Against the Ropes

Terrence P. McCauley is an award-winning writer of crime fiction. His latest novel, Slow Burn is currently available from Noir Nation Books. His first book, Prohibition, published by Airship 27, is a full-length novel set in the colorful, exciting world of 1930 New York City. Terry Quinn is an ex-boxer turned mob enforcer who must use his brains instead of his brawn to figure out who is trying to undermine his boss’s criminal empire and why. Quinn’s boxing career is also featured in a prequel, Fight Card: Against The Ropes.  A proud native of The Bronx, NY, he is currently working on his next work of fiction.


 Writing a prequel to a successful first novel can pin a writer against the ropes of his storyline …

ROPES 5

Terrence McCauley

I love boxing. Always have – warts and all.

I can’t explain why I love it, exactly. It’s not that I ever had any talent for the sport. Oh, I’ve taken and thrown a few punches in my time, but that’s not boxing. I lack a depth of vision that always made sports difficult for me. I could never shag a fly ball properly or gauge the distance between me and a football. And I can’t really tell how far away a fist – gloved or not – might be from my face, which made my ability to take a punch come in mighty handy over the years. I was never what you might call a roughneck, but in the course of my life, I had my share of scrapes.

How many?

Let’s just say I’ve had enough scrapes to appreciate the skill and commitment it takes to climb into a ring and duke it out over twelve three-minute rounds against another trained professional. To dedicate endless hours to training and pushing yourself to the limit knowing that you’re ultimately going to get hit. And, despite all that, you still step between the ropes anyway.

MMA has its merits, don’t get me wrong. It’s faster than boxing, often more brutal and tends to have more blood. It usually makes for great television. But I think boxing has an added gallantry to it that I think MMA lacks.

In boxing, you can’t use your legs or elbows. Head butts are illegal, and so are takedowns. In the ring, unlike the cage, all you have is your fists, your skill and your will against your opponent. I admire that kind of courage. And in today’s mixed up world, I admire that kind of clarity.

Why did I write Against The Ropes? The short answer is because Paul Bishop let me. I’ve been a fan of the Fight Card series from the beginning and had wanted to try my hand at writing for the series. I’d already covered Terry Quinn’s boxing career in passing in my other book Prohibition, which was written several years before the Fight Card series began. But since Quinn’s days in the ring play such an important role in which the character has become at the beginning of Prohibition, I’d always dreamed of being able to tell the story of the end of his career in more detail.

When Airship 27 gave Prohibiton the green light for publication, I thought Fight Card would be the perfect vehicle to tell Quinn’s story.  And, much to my surprise and delight, Paul agreed. The result is Against The Ropes.

But what makes the Terry Quinn character so special in the first place? Why devote one book to him, much less two – not to mention all the short stories I’ve written about him? He’s an ex-heavyweight contender who becomes an enforcer for the mob in 1920s New York. Hardly an original idea. Half of the henchmen in pulpdom and noirdom have boxing backgrounds, if not more.

While that’s certainly true, I worked hard to make sure Quinn was different than those other characters. Enforcers of pulp fiction are usually portrayed as brutes, guys who were too quick with their fists and too slow with their brains. They’re usually easy pickings for the hero of the story. Or they’re punch-drunk has-beens past their prime and looking for some kind of redemption. One last shot at glory.

In Quinn, I wanted to create a different kind of character who was certainly recognizable, but had more going for him than the reader might expect. Sure, he’s a big, tough, mean, violent guy. That’s what makes him interesting to the reader. But Quinn also has something he doesn’t value very highly: a brain. He thinks of himself as just a pug while everyone around him sees him as much more than that. I wanted to create a character who didn’t fit the traditional mold of a thug; one who was tough but not cocky. Who followed orders, but wasn’t ambitious. Who was loyal and had his loyalty reciprocated by Archie Doyle, the man who runs the criminal empire of Prohibition and plays a huge role in Against The Ropes as well.

