Tag Archives: romance

January 10, 2017 · 6:28 am

Love Or Obsession: First Literary Edition

After writing so much about love, obsession, and the obscure, unexplored gray area in between, I thought I’d continue exploring that subject this week. I didn’t intend to spend more than a few posts on it, but it ended up being such a broad, engrossing topic that I decided it deserves greater scrutiny.

However, rather than just dig deeper into what constitutes love and what constitutes obsession, which can often lead to horror stories about stalkers, I’m going to try and approach this from a different point of view. I’m going to try a little exercise here. It’s going to be small, but it has the possibility to expand, just as my “Sexy Sunday Thoughts” column has expanded in recent times.

What I want to do here is fairly simple. I want to take classic romances from various sources, be they books, movies, TV shows, or comic books, and do a quick assessment on the nature of the relationship involved. Now there are some very complex relationships in fiction, so much so that I can’t hope to dig into every one of those complexities. If I do, it’ll be in a different post.

Instead, the purpose of this exercise will ask one simple question. Is the relationship in question more akin to love or obsession? Now I don’t claim to be an expert on the literature in question. I’m sure there are true literary buffs who would argue my assessment passionately. I perfectly understand that and I’m happy to have that debate. For now, I just want to get the discussion going.

For this initial exercise, I’m going to focus on classic romances from literature. These are the kinds of romances most people learn about in English classes and literature studies. They may also come from popular contemporary sources. Since this is just the first edition of this exercise, I’ll focus on romances that are most well-known. If someone wants to chime in on a more obscure romance, please do so in the comments.

Also, if you think I’m dead wrong in my assessment, please let me know why. Again, I’m not an expert. This is just an exercise that I hope will make people more aware of the differences between love and obsession, along with how it impacts romance stories. With that in mind, here’s the first round of “Love Or Obsession.”

Romeo and Juliet

Love or Obsession?
Obsession

I know it’s a classic. I know this is the romance most people cite when they want to embody the sappiest, most ideal form of love possible. However, having read this classic play in high school and seeing multiple movies of it, I still have a hard time calling it a genuine love.

I know that sounds blasphemous to those in literary circles. I don’t doubt that there’s some element of love there, but I think too much of it is built on obsession. These two barely know each other, which is very much a result of the circumstances you get with a play. Everything has to happen so quickly. There’s not a lot of time to develop this romance.

Even if there were time, a romance where every waking thought and every single feeling is centered on each other doesn’t give the impression of love and comfort. It gives the impression of desperation and extreme distress, which is hard to frame in the context of genuine love.

Sir Lancelot and Guinevere

Love or Obsession?
Obsession

This is another classic romance that’s built on a love triangle, a tool in romantic stories that tends to kill any meaningful passions like a thousand dead puppies. I’ve made my hatred of love triangles clear. This one is probably the most famous in classical literature. It can be argued that it’s probably the most refined and polished.

Granted, this is one love triangle that doesn’t make me want to bash my head in with a brick. Guinevere and Lancelot are both well-developed characters in their own right for the most part. However, too much of their character is defined by this love triangle. It’s kind of the only thing Lancelot is known for, wanting to hook up with his buddy’s wife.

On top of that, there’s not a lot of emotional depth to this romance. Lancelot and Guinevere never give the impression that their chemistry goes beyond just wanting to kiss and bone. They don’t seem to know each other on a more meaningful level. They give the impression that the forbidden nature of their desire is what fuels it, which makes it hard to see as genuine.

For that reason, I say this counts as obsession. It’s still not as bad as other horrible love triangles, some of which I’ve broken down on this blog, but that’s not saying much.

King Arthur and Guinevere

Love or Obsession?
Love

In keeping with Arthurian Legend, I feel like it’s important to assess the other part of the love triangle. When it comes to Arthur and Guinevere, the dynamics are considerably different compared to those involving Lancelot. For one, Arthur and Guinevere meet at a younger age and they do get to know each other fairly well before things get romantic.

They also make a genuine effort in pursuing their love, despite advice to the contrary. In the classic narrative, Merlin actually warns Arthur not to pursue Guinevere. However, he doesn’t listen. He still follows his heart and Guinevere embraces it.

Even though this romance does have some tragic elements to it, I think it has more polish compared to Romeo and Juliet. Arthur and Guinevere both build a live together and support each other for much of it. You don’t do that without having genuine love for one another.

Edward Cullen and Belle Swan

Love or Obsession?
Obsession

This one is kind of loaded because I know Twilight hardly deserves to be on a list that includes some of the most iconic romances of all time. I understand that, but it’s still probably the most iconic romance of the past decade or so. I know just mentioning it will bring out the anti-Twilight crowd. I understand the sentiment of that crowd, but I ask that crowd to temper their rage for the sake of this discussion.

There’s a lot of overly idealistic, overly cliched components to this relationship. It’s so ideal at times that it’s hard to take seriously. Unlike Romeo and Juliet, these two do get a chance to really know each other and become part of their world. However, I have a hard time calling this love because so much of their story, especially Edward Cullen’s, is defined by Belle.

On top of that, the idea that he watches her while she sleeps kind of skews the narrative into areas beyond romance. Watching someone while they sleep is something more akin to a stalker than a lover. That’s why, despite the passionate moments in the meadows, I rule this to be obsession.

Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan

Love or Obsession?
Love

This is a less contemporary romance, but one that’s still structured in a very modern context. Unlike Twilight, this book is a lot more detailed in who these characters are and why they do what they do. It’s easy to tell that the story has some personal elements for F. Scott Fitzgerald. This shows in how the book’s most important relationship, Daisy and Jay, plays out.

It’s hard to judge the depths of a relationship that involves infidelity. On top of that, the greed elements that are so central to the book make the passions harder assess because it’s not clear how genuine they are. Despite this, I see Jay and Daisy’s efforts to be together as genuine.

These two characters each have such comfortable lives, if not excessively so. However, they still pursue one another. They still make an effort to be together. As such, I do think there is real love between them.

Paris and Helena

Love or Obsession?
Obsession

When it comes to judging romance from ancient literature, such as the Illiad, it’s hard to put it in a modern context. This was a time when women barely had more rights than livestock and marriage was a loveless business arrangement that had all the romance of getting a building permit.

That’s not to say that the ancients didn’t appreciate love. One of the central romances in the Illiad revolves around Paris and Helena. This is the romance that starts the Trojan war and all the carnage that ensues. Passions have to be pretty damn powerful to start a war like this, with or without the help of the gods.

However, that passion is somewhat one-sided. Paris is clearly infatuated with Helena, but she doesn’t seem too receptive to him. It’s hard to feel that romantic to someone whose idea of a romantic gesture involves kidnapping her. Being so one-sided and built on an act that we consider a crime these days, it’s hard to rule this as anything other than one man’s obsession to have the prettiest girl in the land.

Odysseus and Penelope

Love or Obsession?
Love

Sticking with classic Greek literature, there is another iconic romance that’s almost as important as Paris and Helena. This one involves Odysseus and Penelope, two lovers who test the idea that absence makes the heart grow fonder. It’s a test they end up passing.

Odysseus is away from his love for quite some time, braving the River Styx and all sorts of godly troubles along the way. Even so, he never does anything to undermine the love and trust of his wife. She never does anything to betray him either, despite being pursued by plenty of eager suitors.

The loyalty between these two is admirable. Like Romeo and Juliet, it’s very much an ideal, two people who love each other so much that they don’t look to others for a romantic outlet when they’re away. Unlike Romeo and Juliet though, this one has more depth. These two are able to function independently as much as they can function together. That’s a love that ancients and modern folk alike can appreciate.

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January 8, 2017 · 8:41 am

Sexy Sunday Thoughts: Playoff Edition

If you’re an American Football fan, then this is a wonderful time of you for you. It’s playoff time! That’s right, the NFL playoffs start today. This is one of those years where I don’t have a lot of teams I’m rooting for. I have quite a few teams I’m rooting against, but sometimes that’s the best you can do in sports.

I’ll definitely be enjoying my share of the NFL playoffs for this week and the next couple weeks. Watching football is a great excuse to just pop open some beers, gorge on chicken wings, and relax. You usually don’t need too many excuses for that, but it helps.

You’d think that contact sports involving a bunch of big, strong, sweaty men ramming into each other at full speed wouldn’t inspire sexy thoughts. Actually, I don’t know why anyone would think that. Anything that works up a sweat or raises the heart can send all sorts of sexy signals to your brain. For an erotica/romance writer, those signals are always welcome.

So I’d like to make use of them today with another edition of Jack Fisher’s “Sexy Sunday Thoughts.” Hope this helps get everyone in the mood for the NFL playoffs, among other things. I consider it a public service from an aspiring erotica/romance writer, if only to keep people warm during the cold winter.

“Having an attractive pool cleaning guy is the male equivalent of having a hot secretary.”

How many pornos and bad movies that only air after midnight on Cinemax use this scenario? It’s overplayed. It’s predictable. It’s even a little flat. Even so, it can still be fun. It can still be sexy. Sometimes you just gotta stick with what works.

“For the excessively homophobic crowd, eating a hotdog or a banana must cause some serious anxiety.”

I have little to no sympathy for those who champion homophobia. I stash their sentiment in the same pile of trash as those who claim that letting kids playing dodge ball counts as abuse. However, I do sometimes wonder how stressful it must be to hold such extreme, bigoted views on an empty stomach.

“Give men a tax break for the number of real orgasms they give their wives and the number of happy marriages will increase considerably.”

This is just one of those crazy ideas that comes to an aspiring erotica/romance writer while he’s lying in bed at night, contemplating ways to change the world. Powerful, politically connected men are all about tax breaks these days. Provide a little orgasmic incentive and that power can be put to good use.

“Every time you see a really nice table in someone couple’s home, assume someone has been bent over and fucked on it at least once.”

This is simple math and connection here. You eat your meals on a nice table. You put your best cloths and flatware on a nice table. Naturally, if you’ve got a lover, you’re going to put them on there too and fuck their brains out. Sometimes people are just too horny to make it to the bedroom.

“The color of your bed sheets can inadvertently reveal how messy or dull your sex life might be.”

This time, it’s basic physics and chemistry at work here. Certain bed sheets, especially those of a darker color, tend to reveal certain stains more than others. The presence or absence of those stains can say a lot about your sex life.

“Giving sex education to horny teenagers can only go so far. Giving them sexual training might actually help their love lives down the line and they might actually be eager to learn it.”

As a former horny teenager, this is something I can relate to. My teachers can tell me everything there is to know about how a penis and vagina work. I’m not going to know if I’m doing it right without a little guidance. I’m not saying that it’s wholly feasible in high school, but it would make everyone a lot more excited to go to school.

