Asher Black — Author | Karateka | Musician

Welcome to the worlds of Asher Black ^®

This is the lair of the Ashermost.

Asher Black is a fabulist living in Brooklyn.

By day, he is a self-employed corporate storyteller. When darkness falls, and even the long shadows are inevitably swallowed in black, he turns on the lights in Asher's Haunt, shapes a fire on the hearth, and tells other stories—of pitiless men, and malice, and ordinary people who resist them. At various times, Asher is a maximist, raconteur, genre hacker, and literary performer.

"I write, because I dream while I'm awake — about things that have actually happened and things that need to. I write fiction, because I can say things about the world that can't be heard another way. I need to be heard, because I want to be loved, and no one can truly love a person if they don't know the truth that is in him. I write stories in particular, because I can't stop telling them. They are the language I have for that truth." — Asher Black

News And Project Updates

Actively Seeking Agent August 25, 2023

It's time. I wanted a couple of manuscripts in hand, albeit needing polish. And I want to be working on the next ones while doing this. My focus is being a novel making machine. Crank out a couple of chapters a week at least.

SHORT FIC Going Out August 24, 2023

I've got six short stories in the pipe I'm putting out to various publications. We'll see if they like any of them. I'm pretty happy with all of them. Each is my own spin on lit fic w. action.

SEQUEL to Lit Novel Started August 12, 2023

Two novels at once? Yes. I want to get a jump, picking up where the main character left off in the first coming-of-age tale, and I already had the outline, so I banged out the first chapter.

SEQUEL to Noir Book Started August 12, 2023

Same primary character as the first. Intended to be next in a long-running series. Got a good plot premise, and some fascinating characters. I've cooked my 'digest' of the book (outline, characters, etc) and am working from that.

LIT NOVEL: Finished August 11, 2023

It came together well. I think it'll appeal across genres. Lit fic you can read if you like action, standoffs and battles, the mountains, the forest, and the culture of boys. I had been wanting to write this novel for years.

LIT NOVEL: Started December 7, 2022

Coming of age tale (autobiographical fiction) set in an exotic "Lord of the Flies" environment. Interesting cast of characters and, rare for the form, some explosive action.

"NOIR" BOOK: Finished October 19, 2022

Finished the hard-boiled action thriller ("noir" to some). Compelling characters, continual action. Now in editing. You know when you do good work. It just sings to you. I'm so grateful.

"NOIR" NOVEL: Started December 5, 2021

A pair of old friends, a distant culture, a kid in trouble. Conventional trope: "gal walks into my office" and from there, it blows up fast. I've been cooking these characters in my mind for a while, and it's time to give them ink.

Literary Rhythm Where Asher Got His Literary Chops

EDITING & PUBLISHING — Asher Black cut his teeth (his chops) as a young man—writing for and editing a school magazine, publishing poetry and various broadsheets, and performing impromptu on radio and stage.

GMR —2001-2003: Asher was Managing Editor of The Green Man Review in its heyday as one of the earliest full-production digital publications.

MYTHOLOG™ —2002-2007: Asher was the publisher of the digital magazine MYTHOLOG, 'Literature of Mythic Proportions'.

HAMMER DOWN — 2012 (Spring): Asher launched a marathon project called Nightly Chops™ (30 stories in 30 days), focused not on technique but on translating deep-seated emotions into surface symbols, reaching and sustaining a critical mass of creative energy, and maintaining a consistent emotional rhythm. In Jazz, chops are any individual artist’s demonstration of purely technical skill as part of a main act, after the main acts are done, or in the informal jazz (jam) sessions in various clubs (“he’s showing his chops, tonight”). The resulting unedited drafts are the stories of Forest Park.

THE NEXT MARATHON — 2014: Asher knocked out a novella for NANOWRIMO, the 'Boston Marathon for fiction writing'.

THE BLACK ACADEMY™ — 2015: Asher created a construct called the Black Academy of Story Telling, an aggressive regimen of self-study of dramatic structure as preparation to write novels. For his pivotal project, he wrote prototype novels, novellas, novelettes, and short stories to teach himself the craft. "I needed to put myself through school at an accelerated pace."

CORPORATE STORYTELLER — 2016: Asher began working professionally with commercial enterprises to tell their stories.

THE NOVELS — 2022: Asher began seriously writing novel-form work. He has completed a hard-boiled action thriller (2022) and a literary novel / coming-of-age story (2023), each of which is in editing while recruiting an agent. He started a third and fourth novel in August 2023.

IMMERSED IN ART — Asher is a guitar player, karateka, and outdoorsman. Those things as well as dance, boating, and a pair of writing coaches, have been instrumental in stoking the fire of his story craft.

Welcome to the worlds of Asher Black ®