core, our revulsion to those we deep creepy is an extension of our gag reflex. When it comes to protecting our frail, fleshy forms, nature can’t be gentle. It has to make the process of vomiting or wanting to vomit so debilitating and uncomfortable that it drives us away from distressing situations. Without that sort of gag reflex, what would stop us from swimming in a pool of elephant poop too cool off on a hot summer day?

As is often the case with nature, our gag reflex tends to be overly broad and for some people, it severely overcompensates. That means the things that make us gag don’t always involve seeing a dead horse floating around in a pool. They can involve how and why we avoid certain people.

Sometimes those people do have a reason for being avoided. I’ve walked by homeless people who clearly have issues that go beyond just being homeless. Some of them do a lot more than just ask for money. Some will go out of their way to tell you that there’s a fairy on their shoulder who refuses to scratch their butthole. That’s usually going to trigger a gag reflex for most reasonable people.

However, those situations are the obvious ones. The situations that effect most people, including some people like me, are a bit more subtle. We all have traits and quirks that set us apart. We can’t always control when someone sees those things and calls them “creepy.”

For some people, my love of comic books and infatuation with sexy superhero women counts as creepy. For others, it’s a reason to hold a major convention in New York City. One person’s creepy obsession can be another person’s passion.

Then, there’s the added bit of overcompensation that we as a society heap on all things creepy. What does that entail? Well, most kids who attend a public school these days get a crash course in something called “stranger danger.”

When I was in school, it was a big fucking deal. We would have assemblies in the middle of the day to hear counselors and police officers tell us about the danger of talking to strangers. Never mind the fact that the amount of dangerous strangers is a tiny sub-set of most strangers. Never mind that a good chunk of crime and abuse comes from intimate partners and not strangers. We need to keep kids from getting kidnapped, damn it!

I get it. This is a big fear for parents and communities. It’s not an unreasonable fear, wanting to protect kids from creeps, but urging the to stay away from strangers can have side-effects. It can make kids mistrustful, paranoid, and even xenophobic. Later in life, these kids will become the adults that wants to kick minorities and foreigners out of their country.

We’ve already seen recently how this can have some pretty serious impacts on society. I won’t go into details, but I think recent trends in wall-building enthusiasts speak for themselves.

Now I’m not going to say that we should ignore the things that spike our “creep” factor. Again, that feeling is there for a damn good reason. Until we become superhuman cyborgs, which may happen one day, we need that reflex to remain. However, we also need to avoid pushing people to the fringes of society who don’t deserve it.

This might just be the hugger in me, but we do ourselves no favors by focusing on the “creepiness” in everybody. We all have our quirks. So long as those quirks don’t involve mutilation, exploitation, or clowns, we should give people a chance. If they mess up that chance, then that’s their problem and not yours at that point.

We want to be safe. We want to protect our kids. However, it is possible to overdo it. We can be doing more harm than good to those around us. Let’s not assume the extremes of creepiness outright. Until they put on clown makeup, let’s give people the chance they deserve.

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November 21, 2016 · 6:20 am

Being Single At My Age: Should I Worry?

A while back, I was walking through a mall, as I often do on a nice weekend. This particular mall happened to have these kiosks where people would walk up to you and try to sell you anything from beauty products to exotic vacations to cult membership. I’m usually pretty good at ignoring them, but one in particular got my attention.

This woman was selling some sort of fancy skin care product. She did her pitch. I listened, trying to find a polite way to brush her off. Then, she said this product would make a great gift. She asked if I was married. I said no. She then asked if I had a girlfriend. I said no. Then, she asked me something that kind of struck me.

She looks at me strangely, gives me this cock-eyed glance with her eyes, and asks, “Are you gay?” I said no and I laughed it off. She laughed too and after that, I had a good reason to walk away. However, something about that conversation really struck me. As time goes on, it strikes me even harder and not in the way most BDSM enthusiasts would enjoy.

