THE PULP DEN TAKES ON FELONY FISTS!

THE PULP DEN TAKES ON FELONY FISTS!

TOM JOHNSON OVER AT THE PULP DEN GIVES FELONY FISTS A RAVE REVIEW ...

It has been a long time since we had a good boxing magazine or series, and the genre is sorely missed. Fight Card Productions has began a new series of boxing stories by various authors under the Jack (Dempsey) (Gene) Tunney pseudonym. For the fight fan, Paul Bishop’s “Felony Fist” is the Main Event!

FOR THE FULL REVIW CLICK HERE

FIGHT FICTION: INTERVIEW ~ ROBERT EVANS!

FIGHT FICTION: INTERVIEW ~ ROBERT EVANS!

Fight fiction is making a surprising comeback recently with the advent of the Fight Card series and other old school fight stories, like Iron Hands by James Scott Bell and Cold War Heroes by Tom Johnson.

Fight Fiction is also striking out in new directions as the popularity of MMA (mixed martial arts) picks up. Novels like Suckerpunch by Jeremy Brown, Choke by Christa Faust, and the reboot of the venerable Joe Palooka as an MMA fighter are all part of the fight fiction resurgence.

So, too, are the new novelettes by Staff Sergeant Robert Evans featuring the blistering underground MMA battles of one of the toughest bastards ever, Staff Sergeant Mickey O’Quinn . . .

Dropping in to spar a few rounds with Bish’s Beat is the man himself, Robert Evans, to tell us more about his series, The O’Quinn Fights . . .

LET’S GET THE WHOLE NAME AND SERIAL NUMBER THING OUT OF THE WAY UP FRONT. TELLS US ABOUT ROBERT EVANS.

I’m a Staff Sergeant in the United States Army Reserves. I started my military career in the Navy, went to the California Army National Guard, where I deployed to Iraq with the 2688 Transportation Company, and jumped over to the Army Reserves where I’ve been for the past few years. Over all, I have more than 20 years of experience in the military.

I was born and raised in Antioch California, received my Bachelors in Business Administration from Saint Mary’s College of California. I’ve worked as a stock broker, drilled oil wells in Prudhoe Bay, taught swimming, and worked in retail. Around three years after 9-11 and after I had accepted a discharge from the California Army National Guard, a close friend of mine was Commanding the 2668 Transportation Company, that got orders to deploy.

I signed back up for the guard and in December of 2004 I was sitting in a tent in Kuwait waiting to move up into Iraq. Going off to a war zone has a unique effect on women, and when I came home for leave I went to Belize with my soon to be fiancé. I returned from Iraq in December 2005 and got married in January 2006. Took a job with a municipality and moved to the Sierra foothills. I’m still in the Army Reserves, have a full-time job as an energy scheduler, I buy and sell energy for the municipality I work for, and I’m married to a wonderful wife with two beautiful, and rambunctious boys ages 5 and 3, and in what free time is left, I write.

GIVE US THE LOWDOWN ON THE O’QUINN FIGHTS.

As you said in the intro, Sergeant O’Quinn is one of the toughest bastards in the Army, and currently deployed to Iraq where, a lot of his adventures take place. He has a Platoon leader, who would rather be a fight promoter, getting him MMA bouts usually with other troops either American or Foreign, but sometimes with, the shadowy underbelly.

Sergeant O’Quinn is everyman and woman’s hero, a tough guy whose biggest weakness is cute dames with a doe eyed stare. He knows how to fight, and how to lead. He chooses the rough and tumble world of unsanctioned fighting over the glitz and glamour of the organized fighting world, with promoters and sponsors.

WHAT MADE YOU START PUTTING WORDS ON PAPER?

I realized early on, I could take the wild daydreams I had floating around in my head, write them down, and suddenly I had a story. From that time, I knew I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to create worlds, and tell stories.

DO YOU HAVE A BACKGROUND OF FIGHTING IN MMA OR ARE YOU A FAN?

I’m a huge fan of MMA, from its early beginnings with the Gracie Challenge to its current incarnation of the UFC. Before deploying to Iraq, my company went through what was then the Army’s Combatives program. I’ve gone through some of the Army’s Modern Combatives program. However, the program has changed considerably and is a very extensive course that goes beyond just fighting.

HAS THERE BEEN A REACTION FROM YOUR FELLOW SOLDIERS TO THE O’QUINN STORIES?

