Jack Fisher's Official Publishing Blog

Quick update on my latest project. I’m happy to say it’s nearing an endpoint. I always find that to be one of the most exciting parts of a book. There’s nothing like that feeling you get when you complete a story, step back, and look at what you’ve created in its entirety. I won’t say it’s like sex, but it’s still pretty satisfying.

I’m still a ways away from submitting this to a publisher. Just finishing a book is the first step. Granted, it’s the most important and often the most time-consuming, but it’s still only part of a larger process. I’ve never written something that didn’t require some level of revision. I’m not talking about correcting grammar or punctuation either. Even great stories require polish at some point. Sometimes a scene needs to be tweaked. Sometimes a character needs to be fleshed out. Sometimes a setting needs more imagery. The opposite is also true. Sometimes things need to be completely removed. Sometimes it’s tedious, but it helps add to the satisfaction.

I’ll post more info on this story as my work continues. I still haven’t settled on a title yet. That may change before I start submitting it to publishers. Once that occurs, the hardest part begins, which is waiting. Thankfully, I already have another story in mind and that should keep me busy in the meantime.

Got some exciting news over the weekend. Thanks to some friendly Twitter chats, I chatted with someone who works for ComicsVerse, a website dedicated to the in depth analysis and cultural exploration of comics. The chat went well and I’ve been asked to contribute to their site. It’s a new, up-and-coming site so it’s not like I’m joining a subsidiary of Random House, but it’s a chance to interact and exchange ideas with others who think like me. As such, it’s a chance I hope to take advantage of.

It’s a promising opportunity. In addition to writing romance and erotica, I’m a huge comic book fan. In many respects, comics and the narratives they create has inspired a lot of what I’ve written. Some character concepts in books like Skin Deep were inspired by some of my favorite comic characters. Those who are familiar with that world will see the signs when they read the book.

Like any medium, comics also utilize many romantic themes. Most are familiar with Superman saving Lois Lane or Spider-Man saving Mary Jane Watson. However, these themes sometimes become more mature than what we see in movies or Saturday morning cartoons. The past two decades in particular have explored those mature themes, but only to a point. They’ll never utilize the same level of erotica that I use in my stories. However, the potential is there and it’s potential I think is worth realizing.

I’m not sure what will come of this. I’m also not sure of how it’ll help my career, but I’m eager to find out. I’ve been browsing the ComicsVerse website. They do have an appreciation for romance. They even dedicated several podcasts to the subject. Anyone who is interested in romance should check it out. Comics are evolving as an art form and romance is part of that evolution.

Top Couples in Comics Podcasts

I came across this article recently and it got me thinking. It asked a simple question. Is marriage still worth it? It’s a provocative title. It’s also a bit misleading once you get into the content, but the question itself raises other questions that are worth contemplating.

Forbes: Is Marriage Still Worth It?

Before anyone can answer that question, it’s important to point out context. Marriage today is very different from the marriage of the past. In fact, the whole concept of marrying someone for love is a fairly new phenomenon and there have even been periods in history where marrying for love is seen as detrimental. For most of human history, marriage relationships were business arrangements or social constructs meant to help stabilize society, roles, etc. Considering that for most of human history, people toiled in fields or factories, it makes logistical and economic sense. Society, like any living institution, adapts to fit the conditions its in.

However, conditions have changed. Situations have changed. The fundamentals of society have changed and will continue to change. And yet many people still cling to notions that the traditions of the past still function in this new and constantly changing present. I see it play out in so many romance stories. The deep, passionate, one person loving another until the end of time is almost universal. I don’t doubt there’s a place for that and always will be, but as society evolves, I think there’s room for alternatives.

What kind of alternatives though? Is it possible to create an iconic romance story with such an alternative? I ask this as someone who has written most of his stories about classic romance dynamics. Two characters fall in love, overcome obstacles, and come together. However, I did break that tradition with The Final Communion. This book actually did something different in the end. I won’t spoil it, but it didn’t stick to the formula and I found it oddly satisfying in many respects.

So now I find myself considering other stories that utilize very different forms of romance and relationships. I also think that as society evolves, more and more of those alternatives will find their way into romance and erotica. I think the next couple of decades will be very telling. The pace of change in society is accelerating. At some point, we as a people will have to change with it and that includes our concepts of romance.

As I finish up one story, I’m already hard at work planning another. With each story, however, I have important decisions to make before I even type the first word. One major, often overlooked, detail is the point of view I use for the story and which character’s view I favor. Stories involving romance and erotica are often told from a character’s point of view. It’s often vital in order to convey the necessary feelings and emotions.

In some of my earlier stories, I used third person for the most part. I didn’t just use it for one character though. In both Skin Deep and The Secrets of Sadfur Island, I alternated among the characters. With Skin Deep, I often alternated between several. It did get chaotic at times, but for that story, it was necessary. There were multiple perspectives from multiple characters that each helped tie the story together.

In later stories, I tried to simplify the perspective to help streamline the story. Both Jackpot and Holiday Heat are told from the perspective of one particular character. That can be limiting in some ways, but it’s also more genuine and less confusing. No matter where anyone is in the story, they know whose perspective they’re dealing with. They know whose thoughts, feelings, and emotions are guiding the story.

Perspective or not, those two stories were still written from a distant third person point of view. To date, I’ve only done one story entirely from a first person point of view. That story is The Final Communion, which was told entirely from within the mind of Grace Maria Goodwin. That story offered some interesting challenges and some unique benefits. Writing from one character’s perspective does help personalize the story a bit more. It also helps make for some interesting interpretations of erotic and romantic moments. I’d definitely be interested in hearing some feedback from readers who have read this book compared to my earlier works.

