I’m proud and happy to announce that I’m working with the great Paul Bishop and Mel Odom to write an MMA crime novella for their Fight Card series!
Here is the series intro from Paul:
WELCOME TO FIGHT CARD BOOKS – CELEBRATING THE BEST IN FIGHT FICTION!
What exactly is fight fiction?
I’m glad you asked … When fellow writer Mel Odom and I designed the format for the Fight Card series, we knew several things immediately: The books would be 25,000 – 30,000 word novelettes, designed to be read in one or two sessions, and draw their inspiration from the fight pulps of the ’30s and ’40s – such as Fight Stories Magazine, Knockout Magazine, and Robert E. Howard’s two-fisted boxing tales featuring Sailor Steve Costigan – and would be written under the unifying pseudonym of Jack Tunney (combining the names of our favorite fighters, Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney).
Furthermore, we knew the Fight Card tales would be set in the1950s, with a locations all over the world. We knew we wanted the prose to be hard-hitting, but still fall within a PG-13 range for language and violence. We also decided the different main character in each tale would have a connection to St. Vincent’s Asylum For Boys in Chicago (an orphanage) where Father Tim, the fighting priest, taught the ‘sweet science’ as a way to become a man.
But the most important element of the stories – the ingredient qualifying them as fight fiction – is their focus on boxing at their center. To meet the criteria of fight fiction, a tale’s raison d’être – its reason for existing – must be the actual fighting. The action in the ring or the cage or the back alley pit cannot be merely a backdrop, it must be an integral part of the both the story and its resolution.
The Fight Card novels are all about boxing action. We also celebrate fight fiction from outside the world of Fight Card, such as Suckerpunch by Jeremy Brown, or Basement Brawl by Robert Evans, which are all about MMA fight action. Like the Fight Card novels, they are tales of the The Big Fight at the heart of any true fight fiction tale. The Big Fight doesn’t have to hinge on the heavyweight championship of the world.
The Big Fight can be as small as a scrap between romantic rivals in a makeshift ring in Podunk, America, a bar championship in New Orleans, a pit fight in Singapore, a battle for the pride of a Navy ship in Hawaii, or a backroom smoker with a has-been champ redeeming himself on his last stop before Palookaville – the stakes can be high or low in the big picture, but as high as life or death for the characters involved.
Fight fiction is all about the journey to The Big Fight, the bravery and redemption found in winning (or losing), and in giving the readers a vicarious experience visceral enough to get the blood rushing in their ears.