“From a pure numbers perspective, women’s vaginas have cracked more bank accounts than every hacker or bank robber in history.”

I’ve watched many crime movies. I’ve heard all sorts of crazy stories about elaborate heists and hacks. Then, I recall how divorce laws work in this country and realize that if you’re going to crack a safe, sometimes a vagina and a great pair of tits is the best tools you can have. You don’t see too many sexy female bank robbers, do you?

That’s it for now. Enjoy the NFL playoffs and keep your tables clean!

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January 7, 2017 · 9:45 am

When Obsession Becomes A Crime

Ever feel like you’re being watch? No, I’m not talking about the kind of watching that those in tin-foil hats and poor mental health talk about. I’m talking about the feeling of actually being watched by someone who isn’t a CIA agent, a lizard person, or an agent of the Illuminati.

This isn’t a spy movie or a conspiracy theory. This is an extension of the whole love vs. obsession discussion I began yesterday. When I started writing about this topic, I realized quickly that one post was not going to be enough. There are just so many aspects to this issue that it’s hard to capture everything necessary to convey the message I want to convey. Even this part will only convey part of that message.

When you break down the fine, but obscure line between love and obsession, you enter a strange part of human emotions that borders health and unhealthy attitudes. Love is probably one of the healthiest things you can do for your soul. There’s a good reason why those who marry and form stable, loving relationships live longer than those who don’t. In some sense, sexual healing is a real thing.

Obsession, on the other hand, is not going to increase your lifespan. It’s not going to help your social life either. Obsession at a certain level becomes a symptom of mental illness, be it crippling depression or Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. It’s hard to know where that level is, which is why it’s so hard to know the difference between love and obsession.

There is, however, one clear line that becomes painfully apparent once crossed. It’s a line that represents the endgame of sorts in the love vs. obsession conflict because it turns emotional upheaval into an actual crime. That crime, in this case, is stalking.

Unlike obsession, stalking is a crime and can be prosecuted as such. It takes obsession, dips it in napalm, and throws it into a furnace to create a perfect raging firestorm of emotional unrest. It’s the point where any and all potential for romance fades, becoming instead a case-study in what happens when emotions go haywire.

To make matters worse, the age of the internet and social media makes a stalker’s job so much easier. It’s no longer a matter of just asking the Yellow Pages to not list your address and phone number. If you have an internet presence of any kind, someone obsessed enough can exploit it. It’s scary as hell, but that’s the age we live in.

For most of us who don’t have a vindictive ex-lover, we don’t have to worry about being stalked most of the time. It’s not a passing concern, which is why the whole love vs. obsession conflict kind of flies over our head. For celebrities, though, the concern is real and so is the harm.

So in the interest of providing perspective in what happens when obsession goes too far, here’s a video by WatchMojo detailing some of the most disturbing cases of celebrity stalkers in recent memory. They don’t include cases where the stalker was intent on murder, as that kind of skews the issue. This is just about people who took their love and obsession too damn far.

I admit these cases are extremes. The people involved have serious mental issues and I’m not just talking about the eccentricities of the celebrities either. This is what happens when emotions go haywire and become so unhealthy that it leads to real harm. For an erotica/romance writer who wants to tell stories about healthy romance, it’s an important lesson to heed.

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January 6, 2017 · 6:23 am

Love Vs. Obsession: Why Knowing The Difference Is So Vital

We’ve all asked ourselves one fateful question. It also happens to be the question at the basis of 85 percent of all romance movies and 99 percent of all bubblegum pop music songs. It affects us all in some form or another and is a core component of the human experience.

“How do I know I’m in love?”

It’s a profound, but beautiful question to ask. To love someone is a big part of being human. One could argue it’s one of the most important parts of being human. Being in love is one of those basic, emotional experiences that drives us all. We seek out love because it helps make life worth living. Like chocolate, bacon, and hot showers on a cold winter day, it fulfills us on a fundamental level.

Love is a beautiful thing. It’s a beauty I get to admire from a unique perspective as an erotica/romance writer. Pretty much all of my books deal with love in some form or another. Some books, like “Holiday Heat” and “The Escort and the Gigolo,” go to great lengths to build up a romance. Others, like “The Final Communion” and “Jackpot,” use less elaborate forms of romance.

Whatever form it takes, I enjoy writing about romance and many of my future novels will deal heavily in romance. When mixed with a healthy dose of erotic undertones, it can make for some pretty potent narratives, among other things.

As much as we love romance and as critical it is to the human experience, there’s another question that’s somewhat linked to romance, albeit indirectly. It’s a question we don’t ask ourselves quite as often and in some cases, that’s becomes a big problem. It’s uncomfortable, unpleasant, and distressing to think about. That’s a clear sign that it’s still worth asking.

“How do I know I’m obsessed?”

Stay with me here. I know some snicker at that question the same way they would if a five-year-old came up to them and asked why dogs don’t talk. It seems like an unrelated question. It seems like something that really shouldn’t enter the equation when talking about love, but it does. In fact, I’d go so far as to say it’s a big part of the flawed narrative we collectively craft about what love is.

This is another insight I’ve been contemplating while reading “Sex At Dawn,” a book that has already offered quite a few insights into the mechanics of sex and love. The sexy parts are plenty interesting to say the least, if only for those who opt to wear tight pants, but the parts about love are just as insightful.