I bring this up because while I’m not yet done with my next self-published book, I am already contemplating my next story. I’m not sure whether I’ll continue to tell the story from a single third-person perspective or whether I’ll give first person another shot. It depends on how I choose to develop the story. I still have time to make that decision, but it’s a decision I want to make soon. I’ve got a lot of ideas and I’m eager to put them into a book.

I’m always looking to improve my craft. With every story I write, I want it to be an improvement over its predecessor. Writing isn’t a skill you master. It’s a skill you’re always working on, always trying to improve in any way you can. In that respect, I do seek out advice wherever I can. Recently, I found this video that offers some nice insights. Hopefully, these qualities show in my next project.

I’ve been writing stories about romance and erotica for years. Since I was a teenager, I’ve tried to conjure epic stories that inspire passions. However, there’s no story that I can tell, or any writer can tell for that matter, that compares to real life sometimes.

It’s true. Love is far from dead. Every generation likes to think romance and love is in decline. I believe it has always been strong and will continue to be strong, regardless of trends in culture, technology, or politics. Love evolves and changes with the times, but its core power remains the same. With that in mind, here are 10 amazing love stories, courtesy of Listverse, that should help remind everyone that romance is as strong as ever.

10 Amazing Stories of Love That Will Break Your Heart

There are a number of themes I like to play with when writing romance and erotica. I like to think I’ve made those things abundantly clear, sometimes in a very graphic manner, with my writing. Some concepts just interest me. Issues like repression and venting pent up feelings make for great drama and inspire the vast majority of my stories.

These themes fall within two categories:

1. Realistic manifestations of romance, drama, and passion
2. Manifestations of romance, drama, and passion that exceed human abilities, if not through magic then through some other means

They’re very different methods of developing a story. Stories like Jackpot and Holiday Heat have nothing in it that doesn’t exist in the real world. However, a story like Skin Deep injects superhuman abilities into the mix. These aren’t superhuman abilities in the same mold of superhero movies. These are abilities that allow men and women to carry out feats that normal people can’t carry out in the real world. In the case of Skin Deep, it’s an exotic kind of science that fuels the story. It’s a science that doesn’t exist in the real world…yet. So in some sense, the passions I explore in these stories are thought experiments.

I bring this up because lately, most of my stories have opted for realism. That’s going to change once “Embers of Eros” comes out. That story will do a lot more than Skin Deep. It will deal with forces to stretch our ability to perceive and process such feelings. It deals in forces that might be construed as magic, but doesn’t anything we can’t understand seem like magic?

It’s a difficult concept to wrap your head around. It’s also a major challenge, which I’m proud to take on. These days, a romance/erotica story involving superhuman abilities usually involves vampires or werewolves. I think market for those stories is a bit crowded. I hope “Embers of Eros” can offer something different for those who seek a more fanciful story.

Over the next few days, we can expect every angle of the Orlando Shooting incident to be dissected, broken down, and misconstrued. It happens after every mass shooting. The media, pundits, and commenters on message boards will come up with theories as to how and why someone can become so deranged that they would commit such a terrible atrocity. They’ll blame bad parenting, religious indoctrination, godlessness, poor education, easy access to firearms, and drug abuse.No matter what the excuse, it’ll be impossible to know what drove the shooter to commit these atrocities.

However, one explanation in particular is interesting and unorthodox. It is most likely wrong to some degree, but it has a certain level of validity that’s hard to ignore. Bill Maher brought it up last year on his show, Real Time. I’ll let him explain it.

It’s oddly compelling, the idea that unrealized sexual desire could drive someone to commit such atrocities. We cannot forget that sex is a powerful drive. It’s very much akin to the drives that make us seek out food, water, and shelter. Our brains, bodies, and minds are wired to satisfy these drives. If someone is denied food or water, then it’s very likely that they will behave irrationally to satisfy these needs. So if someone is denied a means of satisfying their sexual needs, it makes sense that it would lead to some irrational and dangerous behaviors.

It’s important to remember though that these mass shooters are on the extreme end of a broad spectrum. Not everyone who is denied their sexual needs will become a mass shooter. However, it is an interesting notion that denial of basic needs can cause so much inner distress.

Like many over the past day or so, I’ve been following the terrible story of the shooting in an Orlando nightclub. It is both a tragedy and an atrocity in the highest order. It’s truly unconscionable that a man could see a group of people dancing and having fun, yet feel the kind of hatred and anger that would drive him to commit such an atrocity.

The fact that the targets were LGBT individuals makes this act especially hateful. This is an already-maligned minority who has been the target of hatred and bigotry for years, sometimes from leading presidential candidates. Hatred is bad enough, but when that hatred manifests into carnage on this scale, it is truly horrific.

I think it says a lot about the flaws in the human psyche that we are capable of having such hatred and hostility towards our fellow human being. At the same time, it is important to maintain  ascertain perspective. There’s a reason why these terrible atrocities are such huge news stories. They’re rare. They’re very rare. If they happened all the time, then they wouldn’t be news. So those tempted to adopt a more cynical view of mankind should pump the breaks. This madman, whose name I refuse to acknowledge, is an aberration and should be treated as such. His hatred for a vulnerable minority should not overwhelm our love for our fellow human being.

My thoughts and condolences are with the victims and their families. I hope more share in the outpouring of support. I also hope it encourages others to stand against those who preach and encourage hatred.