I have heard basically two types of reactions from soldiers; one group say they could see this sort of thing happening over there and the other says it could never happen. But regardless of how they feel about the possibility of it really happening, both sides agree the characters portrayed in the stories are true to life.

I’ve had several soldiers say, “did you pattern so and so after my Sergeant, because he sounds and acts just like him.” The Soliders really like Sergeant O’Quinn, and that the fight scenes were very real.

WHAT ARE YOUR OWN READING HABITS AND WHAT WRITERS HAVE INFLUENCE YOU?

I’m currently reading and in some cases re-reading classic science fiction, fantasy and fight stories from the 30’s and 40’s. The authors of that time had a way with words I truly enjoy reading. Unfortunately, I think that way of writing has been lost.

As far as my influences, I always look to two individuals; Robert E. Howard and Robert Heinlein. Heinlein was a monster in the Science Fiction world, and considered to be the father of SciFi. Howard on the other hand, doesn’t receive the justice he deserves, and I would have to say he is the one fight writer I’m most influenced by. While in High School I was greatly influenced by the writings of bands who created epic stories like Rush, or Blue Oyster Cult.

HOW IMPORTANT IS A BOOK'S CENTRAL CHARACTER?

Mickey O’Quinn is hugely important to the story. He is the driving character, the hero on the quest, the one that has everything to lose or everything to win. He is the embodiment of what it is to be a soldier, not just an MMA fighter, but the grunts that for eight years deployed for a year or more at a time to the middle east.

WHAT'S THE BEST PIECE OF WRITING CRAFT ADVICE YOU'VE BEEN GIVEN?

The best piece of advice was given to me years ago, shortly after high school, when I was wandering around college and taking a creative writing course just about every year. The advice was to READ. And when you find that one author of whom you you just can’t get enough, read everything they write, and study how he or she writes.

With most advice given to you at such an age, you forget about it until you’re older, and that is exactly what I did. It wasn’t until a few years ago that I found the author, which made me go, “this guy is great!” and when I read everything he wrote and studied how he wrote, things started to click.

LIKE MANY OF US, YOU’VE CHOSEN TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF E-PUBLISHING. WHAT HAS THAT EXPERIENCE BEEN LIKE FOR YOU?

So far, the experience has been a good one, and it’s kind of funny. Dealing with “old” school publishers, sending out query letters, and submissions, the results were generally a very cold response in a form letter. And you knew your work had sat in a slush pile, for who knows how long, until someone got stuck reading it.

But with the e-publishing, I haven’t felt the cold response of a newbie trying to break down the walls of the publishing industry. Instead I’ve sensed a greater connection with publishers over the internet, even if the piece was submitted to a committee, the whole process seems to be much more transparent, and much more open to giving writers a chance.

HOW DID YOU DECIDE ON YOUR COVERS?

My publisher Untreed Reads, contracts with a graphic artist to do their covers, I was involved only minimally with the decision making process, but I’m very happy with the result.

AS A NEW AUTHOR/WRITER WHAT ARE YOU FINDING TO BE YOUR BIGGEST CHALLENGES?

Marketing and promoting. Getting the book published was easy and getting it out to the ebook stores was easy, but getting the word out is hard. That is the biggest challenge I’ve come across, and it has taken me awhile to realize it. Marketing and promoting is a full time job, and requires a lot of thought, and a lot of attention.

I joke that the next creative writing course I take, will have nothing to do with writing, and everything to do with social media.

HOW DOES YOUR MILITARY BACKGROUND COME INTO PLAY IN YOUR WRITING?

After spending as much time in the military as I have, it comes into play whether I want it or not. Sometimes I have to sit back and look at things from a civilian point of view. My editor is pretty good at pointing out, “someone in the military would understand that, but not everybody.”

WHAT’S NEXT FOR MICKEY O’QUINN?

Mickey O’Quinn is slated for one more story to be published by Untreed Reads. I’m finishing up with that story, which still has Sergeant O’Quinn in fights for his life but takes on a more mystical plot. After all Iraq is steeped in Biblical history, and while I was deployed I saw some of the sites I read about in the Bible. But that won’t be the end of Mickey O’Quinn. I want to take him through Afghanistan and back to the United States.

WHAT’S NEXT FOR ROBERT EVANS BEYOND MICKEY O’QUINN?