A big part of “Sex At Dawn,” involves breaking down what it describes as the “Standard Model.” Again, this model is just the stereotypical boy-meets-girl-and-they-live-happily-ever-after-like-an-old-Disney-movie narrative. It’s very familiar to modern Western civilization. It’s the ideal embodied in sitcoms, music, and movies.

However, in analyzing this model, the book highlights a few unflattering features that are hard to overlook. A big part of this standard model requires that the man and the woman be completely devoted to one another, the first thought they have when they wake up and the last thought they have when they go to sleep, presumably after a quick round of highly-scheduled, missionary-style sex.

That’s all wonderfully romantic on the surface, but take a closer look at the finer details of this narrative. They’re completely devoted. They direct all their romantic and sexual energy at each other. Their thoughts and feelings are completely narrow and focused on a singular person. At what point does that kind of sentiment turn from romance into obsession?

I ask that question knowing there isn’t a fine line. However, it’s difficult to decouple the details of this narrative from the definition of “obsession.” According to Dictionary.com, the definition for “Obsession” is as follows:

  • The domination of one’s thoughts or feelings by a persistent idea, image, desire, etc.

With this definition in mind, think back to the narrative surrounding the standard model of romance I mentioned earlier. How much of that romance is built on love and how much of it is built on obsession?

It’s a hard, if not impossible question to answer, but it’s a question that’s worth contemplating because it reveals something about the nature of our emotions. Part of being in love is to desire someone and to be desired. However, sometimes our faulty, flawed brains take it too far and that can really hamper the romance.

When someone is obsessed with someone, especially when it’s done out of love, it consumes a person so completely that they struggle to function on a basic level. They can’t focus at work. They can’t focus with family. They can’t focus on whatever goals, aspirations, or dreams they may have had in their lives. It all becomes secondary because of a person.

A good way to contrast this is to look at it from the opposite end of the spectrum. There are all sorts of people who are obsessed with someone out of hate. There are even entire groups devoted to hating others. For most reasonable people, this is deplorable. Devoting that much time and energy into hating someone just seems wrong. It makes no sense.

So if hate is that wrong when taken to extremes, why should love be different? Isn’t that just as unhealthy? I admit it’s not an entirely fair comparison. Comparing love and hate is like comparing candied bacon with expired kale. They’re two very different manifestations of something that’s so basic, broad, and varied. That doesn’t make the extremes any less damaging.

Being in love is a wonderful feeling, but then again shooting heroin and smoking crack can feel wonderful too. That doesn’t mean that it’s healthy. The problem is that Disney movies, pop songs, and bad romance novels have created this ideal about what love is and some of that ideal involves more obsession than love.

There are plenty of examples to explore and I plan on doing more blog posts on this issue. I hope to break it down a bit more, if only to help me craft more complex, engaging romances in my novels. For now, I’ll focus on one particular example involving music.

When it comes to sappy love songs, pop music can always be counted on to give us a massive glut of material from boy bands, country stars, and 80s hair metal bands. There are so many love songs out there of so many different kinds that if super-intelligent aliens landed tomorrow, even they would be confused about how our music defines love.

This leads me to a very famous song that is often mistaken for a love song. It also happened to be one of the biggest pop hits in 1983, voted song of the year by Rolling Stone. Chances are, if you’re over the age of 30, you’ve heard it at some point or another. If you aren’t familiar with the lyrics, you’re at least familiar with that soothingly haunting tune and the undeniably handsome face of Sting.

This song was, and still is to some extent, widely regarded as a love song. However, if you look at the lyrics a bit closer, how much of it is love and how much of it is obsession?

Every Breath You Take

Every Move You Make

Every Bond You Break

Every Step You Take

I’ll Be Watching You

In a certain context, that sounds sweet. It sounds like something a dying spouse would tell their lover before they passed away to provide comfort.

In another context, it sounds creepy as hell. It sounds like a note a stalker would leave someone, as if to warn them that they can never escape their obsession.

The mere fact that such context is even needed says a lot about our inconsistent sentiments towards love and romance. On one hand, we want to be desired. On the other, we don’t want to be stalked by someone who devotes every waking hour to obsessing over us. It’s a tough balancing act.

This conflict is something that even Sting himself, the writer of this song, admitted in a 1993 interview. He goes onto say:

 “I didn’t realize at the time how sinister it is. I think I was thinking of Big Brother, surveillance and control.”

Again, it’s pretty telling when we can’t tell whether a song is about love or obsession. It says a lot about how we assess love, sex, and romance. Since I’m in the romance/erotica business (or at least trying to be part of it), it’s something I think I need to assess more than most.

At the end of the day, stories about love and romance still strike us on a fundamental level. They have an appeal that spans generations, civilizations, and terrible pop music. I want to channel that appeal with my novels because in the end, a story about love will always be more compelling than a story about obsession.

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January 1, 2017 · 8:48 am

Happy New Year (And Some Sexy Sunday Thoughts)!

We made it! If you’re reading this, you can finally say it with a straight face. We survived 2016. We made it through another year, even though that year seemed determined to crush our spirits, our hearts, and our will to live. It wasn’t easy, but we made it and we’re stronger because of it.

I hope everyone had a safe and happy New Years Eve. I imagine some are still fighting off another holiday hangover. Then again, if you survived a Christmas hangover and were still able to celebrate New Years, then you can definitely survive a New Years hangover. You should be pretty damn good at that by now.