I could’ve written Quinn differently. I could’ve made him a war veteran or an ex-cop or just another product of the mean streets of New York City. I made Quinn a boxer because boxers have a capable, professional toughness that writers like, but rarely capture accurately. I wanted a tough guy an audience would be surprised they were cheering for. A character that wouldn’t give me the luxury of easy plot devices that some crime novelists have employed in their stories. You know: the one where the hero walks into a room, gets hit over the head and wakes up tied to a chair. Quinn’s not the kind of character who’s going to let anyone get that close to him. He doesn’t make those kinds of mistakes. He sizes up every situation at his own pace, decides on a course of action and sees it though. He’s not afraid because he’s learned not to be.

Is he a hero? I don’t know. He’s a protagonist, that’s for sure. Is he a good guy? That’s for you to decide. Is he a bad guy? He’s done bad things and even the worst thing: murder. But does that make him a villain? You tell me.

Quinn is a character that I know the audience might not admire, but he’s a character who I certainly hope you’ll want to read about. He does bad things for mostly the right reasons, even when those reasons are criminal reasons. He’s black and white in a Technicolor world. He views the world with narrow parameters and lives his life accordingly.

To Quinn, life outside the boxing ring isn’t much different than life in general. He honed his skills through training and sacrifice. He adapted those skills for each specific opponent he faced. He climbed between the ropes and took whatever they threw at him. And he hit back.

Just like all of us do in our own lives. Every single day.

Find out more about Fight Card here: www.fightcardbooks.com

Why Romance?

A novelist, screenwriter, television personality and half the creative genius behind the Fight Card series, Paul Bishop recently finished a 35 year career with the Los Angeles Police Department where he was twice honored as Detective Of The Year.  He continues to work privately as a deception expert and as a specialist in the investigation of sex crimes.  His books include the western Diamondback: Shroud Of Vengenace, two novels (Hot Pursuit / Deep Water) featuring LAPD officers Calico Jack Walker and Tina Tamiko, the thrillers Penalty Shot and Suspicious Minds, a short story collection (Running Wylde), and five novels in his L.A.P.D. Detective Fey Croaker series (Croaker: Kill Me Again, Croaker: Grave Sins, Croaker: Tequila Mockingbird, Croaker: Chalk Whispers, and Croaker: Pattern of Behavior).  His latest novel, Fight Card: Felony Fists (written as Jack Tunney), is a fast action boxing tale inspired by the fight pulps of the ‘40s and ‘50s. His novels are currently available as e-books.


When the tough, two-fisted, pulptastic series Fight Card softens its edges there has to be a method to the madness…

Ladies Night

Paul Bishop

Yes, I get funny looks when I use the phrase, Fight Card Romance, but I couldn’t be more excited. The Fight Card Romance novels – debuting this month with Ladies Night (Carol Malone writing as Jill Tunney) – are reaching outside of the traditional Fight Card novels  to another audience of by crossing the heart of the once immensely popular romance pulps and the current popularity of the romance genre with the two-fisted pulp boxing action Fight Card fans have come to enjoy.  While romance will feature prominently, the main story – like the original Fight Card tales – will still center on boxing, the big fight, plus a happy resolution to the romance aspects of the tales.

Inspired by the fight pulps of the ’30s and ’40s – such as Fight Stories Magazine and Knockout Magazine – and specifically Robert E. Howard’s two-fisted tales of boxing champ Sailor Steve Costigan, the Fight Card series was conceived two years ago as a monthly series of 25,000 word novelettes, designed to be read in one or two sittings.

Originally, each Fight Card story was to be set in the1950s. However, this quickly became negotiable when Terrence McCauley proposed writing a prequel to his outstanding 1920’s set first novel Prohibition, featuring Quinn, an ex-fighter turned mob enforcer.  Terrence wanted to tell Quinn’s origin story, which was firmly set in Fight Card territory, but three decades earlier.

Once the specific era precedent was broken, it cleared the way to enlarge the Fight Card audience with the advent of the spin-off brand, Fight Card MMA.  MMA savvy writers Gerard Brennan and Jeremy Brown gave Fight Card MMA a great kick off with Welcome To The Octagon and The Kalamazoo Kid respectively.