I really like Mickey O’Quinn, and he is a fun character to write. But I want to explore Science Fiction and Horror. Two genres I enjoyed greatly as a kid and feel that a new golden age is bubbling in the under-belly of the new pulp world of Ebooks.

Thanks, Robert, for getting in the ring with Bish’s Beat today . . .

THE O’QUINN FIGHTS #1: BASEMENT BRAWL

In this first outing of a new short story series by Staff Sergeant Robert Evans, Sergeant O'Quinn finds himself battling in an underground mixed martial arts fight in Iraq. Is the fight really just two men battling, or is it a setup for something far more dangerous for the American soldiers involved?

THE O’QUINN FIGHTS #2: FOUL FIGHT WITH A PIT VIPER

Things go awry from the moment Staff Sergeant Mickey O'Quinn arrives in Qatar. SSG O'Quinn, the brawling mixed martial arts fighter from the 4th Infantry Division, finds himself going from rescuing a frightened young American woman to landing in the middle of the toughest and deadliest underground MMA bout of his life.

Will O'Quinn win the fight and the girl? Or has he finally taken on too much?

FELONY FISTS NOMINATED FOR 2012 PULP ARK AWARDS!

 

FELONY FISTS NOMINATED FOR 2012 PULP ARK AWARDS!

THE NOMINATIONS FOR THE 2012 PULP ARK AWARDS ARE IN ... (DRUM ROLL PLEASE) ... AND I'M AS PLEASED AS CAN BE THAT FELONY FISTS HAS BEEN NOMINATED IN TWO CATEGORIES: BEST SHORT STORY AND BEST AUTHOR ... WINNERS ARE DECIDED BY THE PULP ARK NOMINATING COMMITTEE ...

FOR A FULL LIST OF NOMINEES CLICK HERE

FELONY FISTS NEEDS YOUR VOTES!

FELONY FISTS NEEDS YOUR VOTES!

★★★ MOST COOL! ★★★ FELONY FISTS HAS BEEN NOMINATED FOR THE 2012 SPINETIGLER AWARD: BEST NOVELLA ★★★ PLEASE POP OVER TO THE BELOW LINK AND VOTE ★★★

VOTE HERE

HAPPY 70TH BIRTHDAY TO ‘THE GREATEST’ ~ MUHAMMAD ALI!

HAPPY 70TH BIRTHDAY TO ‘THE GREATEST’ ~ MUHAMMAD ALI!

“He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.” – Muhammad Ali

“I am the astronaut of boxing. Joe Louis and Dempsey were just jet pilots. I'm in a world of my own.” – Muhammad Ali

“I am the greatest, I said that even before I knew I was.” – Muhammad Ali

Z7’s HEADQUARTERS MATCHES UP TO FELONY FISTS!

Z7’s HEADQUARTERS MATCHES UP TO FELONY FISTS!

A NEW REVIEW JUST IN FROM TIMOTHY L. MAYER OVER AT Z7’S COOL NEW HEADQUARTERS . . .

. . . The book moves at at brisk pace. I was amazed at how much was crammed into a short novel that’s barely 100 pages long. Tunney covers the corruption in LA, the casual racism at work, and the whole world of boxing as it existed. When Flynn goes into action against Cohnen’s thugs, you feel the weight of his sap glove. The rigorous training he has to endure doesn’t let up either. This is a powerful novel . . .

FOR THE FULL REVIEW CLICK HERE

PERMISSION TO KILL TARGETS SPLIT DECISION!

PERMISSION TO KILL TARGETS SPLIT DECISION!

AUSSIE BLOGGER DAVID FOSTER WEIGHS IN ON FIGHT CARD: SPLIT DECISION . . .

Recently I have written how much I enjoyed the first two books in the Fight Card series (Felony Fists by Paul Bishop and The Cutman by Mel Odom). However, in my reviews I suggested that a boxing story would always be predicatble because they will always end with the ‘big fight’ and that the hero will win. Well now I find myself in the embarrassing situation of having to eat my words. There is nothing predictable about the third instalment of the Fight Card series, Split Decision by Eric Beetner.

And I must say, I am delighted to eat my words. I think I just have a narrow view of what a pulp boxing tale can be – maybe I have watched too many Rocky films . . .

FOR THE FULL REVIEW CLICK HERE

ALL PULP GETS IN THE RING WITH THE CUTMAN!

ALL PULP GETS IN THE RING WITH THE CUTMAN!

