I write young adult fiction under the name of Nicholas Fisher. My first young adult novel titled ‘Becky’s Kiss’ will be coming out in November through Vinspire Press, Editor: Dawn Carrington.

It was fun writing this piece, and many of my close friends asked why I chose to walk away from the hard core adult horror I was most comfortable with. My answer is that I do not specifically write “horror” in the first place, as I feel it is more a “spice” than a genre. And plainly, the idea for ‘Becky’s Kiss’ seemed interesting. It mixed mystery, romance, and baseball, and what could be better than that?

I will say that as I have worked deeper into this business, I have found that the advice one gets is ultimately important…good advice, things you can use as opposed to someone’s harsh criticisms that simply poke holes. In other words, it is too often we lend out our stuff and have someone rip it apart, clearly developing their own critical voice(s). I suppose part of the growth process is taking the criticism you can utilize positively and utilizing it! Discard the rest (sorry Mom). There is only heartache there.

In terms of ‘Becky’s Kiss,’ I was fortunate enough to have gained a plethora of ideas from people above me in the business in terms of level of success and experience. I re-wrote this piece many times, gaining wonderful and highly valued advice from Tamara Thorne (horror author), Meghan Macdonald (my agent at the time), Claire Evans (Editor at Dial / Penguin’s Young Adult Division), Q.L. Pearce (successful children’s author), S.T. Joshi (Lovecraft’s number 1 World Biographer), and Cherry Weiner (literary agent – possibly the most active for successful horror writers nowadays). In the end, I think I came out with one hell of a book.

I made a separate website for ‘Becky’s Kiss’ and any future young adult material to be written by Nicholas Fisher. I thought it would be appropriate to provide the link here.

http://nicholasfisherbooks.weebly.com/