Which brings us to Fight Card Romance

Fight Card has its roots deep in the pulp genre – and so does romance.  The love pulps flourished between the ‘20s and the ‘50s, often not only outselling all of the best remembered pulp genres, but often supporting the costs of those other pulps on romance’s broad shoulders.

Street & Smith’s pulp, Love Story Magazine, founded in 1921 and edited by Amita Fairgrieve (and later the dynamic Daisy Bacon), was the gold standard.  It obtained a stunning circulation of over 100,000 copies a month within its first year of publication. Love Story created a bond with its readers unlike anything else in pulpdom. Very quickly, Love Story began publishing semi-monthly and shortly thereafter, weekly.  With its huge circulation of loyal readers, Love Story became the financial security behind Street & Smith’s complete line of pulps.

Today, is no different.  According to industry estimates, the romance genre is responsible for more than fifty-five percent of all books published yearly – showing the continued strength and loyalty of romance readers.  Other genre readers and publishers sometimes foolishly scoff at the romance genre – in much the same way as the popularity of pulp writing in general was regarded – but clearly romance, in all its many forms, is still providing much of the publishing field’s profits.

Before you get the idea the Fight Card Romance brand is just about profits remember, Fight Card is not a publishing house.  It is a new publishing dynamic, an author’s cooperative.  The money from the individual titles in all the Fight Card brands go directly to each individual writer – not to a company.  The writers bring back to the cooperative whatever skills they can offer – cover art, editing, blurb writing, website design and maintenance, publicity contacts, podcasting, e-formatting, blog tours, advertising, creation of our free quarterly Fight Fictioneers Magazine, social networking – all as part of the Fight Card team. Fight Card is first and foremost a dynamic for the writers and of the writers.

Fight Card chose to enter the romance genre excited to find new readers – individuals who, after enjoying a Fight Card Romance, may also find something they like in a traditional Fight Card tale, or a kick-ass Fight Card MMA story – good writing cuts across all genres.

The main goal, however, is that romance readers will discover and enjoy the first Fight Card Romance: Ladies Night.  The author, Carol Malone is a romance reading fanatic and a romance writer.  She worked particularly hard with this essentially new genre mash-up to provide both romance readers and traditional Fight Card fans with a knockout story.

Find out more about Fight Card Romance and other Fight Card brands here: www.fightcardbooks.com

Fight Fiction and the Fight Card Series

A novelist, screenwriter, television personality and half the creative genius behind the Fight Card series, Paul Bishop recently finished a 35 year career with the Los Angeles Police Department where he was twice honored as Detective Of The Year.  He continues to work privately as a deception expert and as a specialist in the investigation of sex crimes.  His books include the western Diamondback: Shroud Of Vengenace, two novels (Hot Pursuit / Deep Water) featuring LAPD officers Calico Jack Walker and Tina Tamiko, the thrillers Penalty Shot and Suspicious Minds, a short story collection (Running Wylde), and five novels in his L.A.P.D. Detective Fey Croaker series (Croaker: Kill Me Again, Croaker: Grave Sins, Croaker: Tequila Mockingbird, Croaker: Chalk Whispers, and Croaker: Pattern of Behavior).  His latest novel, Fight Card: Felony Fists (written as Jack Tunney), is a fast action boxing tale inspired by the fight pulps of the ‘40s and ‘50s. His novels are currently available as e-books.


 

An old genre made brand new again …

 Paul Bishop

Paul Bishop

What exactly is fight fiction?  I’m glad you asked … in 2011, 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 they 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 (although this later changed to include many different time periods), 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 characters in each tale would have a connection to St. Vincent’s Asylum For Boys in Chicago (an orphanage) where Father Tim Brophy, 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 as 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.  Other fight fiction novels, such as Suckerpunch by Jeremy Brown, or Basement Brawl by Robert Evans, are all about MMA fight action.  Like the Fight Card series, 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.