ALL PULP REVIEWER AND PULP MAVEN DERRICK FERGUSON REPORTS THE BLOW BY BLOW OF FIGHT CARD: THE CUTMAN . . .

Back during the heyday of the Classic Pulp era there were magazines devoted to just about every type of genre you could think of or that publishers thought they could sell to the entertainment hungry public. Most of us are familiar with the hero pulps, the western pulps, the science fiction pulps, the horror pulps. But there were far more than that. You had your spicy pulps which was a safe name for what was pretty much soft core porn. There were gangster pulps, railroad pulps and sports pulp. And a sub-genre of the sports pulp was boxing pulp stories.

If you’re at all familiar with the boxing pulp genre it’s probably because of Robert E. Howard and his champion boxer character Sailor Steve Costigan. Even though Howard is best known as the creator of Conan, King Kull and Solomon Kane he wrote more stories about Sailor Steve Costigan.

It’s probably inevitable that in the New Pulp Renaissance we’re enjoying right now that the pulp boxing genre should also enjoy a revived popularity and it’s a genre that’s well represented by the the Fight Card series of books in general and The Cutman in particular. It’s the second book in the series but you don’t have to have read the first one in order to enjoy it. The books are credited as being written by Jack Tunney but that’s a “house name”. The first book, Felony Fists, was written by Paul Bishop and The Cutman was written by Mel Odom and it’s a terrific read . . .

FOR THE FULL REVIEW CLICK HERE

FIGHT PULPS: FIGHT STORIES

ILLUSTRATION BY GEORGE GROSS

FREE FIGHT CARD NOVELS ~ TODAY ONLY!

FREE FIGHT CARD NOVELS ~ TODAY ONLY!

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FIGHT FICTION: IRON HANDS

FIGHT FICTION: IRON HANDS

JAMES SCOTT BELL

His name is Irish Jimmy Gallagher, and he checks in at 6'3" and 225 pounds. A boxer with dancing green eyes and a wit born of the Blarney Stone, Jimmy is a hell of a fella, quick with a laugh and quicker with the jab.

But if you foul him, stand back, because all the laughs will die in fury.

It's Los Angeles, 1955. A time of relative peace in the nation. The Korean War has ended, Eisenhower is in the White House and in the City of Angels life goes on.

And down by the river is a "smoker," a privately set-up boxing match where Jimmy hopes to make a couple hundred bucks. With his girl, Ruby, waiting tables at Charley's, Jimmy can always use a little extra scratch. What he can't abide is a mobster trying to fix a fight. But what can one man do against a local crime boss and his team of thugs? Especially after they've arranged to have Jimmy Gallagher clobbered by Iron Hands?

FIGHT FICTION: SINBAD THE SAILOR

FIGHT FICTION: SINBAD THE SAILOR

ROBERT H. H. NICHOLS

FIGHT STORIES, JANUARY 1929

A fighting fool of a sailor, with a mania for airplanes and red-headed sweethearts—that was Sinbad! Dumb in many ways, perhaps, but dumb like a fox with that left hand of his! Another whirlwind of laughs and leather, featuring the great Roland Rigormortis.

FIGHT FICTION: FINISHING SKILLS

FIGHT FICTION: FINISHING SKILLS

SARAH INMAN

Set in pre-flood New Orleans this novel explores the world of women's boxing through the eyes and hands of a young business school dropout.

What it does is it dances. It comes rushing at you with blazing red speed, yet at unexpected moments, turns you with feline grace. Heidi Whitehill, the enigmatic main character of German-Polish descent who leaves the business world to pursue professional boxing, will first demand your attention, then command it, inspiring you to risk all and fight, work to finish what you need to finish, so you can finally be free.

FIGHT FILMS: GREAT SPORTS STORIES ~ THE LEGENDARY FILMS

FIGHT FILMS: GREAT SPORTS STORIES ~ THE LEGENDARY FILMS

WILLIAM RUSSO

An encyclopedia of sports fiction …

Based on Dr. William Russo's popular and long-standing college course, Great Sports Stories is an overview of the conflicts, tales, plots, characters, and actions, that comprise the most significant sports films of the past century. From famous literary athletics to the politically incorrect tales of sport, from distant past games to professionals of the modern age, the book covers them all. If you want a definitive guide to winners and losers among the movie sports scene, you have found it.

Now with over 70 photos from popular and unpopular movies!