I’ve already talked about my aspirations for 2017. I’ve even talked about some of my personal goals and my reasons for questioning the feasibility of those goals. In an effort to respect those recovering from hangovers, I’ll hold off on saying much more about these issues. I understand that this is supposed to be a day of new beginnings, new perspectives, and for some, utter relief.

Instead, I’d like to start the year off on a sexy note by delivering another entry of Jack Fisher’s Sexy Sunday Thoughts. I’d like to start 2017 off on a high note. I think a few sexy musings will help everyone get in the spirit of the new year, among other things.

“When you think about it, a bottle of lube is the ultimate romantic gesture in that it helps us to love each other and ourselves.”

Remember this when you’re shopping for a Valentine’s Day gift this year. Your partner might not understand or appreciate it at first, but once they understand the sexy sub-text, they’ll realize it beats the hell out of flowers.

“The main difference between erotic art and porn is the extent to which it’s acceptable to take your pants off.”

I’m not saying erotic art doesn’t have merit in it’s own special way. I’m not even saying it’s on the same level as porn. I’m just saying that some differences are more substantive than others.

“The market for new panties grows during times of prosperity while the market for used panties grows during recessions.”

This is basic economics and good investing advice for those who think male horniness is a good way of predicting market trends. When times are good, we want to hump, so that means more fresh panties. When times our tough, we still want to hump, but need to pinch pennies so we resort to less glamorous alternatives. Beautiful women with used panties are in a unique position to weather the storm.

“Does being a gay man give you an advantage at a hot dog eating contest?”

I don’t know much about the skills necessary to enter and win a hot dog eating contest. However, I suspect that gay men with healthy sexy lives may have more natural skills than most in this endeavor.

“Wonder Woman is rarely seen wearing a bra, which effectively proves that the weight of being a woman is never too much for her.”

As a lifelong comic book fan with a deep love and admiration for Wonder Woman, I’ve noticed this since puberty flooded my brain with the chemicals that make me horny. Wonder Woman is a proud warrior and a feminist icon, but doesn’t seem too fond of wearing bras. I think that says a lot about women, female empowerment, and the power of breasts.

“When someone shaves their pubic hair, it means their lover has fewer excuses for not knowing their anatomy.”

There are a lot of reasons that people shave their pubic hair. Not all of them are logical. Not all of them are necessary. That said, if someone does go full Brazilian, it means that their lover better know their partner’s anatomy because they’ve got no excuses.

With that lurid thought, I wish everyone a safe and sexy New Year! Here’s to making 2017 a better, sexier year for everybody!

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December 30, 2016 · 8:36 am

An Online Dating Experiment That Does NOT Bode Well For Me

I know it’s a little early to be contemplating New Years Resolution. We still have to get through the final days of 2016 without losing any more beloved celebrities. Then again, I’ve always been an overly proactive guy. I’m the kind of guy who used to turn in essay papers three weeks ahead of schedule in college. My old professors used to say setting deadlines was useless for a guy like me.

While I appreciate their insight, I do understand that you can only be so proactive with certain activities. Compared to college essays, dating may as well be an Olympic event done drunk, blindfolded, and concussed. I’ve made my recent luck with dating painfully apparent. I’m trying to change that luck for 2017.

Over the holidays, I actually set a very specific goal with my family, one that may or may not be too ambitious. I actually told some close relatives who know how dedicated I am to my craft that I want to bring a significant other to Thanksgiving dinner in 2017. In my family, that’s a big fucking deal. Bringing a significant other to a big family event is right up there with co-signing on a loan.

It’s ambitious, but it’s something I really do want to try. I’m hoping online dating will give me a chance, if only to slightly improve the long odds. Then, while doing some cursory research on the subject for my last post, I came across some very discouraging news.

It has to do with a certain kind of gender disparity. I’ve talked about that sort of thing before and it’s never a pleasant conversation. It’s like talking about taxes, dead animals, and clogged toilets. It’s not going to have pleasant details. With online dating though, I can’t avoid these details.

In this case, the disparity has actual numbers to back it up. After the Ashley Madison hack in July 2015, we learned a nasty secret about certain online dating sites. The amount of men on these sites grossly outnumber the amount of women. How gross is it? Well, according to the Washington Post, only 15 percent of the profiles on Ashley Madison belonged to actual, real-life women.

Think about that number for a second. If you went to a restaurant and you only had a 15 percent chance of getting a meal, you’d say that was a pretty shitty restaurant, wouldn’t you? Well, those are the kinds of odds that men are facing here.

I already have some direct experience with it. Last year, I created an account on two dating websites. In both cases, the only responses I got came from chat bots trying to solicit money for porno webcams. That’s literally all I got. There’s enough pornographic spam on the internet and that’s all I could attract with my online dating profile. What’s that say about me?

It’s depressing, but it’s not just me. People have done actual experiments on this disparity and the results are pretty discouraging. An Elite Daily article profiled a man who created two Tinder profiles, one male and one female. The response rate between them was pretty damn egregious. The female version of his profile got five times as many messages. In terms of raw numbers, that is not a trivial difference.

Other experiments have revealed similar results. The Daily Mail UK did a similar profile on a man from London who actually dressed up as a woman for his profile. It turns out, the men didn’t care. They inundated him with responses, some of them using language I usually reserve for my books.

This is not encouraging. This does not sit well with me. It also reveals something else that gets lost in the laughable number gap. Online dating sucks for men and it brings out the worst in them, which gives the radical feminist, overly PC types a reason to whine.