These types of stories proliferated in the sports pulps of the ’40s and ’50s and have appeared literally in hundreds of movies, best typified by the Rocky series.  Today they are proliferating again in the form of Fight Card’s two-fisted boxing tales, Fight Card MMA’s more modern epics, and the new spin-off series Fight Card Romance – which has just debuted with Ladies Night.

No matter the time period or the style of fighting involved, fight fiction, as celebrated within the pages of Fight Card, gives readers the feeling of being in the ring against an overwhelming opponent, yet with the determination to never, never, go down for the count.

I savor fight fiction because, as a reader and a writer, it brings my imagination alive, it makes me want to stand up and cheer, it elevates me beyond the ordinary, and takes me into the world of one man’s determination and skill pitted against another in the brutal ballet danced in the ring or cage.  The Fight Card series and associate spin-offs celebrates these stories.  So, let’s touch gloves and come out reading ….

Find out more about the Fight Card series here: www.fightcardbooks.com

Authors’ Cooperative: A New Publishing Paradigm

A novelist, screenwriter, television personality and half the creative genius behind the Fight Card series, Paul Bishop recently finished a 35 year career with the Los Angeles Police Department where he was twice honored as Detective Of The Year.  He continues to work privately as a deception expert and as a specialist in the investigation of sex crimes.  His books include the western Diamondback: Shroud Of Vengenace, two novels (Hot Pursuit / Deep Water) featuring LAPD officers Calico Jack Walker and Tina Tamiko, the thrillers Penalty Shot and Suspicious Minds, a short story collection (Running Wylde), and five novels in his L.A.P.D. Detective Fey Croaker series (Croaker: Kill Me Again, Croaker: Grave Sins, Croaker: Tequila Mockingbird, Croaker: Chalk Whispers, and Croaker: Pattern of Behavior).  His latest novel, Fight Card: Felony Fists (written as Jack Tunney), is a fast action boxing tale inspired by the fight pulps of the ‘40s and ‘50s. His novels are currently available as e-books.


 

The publishing world is changing fast with new opportunities for writers to support one another …

 

Mel Odom and I didn’t start out to create a new publishing paradigm.  We started out to take advantage of the world of e-publishing to create Fight Card – some pulpy fun for a niche audience, which included ourselves.  Two years and twenty-seven titles later, we find we just might have discovered something much more precious.

The genesis of our Fight Card series began with a phone conversation between the prolific writer Mel Odom and myself.  I’ve written a dozen novels published by major traditional publishers and have worked in scripted television and film.  However, Mel’s output of paperback originals, under his own name and a bouquet of pseudonyms, numbers in the hundreds.  We’re both pros, but Mel had made a living as a writer, while I wrote as a second career while keeping my day job as an LAPD detective.

In a Los Angeles to Oklahoma phone conversation in mid-2011, we were discussing – as so many writers were at the time, and still do – how the advent of e-books was turning the publishing business on its head in much the same way MP3s and the Internet had turned the music business upside down.  Suddenly, there were viable lines of distribution for individual writers who no longer needed the monolithic, outdated, methods of traditional publishing houses in order to reach readers.

For years, the major legacy publishers had treated most writers like serfs toiling in the kingdom’s fields.  Traditionally, self-publishing, via vanity presses (where the author paid to have his or her book published), was considered the trademark of foolish amateurs and crackpots who couldn’t put two coherent sentences together.  But Amazon and other e-publishing outlets (such as Smashwords) changed all that in virtually the blink of an eye.

During our conversation, the topic came up of Smoker, a Twilight Zone style short boxing story Mel had published via Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) platform.  Both Mel and I were fans of Robert E. Howard’s two-fisted boxing tales featuring Sailor Steve Costigan, and bemoaned the fact nobody was writing stories like those anymore …

Then the light bulb clicked on …  With the advances in e-publishing and the ability to use Amazon’s publishing platform as a worldwide distributor, there was no reason why niche interest stories couldn’t be published and reach their intended audience.  While there was only a very limited traditional publishing venue for short stories, there was no market at all for the novella – 20,000 – 50,000 word stories.  Again, e-publishing had changed that paradigm completely.

