 ISBN: 1-4134-0592-4 (Trade Paperback) Xlibris 2003 |
by Fred Shank and Chris Fisher Quite often a dream never becomes a reality. There is always a good excuse; lack of perseverance, too many distractions or just not enough support. All of these aspects entered into the fold last summer, when I came up with the idea for my first novel, Out of Bounds (Xlibris, ISBN # 1-4134-0592-4). At first, I didn’t realize my dream of being a novelist. I am a publicist by trade, a sports one at that, so the reality of writing two-page press releases and various opinion pieces discouraged my confidence to the point I believed I could never master anything beyond 2,000 words. But I had been reading the latest and greatest gay fiction from the traditional brick and mortar bookshops and the word ‘crap’ kept rumbling through my head. After not being able to press past the first hundred pages on two-consecutive books, I proclaimed that I could write a better story than these. Of course, my partner Chris immediately challenged me to actually do what I said and so became the birth of Out of Bounds. I recruited my partner to be my sounding board and we walked around our town pitching ideas and discussing various plot twists and turns. But what we wouldn’t allow ourselves to get away from was that we actually wanted to put better text on paper than what was already being done. It seemed so obviously absent in so many examples of gay fiction. Quickly after finishing the outline, I learned that a great deal of the storyline came directly from my partner and “my” book wasn’t going to be completely mine. The next day, I asked him to write Out of Bounds with me. Soon enough we were turning out copy faster than our neighbor could read it, and I went looking for a publisher. Being snubbed by countless agents and traditional publishers, I stumbled upon print-on-demand publishing. Honestly, I had never heard of it. And more embarrassingly, I had never read any books that were self-published. Soon enough, I was launched into a world of better books where gay men weren’t only rich, drunk and drugged-out queens in one of the three gay ghettos. There were characters that leapt from the pages and tackled bigger questions in life than which boyfriend cheated on them at what circuit party. Stories weren’t strictly written for camp sake. I said, “This is what I want my story to be like.” (Feel free to read Out of Bounds and tell me if I did move past the stereotype – only using them for irony, of course – but this isn’t what this article is supposed to be about.) After months of research and writing various POD authors for their feedback, Chris and I settled on Xlibris, hoping that I could use my skills as a publicist to fetch that glorious book deal that we both knew would eventually come to our feet. Of course, getting to Xlibris wasn’t the easiest decision. There were countless options including Great Unpublished, Llumina and iUniverse. iUniverse had seemed to corner the market on the POD gay fiction movement, and I was more than willing to just go with it as a matter of “tradition”. My only problem arose, when I had my own distinct visions of what Out of Bounds was going to look like and iUniverse’s options weren’t as specified as the others in terms of cover design and layout. A friend of mine, who worked at the Sports Illustrated photo department, and I were able to get the vision of the cover for Out of Bounds perfected. Our inspiration came from a famous Sports Illustrated cover in 1989 titled “Kentucky’s Shame” and considering I’m an alum - and a sadist - of said University, I was more than willing to relive one of college basketball’s darkest days. After calls to graphic artists at all the POD houses, I became convinced that Xlibris, while costing more to just get the manuscript published, would be the best avenue for Out of Bounds. While no one should actually judge a book by its cover, I am not naive enough to believe that it doesn’t happen some of the time. Throughout the publishing process, Xlibris was slow at returning phone calls, e-mails and virtually every other which way it could have been. Of course, my impatience was probably to blame for half of it, but I’m working on that in therapy. All was easily forgiven and forgotten when that day came, when Out of Bounds reached my front door for the very first time. It was beautiful. Through my work with their graphic artist and my friendly photographer at Sports Illustrated, the cover was exactly what I wanted. Of course, the insides were fine, too, but didn’t we already talk about judging a book by its cover? As I sit here and write this article for the Independent Gay Writer, I cannot believe how far I have traveled. Just over a year ago I was a disgruntled reader who couldn’t find anything to read. Now a booming POD community of smart, talented writers who see the world outside of the proverbial box surrounds me. I would like to thank you all for writing your books. The last leg of Out of Bounds could not have been reached without their existence and until Chris and I discovered them, good contemporary gay fiction was just a dream. Hopefully Out of Bounds can join their reality. |
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