There are any number of articles where the dirty, pornographic language men use on these sites are documented. Women and the PC crowd love to screen-cap these comments and use them to say, “Look at this! Look how disgusting men are! There’s so much misogyny! All men must be ashamed of themselves and die!”

That may be an extreme response, but extremes are the new normal in this day and age. So I’m not going to waste my time confronting those issues. There’s another side to that coin that will get lost in all the whining and it comes down to this simple truth:

Men are REALLY desperate to find a lover and not having one really screws with their mind.

Think about it because I sure have. When men get really horny, they tend to make poor decisions. Women do the same, but it’s much easier for a horny woman to find an outlet. As these online dating experiments prove, they really don’t have to make much of an effort to get a man’s interest. The massive disparity in gender ensures their options are limited.

With men, however, that kind of horniness really fucks with our brain. Scott Adams even talks about this when explaining the modern phenomenon of sexting. Horny men don’t think clearly and will, in turn, do stupid shit. Remember, our brains aren’t wired for logic and reason. They’re wired for survival and reproduction.

Survival isn’t as big a deal in 2016 so reproduction occupies much more of our mental energy. When we don’t have an outlet, our caveman brains get a little erratic. That leads us to saying some of the disgusting shit that women find so offensive.

Now I like to think I haven’t sent a woman an outright pornographic message, but given the heavy erotic content in my novels, I’m sure I’ve let a few slip. I’m sure some women even found it offensive. There’s nothing I can do to apologize to those women. They’ve already formed an opinion about me and I can’t change that.

So where does this leave me? What can I do at this point if the odds and numbers of online dating are stacked against me? That’s not a rhetorical question, by the way. I’m serious. I really would like to know because this does worry me.

I guess I’m somewhat lucky because I do have an outlet with my novels. I can take these sexy thoughts that fill my masculine brain and channel them into erotic novels or sexy Sunday thoughts. I think that’s a healthier way to manage my mental energy compared to sending women overtly sexual messages online.

Then again, it still only goes so far. It still leaves me alone, single, and dangerously close to creepiness territory. I still want to make an effort in 2017 to change my romantic luck, but I’m facing an uphill battle here. If, however, it means I can find a good and affectionate lover, then I’d say I’m willing to fight that battle.

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December 29, 2016 · 8:30 am

Online Dating: Should Give It A (Third) Try?

We live in an era where people have a more intimate relationship with their smart phone than they’ll ever have with another person. Think about it. People tell their phone all their dirtiest secrets, trust it to keep those secrets, and turn to it in their time of need, no matter how serious or trivial the situation may be. In the grand scheme of things, a smart phone is a lover, an accomplice, a therapist, and a butler all rolled into one.

There may come a day when our phones and our technology will take the place of lovers. There are some parts of the world where sex robots are already a thing. Until then, though, we will continue to seek out human companionship in some form or another.

I certainly love my smart phone, but I’m not going to form an intimate relationship with it. I can’t make love to it. I can’t enjoy foreplay with it, which is kind of important to me. Maybe I’m old fashioned by today’s standards, but I’d rather have a person as a lover.

This is something I’ve talked about before as a concern. I am in my 30s now and I’m a single male. The older I get, the greater the creepiness factor will escalate. I don’t want that. I don’t want to be the creepy guy on the block. I’m already the guy on the block who wears flip-flops and a bathing suit to a coffee shop. That’s the most my reputation can handle.

So as I was getting together with friends and family for the holidays, I started having conversations about my goals for 2017. Naturally, most of those goals involved being a successful erotica/romance writer and a more awesome guy in general. Those have been my goals for years now and I like to think I’m making progress in both.

That said, one goal in particular came up and I’m the one who brought it up. Maybe it was due to me seeing so many members of my family find love in their own way. Maybe it’s just the male version of a biological clock starting to go off in my 30-year-old brain. At some point, I do want to find love again and I’d like to make that part of my goals for 2017.

The problem is I have piss poor social skills. I can write novels. I can talk about comics and football for four hours straight. I can work out until I’m a big mass of muscle and sweat. I still can’t, for the life of me, find a way to properly interact with the opposite sex on a face-to-face level. I struggle to enter that mindset where I can use my words and my gestures to win a woman’s heart.

That’s a big reason why I haven’t had a serious girlfriend in a number of years now. It’s for that same reason I really want to change things up for 2017. One approach that many family members suggest is to use online dating. That’s something several family members have used to great success in some form or another. The problem is I have experience with it too and it’s not all that pleasant.

A while back, I did give online dating a try. In fact, I gave it two tries. I signed up for two popular sites and since I don’t know any good lawyers, I won’t name names. I’ll just say you’ve probably seen commercials for both of them.

I put some serious effort into these sites. I worked hard on my profile. I made sure my pictures weren’t too goofy or unflattering. I tried to paint a picture of being an awesome guy with plenty to offer a prospective lover. I must have not tried hard enough because, despite spending both time and money, I basically got zilch out of it. I probably would’ve been more productive trying to seduce a tree.

It’s not that the sites themselves failed me. I just think I’m shoveling sand against the tide with online dating. I’m a single male. There are a lot of single males on the internet looking for love and not all of it is of the healthy variety. The disparity between single males and single females on the internet is pretty goddamn staggering. If you’re a woman of average physical attractiveness, online dating is like a candy store. For men, it’s basically akin to fighting over table scraps.