It’s one thing for a guy in his early to mid 20s to be single. Society really doesn’t look down on that. We see a young guy in his 20s who is single and think:

“He must between girlfriends. That or he’s just humping everyone and everything he can to get it out of his system before he settles down. That’s okay. I will not shame him. He’s a valuable part of the labor force so it’s probably not a good idea to bust his balls.”

Okay, maybe that’s not exactly what we think when we see a young 20-something single guy, but it’s a close approximation. The point is that when a man is young, society is okay with him being single and unattached. We don’t look at that as anything strange or suspicious.

That all seems to change when a man crosses that special, magical threshold otherwise known as “turning 30.” I’m over 30 and I’ve been over 30 for a while now. I try to stay healthy. I made it a point several years ago to be healthier in my 30s than I was in my 20s. I like to think I’ve kept that promise to myself.

However, no matter how much I work out or how healthy I am, I can’t change the number of days that have passed since I was born. That also means I can’t change the fact that I’m single and over the age of 30. For whatever reason, that’s the age where being single suddenly becomes an issue.

It’s another one of those lesser-known double standards. I’ve bemoaned many of the double standards plaguing women and men, but this one affects me personally. It may very well affect my ability to find love, interact with the public, or work ahead in my career. It’s a serious issue for me and one that I don’t know how to address.

It may sound like a trivial, first-world problem by current standards, but it is there. We’ve made a lot of societal progress. We no longer arrange marriages for our children and force them to stay in passionless, abusive relationships. I say that counts as progress in my book.

A byproduct of this progress, though, is that we’re going to end up with a sizable population of men and women who either lag behind or never really catch up in the end. It’s true. There is a stigma to being single these days. I’m not just talking about a stigma that amounts to the “creepy guy” factor either.

When we find out someone like me in their 30s is single, society has these strange set of assumptions that are somewhat understandable within a context. I’m not saying those assumptions are right, but there is a context. So when people find out a man is over 30 and single, there are sentiments like:

  • He must be gay or something
  • He must be some kind of pervert who can’t get a woman
  • He must have some kind of mental health issue
  • He must have some sort of gross habit that repels women
  • He must be a serial killer or a child molester in the making
  • He must be abusive or selfish to an extreme degree
  • He must be some kind of man-whore who only sees women as disposable tissues
  • He must be terrible with kids
  • He must be broke and have nothing to offer

These are all harsh assumptions. Some are more extreme than others. Again, there is a context though. For most of human history, we lived in small tribes. Men and women often paired up out of necessity and convenience at young ages. If someone, male or female, became distant from the tribe, that was inherently harmful to the tribe. In that sense, the stigma is understandable.

Here in the modern era, the circumstances have changed, but the caveman logic hasn’t. A single man in his 30s is often seen as a sign of a larger problem. It’s still seen as a failing of sorts. Even in this more progressive era, men are expected to be married or in some form of relationships after a certain age. They’re expected to be locked into some sort of social bond. When they don’t meet that expectation, that’s cause for concern.

This has a real impact that goes deeper than just creepy glares and accusations of being gay. Some of these impacts affect men much more than women as well. It means that when I see a cute kid and play around with that kid, it’s going to come off as creepy to some people. A single man in his 30s playing with a kid? That makes some people shudder for reasons I don’t think I need to describe.

It also has an economic impact. If you’re a single man over 30 and you’re working full-time, you can expect to make less than a single woman the same age. Society does, and understandably so, reward those who are married and in relationships. I can understand society wanting to incentivize those in relationships, but sometimes incentives can have a snowball affect.

I worry that as I get older, the stigma will become harder and harder to avoid. With each passing year that goes by without me getting in a relationship, people are going to start making more and more assumptions. As a result, people will also keep their distance from me. For someone like me, a natural hugger, that can be pretty damaging.

It’s a self-reinforcing cycle, one that will make things worse in the long run. It’s a cycle that may drive me to enter a relationship for the wrong reasons and I don’t want to put myself, or any woman for that matter, through such an experience.

I do want to find love. I do want to forge close, intimate relationships with others. I just worry that my age and the stigma that comes with being single will work against me. I hold out hope that I’ll find someone to share my life with one day. I just hope that day comes sooner rather than later.

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