FIGHT FICTION: HIGH KARATE

FIGHT FICTION: HIGH KARATE

LEROY SMITH

Masashi reluctantly decides to finance his film by fighting in a series of no-rules bouts with 3 club fighters. The deck is stacked against him as Kenji, his own sensei, is secretly plotting Masashi’s demise. Can High Karate triumph over street fighting?

FIGHT FICTION: THE CHAMPION’S NEW CLOTHES

FIGHT FICTION: THE CHAMPION’S NEW CLOTHES

BARRY GRAHAM

It’s an opportunity a journalist and ex-boxer with a complicated personal life can’t turn down - joining the camp of the world title challenger, Ricky Mallon, in the run-up to the championship fight. For Billy Piers it’s more than work, it’s an escape from Karen, loving and beautiful but disturbed, and unaware of what he’s going through - that he’s in love with someone else, someone who can’t decide who she’s in love with at all.

Set in the urban wastelands of Scotland in the 1980s, The Champion’s New Clothes is about love and friendship, loneliness and violence, from the brutality of the boxing ring to the cruelty that goes hand in hand with romance. As Ricky trains for the hardest fight of his life, Billy faces the hardest decision of his. Both men are driven by desire, and both men come to realize that nothing is ever what it seems. With wit and acute honesty, The Champion’s New Clothes warns: Beware of what you want. You might get it.

FIGHT FICTION: THE FIGHT

FIGHT FICTION: THE FIGHT

LUKE WORDLEY

Sam Pennington's life has fallen apart. Since his father's death, he's lost his home, his Mum's started drinking and they've been dumped in a dismal housing estate in East London.

Jerry Ambrose, on the other hand, has got everything together. After a turbulent early life, a new-found faith has helped him reconcile his past, and dedicate his life to helping others.

But when a street fight leads Sam to Jerry's boxing club, both their futures are thrown into question. As Jerry reaches out to Sam, an extraordinary talent emerges - a talent that re-opens the wounds of Jerry's own life.

Can Sam be saved from his rage? Or will Jerry's re-awakended ambition tear them both apart?


Set in East London during the 1990s, The Fight is a gritty story of two desperate struggles:


The battle over a man's past. And the fight for a boy's future.

PSYCHO-NOIR REVIEWS FELONY FISTS!

PSYCHO-NOIR REVIEWS FELONY FISTS!

PSYCHO NOIR'S HEATH LOWRANCE  GETS IN THE RING WITH FELONY FISTS . . .

Felony Fists is a tight, streamlined brawler of a novel, heavy on ring action and spare jabbing prose. It’s hard not to use boxing analogies when talking about it. Series co-creator Paul Bishop is Jack Tunney this time out, and he sets a high standard for the Jack Tunneys to follow. His invocation of L.A. in the ‘50’s is vivid and well-researched without being overwhelming, and his grasp on the strange, sometimes seedy world of boxing is spot-on …”

FOR THE FULL REVIEW CLICK HERE

SUCKERPUNCH: GRAPPLING WITH AUTHOR JEREMY BROWN!

SUCKERPUNCH: GRAPPLING WITH AUTHOR JEREMY BROWN!

I’ve mentioned Jeremy Brown’s novel Suckerpunch quite a bit recently – mostly because it’s the best crime novel I’ve read this year. I got it touch with Jeremy and asked him to do an interview on Bish’s Beat, and he’s provided an insightful take on his approach as a writer and on Suckerpunch and it’s coming sequel.

Suckerpunch is a taunt and terrific tale featuring the first appearance of MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) fighter Woodshed Wallace ... cue Rockyesque theme music ... So, it’s into the MMA cage – writer vs. interrogator – and it’s grappling to a tap-out …

Q1: What is the novel’s version of a fighter’s stats when applied to Suckerpunch?

Suckerpunch is a lean and mean crime thriller set in the world of Las Vegas mixed martial arts. The narrator, Aaron “Woodshed” Wallace, is in a constant battle of “head or gut.” Is he going to use his head and distance himself from his shady past and the criminals who want to drag him back in, or is he going to go with his gut – the one that put him next to those criminals in the first place?

Q2: While becoming more popular, fiction using an MMA background must have been almost unheard of when you started writing Suckerpunch. What brought your writing into the cage?

It’s true — MMA was pretty scarce in the fiction world when I started this project in 2006. It had infiltrated the non-fiction market with fighter biographies, but I still had to explain to my agent at the time what MMA meant, and why it was (and still is) a great world for thriller novels.