Inspired by the fight pulps of the ’30s and ’40s – such as Fight Stories Magazine an Knockout Magazine – as well as the aforementioned fight fiction by Robert E. Howard, Mel and I quickly conceived Fight Card as a monthly series of 25,000 word novelettes, designed to be read in one or two sittings.  We would take advantage of everything Amazon’s KDP platform had to offer.  We could have a  blast writing and publishing stories we wanted to read without having to find a traditional publisher who would never take a chance on such a niche audience scheme.

Mel and I wrote the first two books in the series, Felony Fists (me) and Cutman (Mel), before shanghaiing noir master Eric Beetner into writing the third entry, Split Decision. We began publishing the books in January of 2012 figuring between Mel and myself and a few other writer friends, we might crank out a half-dozen or so Fight Card tales.

Then came a surprise – the stories were not only resonating with readers, but also with writers.  Young writing lions such as Heath Lowrance, David Foster, Kevin Michaels, Terrence McCauley, and Robert Evans, as well as established pros like Wayne Dundee, Mike Faricy, and Robert Randisi expressed the desire to write entries in the series Fight Card series.

Part of the appeal was the new publishing paradigm Mel and I had established … Fight Card was not a publishing company, but something different – an author’s cooperative.

Using the shared open pseudonym of Jack Tunney (to maintain series cohesiveness on Amazon) for the e-books, and the author’s own name for the cover of the paperback versions (via CreateSpace), each author would launch the books from their own individual KDP platform.  This ensures the royalties from each Fight Card title go directly to each individual writer – not to a company.

In return, each writer brings back to the cooperative whatever skills they can offer – cover art, editing, blurb writing, website design and maintenance, publicity contacts, podcasting, e-formatting, blog tours, advertising, creation of our free quarterly Fight Fictioneers Magazine, social networking, etc. – all as part of the Fight Card team. Fight Card became, first and foremost, a dynamic for the writers and of the writers.

Specific guidelines for the Fight Card stories were established, including time period, worldwide locations, a PG-13 level of sex and violence, no profanity, and, while the main character didn’t have to be a boxer (reporters, managers, etc. would also work), the heart and soul of the story had to revolve around and – most importantly – be resolved by boxing.

Within these guidelines, the Fight Card authors have submitted some incredible character pieces as their protagonists each stride a different journey to the big fight.  The big fight doesn’t usually hinge on the heavyweight championship of the world.  The stakes are often 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, but always life, liberty, love, or death hinge on the results for the characters involved.

As Fight Card moved into 2013 with a second year of monthly stories, a wider audience was sought with the addition of the spin-off brand, Fight Card MMA, which brought stories and characters into the current world of mixed martial arts.  Now, with two released Fight Card MMA titles and more on the way from MMA savvy writers, Fight Card is also moving in yet another direction.

Our Fight Card Romance brand debuted this month with Ladies Night from the first female writer on the Fight Card team Carol Malone.  Still the same two-fisted, pulptastic, stories, but with a touch of romance.

The Fight Card authors cooperative is still a work in progress. New writers and readers are regularly joining the troops – enjoying the camaraderie of fellow writers and a love for this style of storytelling.

By the end of 2013, Fight Card and our associated spin-off brands will have published twenty-seven titles, including our special December holiday offering – Fight Card: Sherlock Holmes.

2014 is also looking to be a bumper year for the Fight Card author cooperative with the upcoming Fight Card: Luchadores (Mexican Lucha Libre wrestlers), and tales featuring literary figures (such as Rod Serling, Hemingway, Jack London, Robert E. Howard) and historical figures (gangster Mickey Cohen, the notorious Jack Ruby – whose boxing nickname was Sparkling Jack) all with connections to boxing.

Boxing, MMA, romance, two-fisted prose and great storytelling from writers working together is what Fight Card is all about.  Hopefully, you’ll get on the Fight Card yourself.

Find out more about Fight Card here: www.fightcardbooks.com