That was my experience. It wasted my time and my money. It also made me feel ugly, unattractive, and unloved. It was not a pleasant experience. That said, it’s not like what I’m doing now is working any better. I need to do something different if I’m going to find a lover.

So with a healthy bit of skepticism and an unhealthy bit of frustration, I’m thinking of giving online dating a try again. I will definitely not use the same sites I did last time. I will try to use another. I will even invest some money into it. There’s no romance without finance, especially if you’re a man like me. It’s not necessarily fair, but that’s the way the world works.

Again, I’m doing this because my options just seem so limited. I’m a young single man and there are just too many of them on this planet right now and not enough women are willing to give them a chance. I need to find a way to be more awesome than all of these men. I don’t know how I’ll accomplish that, but I’d like to give it a try in 2017. Wish me luck.

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December 26, 2016 · 10:45 am

Staying Sexy In Winter (It IS Possibe)

Christmas is over. The holidays are drawing to a close. Many today are still fighting off hangovers from excessive eggnog, whiskey, and fruit juice spiked with vodka. If you party like my family does, you may be fighting off a combination of all three. If that is the case, I commend you. You are molded from stronger stuff.

As much fun as the holidays are, they do signal something else besides hangovers. The holidays, at least in this part of the world, signal the first stage of a long, cold winter. For those of us who don’t live in a tropical climate where it’s possible to wear a bikini to a Christmas party without risking hypothermia, the end of the holidays marks the end of the excuses we give ourselves to tolerate this time of year.

It’s winter now. It’s going to be cold. You can’t be all that sexy when it’s this cold. Being an erotica/romance writer, that’s kind of a problem. I sort of need to maintain a sexy sort of spirit in order to continue my work. I have a lot of ideas for novels. I have a lot of romantic/erotic concepts I want to explore. That’s going to be a challenge when I’m wearing several layers of clothes, sipping hot chocolate spiked with whiskey, and trying desperately to keep my balls from freezing.

Now I’m not saying I live in a part of the country that freezes over every winter. However, I do live in a part where it’s uncomfortably common to have to dig my car out of a big snow bank at least once a year. It’s not nearly as fun as it sounds. Kids may love snow days, but once they have to start digging their shit out of snow, it loses a lot of its appeal.

So how do I handle it? How do I keep things sexy in the winter time when walking around my house naked is a bit less practical? Well, I do have a few tips. In the spirit of recovering from holiday hangovers and helping others prepare for a long winter, here are some of Jack Fisher’s winter survival tips for those who want to keep things sexy.

  • Always keep hot chocolate and wine handy, as there are few situations that can’t be made sexy with the right drink
  • Take regular hot baths, with a heavy emphasis on candles and bubbles to make for a steamy, sudsy environment
  • Wear colorful coats and scarfs, as color can let the world know that cold can’t stop you from being sexy
  • Just because you have to wear layers doesn’t mean you have to wear them on every part of your body
  • A sweatshirt and no pants will keep you warm and keep you sexy
  • For men, use this opportunity to grow a thick, manly beard to emphasize the scope of your manliness
  • For women, use this opportunity to style your hair and your nails in a way that’ll keep you warm and sexy
  • Find a way to exercise and work up a sweat, if only to remind your body the importance of exerting itself in just the right ways
  • Warm soups go well with a movie, especially those with heavy action and graphic nudity
  • If you have a fireplace, use it and make love near it at least once during a snowstorm
  • If you don’t have a fireplace, use your TV to stream a crackling fireplace to create a similar ambience (it won’t keep you warm, but lovemaking will)

These are just some of the tips I have to offer. If anyone has others they’d like to tac on, please let me know in the comments. I think we could all use a little help getting through the long, cold winter. With the holidays over, it’s just a matter of counting down the days until we can wear bikinis and speedos again. Like the holidays though, those days will come before we know it.

For the record, though, the cold weather will not stop me from sleeping naked. I don’t care how cold it gets or how many blankets I need to pile on top of my bed. I will not give that up.

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December 23, 2016 · 8:58 am

How NOT Tell A Love Story: The Cautionary Tale Of “Passengers”

We live in an era where it’s impossible to hide a twist ending to a movie. Movies like “The Empire Strikes Back” or “The Sixth Sense” simply could not be made today and have the same impact. As soon as someone sees it, they just tweet the ending and it’s spoiled for everybody. Even those without social media can’t avoid it.

You could argue whether or not this is a good thing from now and until our robot overlords enslave us. I’m not going to have that argument here. It’s not an argument anyone can win, let alone an aspiring erotica/romance writer. However, this era of excessive spoilers does sometimes pay off, if only in the sense that it saves you a few bucks here and there.

This brings me to the movie, “Passengers.” It stars Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt, two big time Hollywood stars that are at the top of their game at the moment. I’ve made my love of Jennifer Lawrence very apparent many times here on this blog and it’s not just because she walked around naked in an X-men movie, although that definitely helps.

Now I love Chris Pratt too for his role in “Parks and Recreation” and “Guardians of the Galaxy,” but I’d much rather see Jennifer Lawrence naked and covered in blue paint. That’s just me though.

So with two acting talents like this, I was naturally excited about the prospect of “Passengers.” It’s a sci-fi movie with a lot of sci-fi elements, from interstellar travel to conflicts involving how mankind goes about traveling the stars. It also is heavy on romance, which definitely appeals to me as an erotica/romance writer. After seeing the trailer, I was tempted to reserve my ticket right then and there.