I’d tried writing the Aaron Wallace character before, going back to scenes I wrote for fiction workshops in college in the late 90s. Wallace started out as a self-defense instructor/vigilante, but there wasn’t any steam behind that approach. When I revisited him in 2006, MMA was getting a huge surge from Japan’s Pride Fighting Championships and the UFC, especially its new reality show The Ultimate Fighter. I was watching and loving all this MMA, and decided to throw Wallace in the cage to see how he did. That was the one big piece I needed to get the story going. I still needed two more, and we’ll get to them soon.

Q3: Suckerpunch is subtitled Round One, indicating the first in a series. Did you always perceive Woodshed Wallace as a series character?

Yes, I liked the idea of following this character while he tries to fight his way out of his past and to the top of the MMA food chain. The series is designed for five books, the same number of rounds in a championship MMA fight.

Q4: Do you have a background in MMA as a fighter or a fan?

I’ve been a fan of MMA since UFC 1 in 1993, when Royce Gracie showed the world what Brazilian Jiu Jitsu could do. I never planned to compete in MMA, but the training and skills fascinated me. I trained in judo, jeet kune do, BJJ, and various close-quarter combat stick and knife arts. Most of the stuff I trained was for self-defense – filthy, nasty stuff – which informed Woody’s street fighting background. I enjoy the scenes where he has to battle his street muscle memory in order to stay within the rules of MMA.

Q5: As a writer how do you help readers understand MMA fighting?

Bottom line, I want the story to be entertaining. These fights and fighters can be so technical, breaking down a play-by-play could read like a flowchart on combat chess. Possibly interesting to MMA die-hards, but it would turn off most readers.

So, I try to throw enough MMA detail in – technique, cause and effect, terminology, culture – to show the reader what’s happening and why without drowning them in minutia. I think it works best to have the characters convey that information through action and dialogue, but there’s no way these guys would stand around explaining everything to each other. They’re so close to it and each other they speak in shorthand and code, so the action and dialogue have to work together.

For example, Woody dives in to take his sparring partner down. Gil says, “Watch the guillotine.” Woody pulls his opponent’s forearm away from his throat so he can keep breathing. Good – now we know a guillotine is a forearm choke.

Q6: What would you say to those of us who are traditional boxing fans to give MMA a chance to grow on us?

I started as a boxing fan (actually, I started as a ninja fan, but they aren’t on pay-per-view), and as soon as I saw MMA I thought, “It’s like boxing, but with kicks and chokes and broken arms? Even better!” Here are just a few reasons to cross to the dark side:

1. Fighters who finish fights are promoted. Those who fight for points are not – usually because they get finished by the other guys.

2. MMA delivers the fights fans want to see. There are some match-ups that don’t happen or happen too late in careers, but for the most part the guys who should fight, do.

3. MMA is safer. The smaller gloves allow one-punch knockouts rather than 12-round bludgeonings, and there are no standing eight counts that let boxers keep fighting when they should not.

4. Don King is not in MMA.

Q7: Did you see the recent MMA film Warrior and, if so, what did you think?

I haven’t seen it yet, but I’m looking forward to it. The first batch of MMA films were mostly Rocky or The Karate Kid set in MMA, so I was excited to see this one come along. At the same time, it scares me. I think I’m going to watch it and go, “Damn, why didn’t I think of that?”

Q8: You began your professional writing career with a series for young adults, Crime Files: Four Minute Forensic Mysteries. How did writing the Crime Files series lead to Suckerpunch?

I never thought I’d write for kids or young adults, but the Crime Files opportunity was perfect for me. They wrapped up and that’s when I decided to revisit the Aaron Wallace character. Like I said before, this was a guy who needed his story told, but I hadn’t figured out how to tell it. Putting him inside the cage was the first step. Then I read Chandler’s The Big Sleep, and it knocked me like a sap in the temple. As soon as I started writing it as a noir crime thriller, the story poured onto the page. That was the second big piece.

The third came with the title. The martial arts instructor I was training with had a private seminar called The Art of the Suckerpunch. I thought, How cool is that? Something so nasty can have an art to it. And bam, there was the title and the final piece I needed to get rolling.

Q9: What was the path you followed to get Suckerpunch published?