Then, I read the spoilers. I found out that there’s a very important detail that this trailer leaves out. I won’t go into the full scope of that detail, but I’ll just keep it simple. This whole movie is just one big case study in Stockholm Syndrome romance and personally, that just doesn’t appeal to me.

What is the Stockholm Syndrome? Well, if you saw Beauty and the Beast as a kid, then you already know, but didn’t realize it. It’s when a hostage begins developing sympathetic, almost affectionate feelings for their captors. It’s not as crazy as it sounds. In fact, it makes perfect sense with caveman logic.

For centuries, we lived in small bands of tribes. Those tribes didn’t always get along with other tribes. Sometimes those tribes fought one another and took captives. Psychologically, this is pretty damn stressful for some people. Our brains, wired only to help us survive and reproduce, developed a mechanism to help us cope. Just being upset and terrified all the goddamn time isn’t a productive use or resources.

While it makes sense with respect to caveman logic, it also makes for a really shitty love story. This is not “Titanic.” This isn’t even “50 Shades of Grey.” At least Anastasia Steel willingly entered Christian Grey’s world of BDSM. The characters in “Passengers” didn’t get to choose shit and when they did, they chose badly.

Now based on the spoilers I read, there is a concerted effort to redeem the characters. There’s even a concerted effort to make a happy ending. However, as the Rotten Tomatoes score for the movie shows, it didn’t really work.

What happens here is that Chris Pratt’s character basically dooms Jennifer Lawrence’s character and he does it for all the wrong reasons. He just does it because he’s lonely and losing his goddamn mind. That’s understandable when you’re marooned, lonely, and lacking in some of your most basic needs as a human. However, it’s worth restating that this is a awful way of establishing a romance.

Even “Beauty and the Beast” did a better job of twisting the Stockholm Syndrome premise just enough to feel genuine. There’s none of that here. There’s nothing Pratt’s character can do to redeem himself. He effectively killed someone just because he was lonely and basically tried to lie, cheat, and justify his actions. That’s not romance. That’s making excuses.

As a result, I’m not seeing this movie. That’s not the kind of romance I care for. It sends the message that if two people are stuck together in isolation, then eventually they’ll fall in love, no matter what sort of lies and atrocities are committed behind the scene. I like to think genuine love is a bit more complex than that.

This movie sends a message that someone can just randomly pick another person and get that person to fall in love with them. I’m not a love expert by any stretch, but even I know human emotions aren’t that basic. A love story based on that premise can only ever be forced and nothing is less sexy than a forced romance.

Now there may be other factors involved in how this movie played out. The premise of the movie might not be the same as the result of the movie. I’m not qualified to speculate, but the folks at Midnight’s Edge, a YouTube channel I follow that digs into Hollywood news, do a great job of breaking it down.

Overall, it’s times like this where I’m grateful we live in a world of abundant spoilers. If this movie came out in the mid-90s, I probably wouldn’t have realized the flaws in this movie until after I bought the ticket. Thanks to spoilers, I saved myself money that could be better spent on whiskey and comics.

Now I don’t want to give the impression that my distaste for this movie is because of some radical feminist concept of men manipulating women for their own ends. I’ve made it clear on this blog that I take issue with a lot of firebrand feminism. My aversion to this movie has more to do with how poorly it handles romance.

As an erotica/romance writer, I feel like my standards for solid romance are a bit higher. Maybe that’s just a byproduct of writing about it so damn much, but it means forced romances like “Passengers” just don’t do it for me. I think Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence deserve better. Hopefully, they’ll get a chance in a future movie.

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December 22, 2016 · 8:34 am

Quick (Non) Update On “Embers Of Eros”

Just wanted to give a quick update on “Embers of Eros.” By that, I mean I want to vent a few concerns and for once, they have nothing to do with the holidays. I’m not sure whether that’s a good or bad thing.

A few weeks ago, I finally made the announcement I had been hoping to make for years. I announced a release date for my long-pending novel, “Embers of Eros.”The date the publisher game me was December 20th. I still have the email sent to me by Crimson Frost Publishing.

I don’t think they’ve forgotten about it. If you go to their website, the cover of Embers of Eros is shown as an upcoming release. However, I’ve checked both their website and Amazon and found nothing. Near as I can tell, the book hasn’t been released. I haven’t even gotten an email from the editor.

This is somewhat par for the course with Crimson Frost. I’ve tried again and again to get in contact with them. I know they’re a small-time publisher with limited resources, but this is my first published book. It’s a big deal for me and their lack of responsiveness is troubling to say the least.

Now that they’ve basically reneged on a release date, I’m more than a little concerned. I’ve sent an email asking for details. So far, I’ve gotten nothing back. I know it’s the holidays. I know things come up, people get busy, people have to travel. I had hoped that all this had been taken into account when they gave me the December 20 release date. I guess I had hoped for too much.

I’m not going to rant or whine here. I’m still willing to give Crimson Frost a chance. Hopefully, they’ll release the book before the end of the year so I can finally say I’ve published something with someone. That’s a big step for me and I one I want to take before heading into 2017, where I’ve got “Passion Relapse” in the works.

I hope I can take that step. I’m still not sure what the deal is. I’ll be sure to provide updates as they come in. Fingers crossed I can end 2016 on the highest of notes by releasing my first book. If not, then I guess I better work extra hard to make 2017 more awesome. Stay tuned.

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