Twisty, with lots of switchbacks and dead ends. I changed agents, then rewrote everything except the first chapter with an entirely new plot and characters. We submitted it to editors who loved it – with just a few major changes here and there – and they presented it to publishers who passed. It was very frustrating to get so close again and again, but it made the story stronger.

When Medallion Press picked it up in the summer of 2010, I was thrilled. The people there love the story and characters, and there are quite a few MMA fans on the staff. They’ve all been fantastic.

Q10: As MMA continues to grow in popularity has the sport provided you with an outlet to promote Suckerpunch?

I believe so – I don’t have to explain what MMA is nearly as much as I used to, and usually just mentioning the UFC is sufficient. We ran ads on the popular MMA site Sherdog.com and I dream of seeing my book cover on the canvas of a UFC event, but that will have to wait for a bigger advertising budget.

I hope it’s been a mutually beneficial relationship, where MMA fans come across my book and share it with non-fans (ahem, Bish), who check out the sport and get hooked. But I also want readers who couldn’t care less about MMA to enjoy the story. I’ve had readers who haven’t seen one 4oz punch get thrown tell me they couldn’t put the book down, which is great.

Q11: As a writer, how do you sustain a series of novels focused around a fighter without always having to lead up to the ‘big fight,’ or is leading up to the ‘big fight’ part of the attraction?

Great question. Any ideas? Because the novels are crime thrillers first and MMA thrillers second, I get to make the climax something other than the big fight. The fight is certainly vital to the story, and Woody has to win (so far), but the stories are about more than what happens in the cage. It’s fun to find ways to tie the big fight in with the other conflicts going on in the story to make it bigger than a number on Woody’s win/loss sheet.

I also try to treat the fights like a compact mystery, with foreshadowing, twists, and misdirection. Woody is trying to solve the mystery before his opponent, and they both know what it means to figure it out a second too late.

Q12: What’s up next for Woodshed Wallace in Round Two?

Round Two is titled Hook and Shoot, and it picks up seven weeks after the final scene in Suckerpunch:

Woodshed Wallace has fought to survive his entire life. He thinks the big break from MMA promotion Warrior is going to change all that, and he’s right – now he has to make sure Banzai Eddie and Warrior don’t get snuffed out by the yakuza.

If the yakuza can’t collect on the debt Eddie owes, they’ll take payment in blood –and it doesn’t matter whose. Woody has no choice but to help Eddie and his ex-SAS bodyguard, Mr. Burch, stay alive and keep Warrior intact.

Serves Woody right for trusting Eddie and thinking he was off the hook for his past. He should know by now what happens with hooks: when you drop back onto them, they go twice as deep.

Thanks to Jeremy Brown for getting in the cage with Bish’s Beat.

As I said at the start of the interview, Suckerpunch is one of the most entertaining novels with one of the most engaging lead characters to come to the attention of Bish’s Beat this year. Pin down a copy for yourself, now!

TO VISIT JEREMY BROWNS WEBSITE CLICK HERE

SUCKERPUNCH

JEREMY BROWN

No head butts, groin strikes, eye gouges, or fishhooks. He'd go along with it, but heavyweight mixed martial artist Aaron "Woodshed" Wallace thinks they're taking all the fun out of fighting. Stuck on no-name cards for tiny organizations, Woody is trying to put his shady past behind him with help from his trainer and mentor, Brazilian jiu jitsu black belt Gil Hobbes.

When Banzai Eddie Takanori--president of MMA's largest organization, Warrior Inc.--offers Woody a short-notice fight against a highly favored poster boy, Woody sees his shot at salvation. By the time he realizes he's just a pawn in a high-stakes game between psychopaths, he's in way too deep.

Good thing he knows how to take a punch.

And give a few back...

ROUGH EDGES REVIEWS FIGHT CARD: SPLIT DECISION!

ROUGH EDGES REVIEWS FIGHT CARD: SPLIT DECISION!

JAMES REASONER TAKES ON THE LATEST FIGHT CARD ENTRY SPLIT DECISION OVER AT HIS ROUGH EDGES BLOG . . .

. . . Beetner's tale is darker than either of the preceding entries, but it's just as compelling and does a fine job of capturing the era. He has the knack of putting his protagonist in an impossible situation and then making the reader race along to find out how it's going to get even worse. Split Decision is a prime example of the sort of variety and adventurous storytelling we can expect from the Fight Card series, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Highly recommended.

FOR THE FULL REVIEW CLICK HERE