{"id":3731,"date":"2013-09-18T14:43:31","date_gmt":"2013-09-18T18:43:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/?p=3731"},"modified":"2013-09-18T14:43:32","modified_gmt":"2013-09-18T18:43:32","slug":"what-is-a-fight-card-romance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/2013\/09\/what-is-a-fight-card-romance\/","title":{"rendered":"What Is a Fight Card Romance?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Honored by her college for literary excellence, author Carol Malone<\/a> has played make-believe all her life and started writing romantic tales in high school. Raised with four older brothers, sports was the center of her family\u2019s life. To this day, she still bleeds Dodger Blue. Carol writes pulse-pounding, noir sports stories with a passionate twist, inviting fans to jump in a front row seat and cheer for the underdog.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

In the world of new pulp writing, this question is turning heads …<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

\"Ladies<\/a><\/p>\n

Carol Malone<\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Before I can tell you about Fight Card Romance<\/i>, I need to explain a little about the traditional Fight Card<\/i>.<\/p>\n

In 2012, a dear friend of mine, mentor and author Paul Bishop, and his pal, Mel Odom, created Fight Card<\/i> \u2013 a series of 25,000 word novellas inspired by the pulse-pounding fight pulps so popular from the \u201830s to the \u201850s.\u00a0 In the 1920s, boxing as a sport began coming into its own \u2013 attracting the minorities, the Irish, the Italians, the Jews, and later the Blacks and Latin boxers \u2013 all trying to prove their metal in the toughest arena of all \u2013the boxing ring, man-to-man.\u00a0 Fictional boxing stories filled the pulps of the era with two-fisted action devoured by a rapt public. The Fight Card series was a return to this style of writing, bringing new fight stories to modern readers.<\/p>\n

Paul and Mel established a list of writers guidelines for the Fight Card<\/i> series.\u00a0 \u00a0Originally, all the stories were to be set in the 1950\u2019s \u2013 though this was quickly waived to include other decades.\u00a0 The stories could be set anywhere in the world (and have \u2013 from the Australian Outback, to South Africa and Ireland), and a PG-13 level was established for language, violence and sex.<\/p>\n

The main character in the stories did not have to be a professional fighter \u2013 they could be a reporters, sailors, fight manager, soldiers, or \u2013 in the case of my novel, Ladies Night<\/i> \u2013 the boxer\u2019s lady-love. However, the biggest rule was the stories must have boxing at its heart and resolution \u2013 usually the big fight<\/i> conclusion. This didn\u2019t mean ever story had to be about the championship of the world.\u00a0 The characters don\u2019t have to be contenders, and most aren\u2019t, but all of them are facing extremely high personal stakes, if not certain destruction, if they don\u2019t man-up.<\/p>\n

The boxer in each story was to have a connection to St. Vincent\u2019s Asylum for Boys, an orphanage in Chicago. Under the big-hearted, tough-love, dished out generously by the much beloved Fighting Priest<\/i>, Father Tim \u2013 also known as Tornado<\/i> Tim Brophy, a Golden Gloves champion himself as a youth \u2013 each boy under his care grows up believing he\u2019s something special. Although cursed by some nuns and loved by others, the good sisters of the orphanage pray for Father Tim who manages to keep his ruffians in check by teaching them the sweet science <\/i>of boxing. Boys who come to him with no food in their bellies, no love in their hearts, and no hope for a future, find Father Tim filling up those holes.<\/p>\n

Each story is written to be e-published via Amazon\u2019s Kindle Direct Publishing platform under the shared pseudonym of Jack Tunney for cohesiveness. I wrote Ladies Night under the name of Jill Tunney.\u00a0 Paperback editions follow on the heels of the e-books, this time under the individual author\u2019s own name.<\/p>\n

My husband Tim and I are part of a monthly writer\u2019s group mentored by Paul.\u00a0 When he asked my husband, Tim \u2013 an end-of-the-world sci-fi writer \u2013 if he wanted to take a shot at writing a Fight Card<\/i> story, Tim declined. He\u2019s not into sports \u2013 but I am. Raised with four older brothers, sports was an obsession. When I was in high school, I started reading and writing romance, and have since then written numerous manuscripts. So, I decided to take a dare and without Paul\u2019s knowledge began pecking out my own Fight Card<\/i> tale. I didn\u2019t start out to necessarily write a romance, but the main characters dictated their story, I simply jotted it down. A year later, voil\u00e0 \u2013 Ladies Night<\/i>.<\/p>\n

In Ladies Night<\/i>, Jimmy Doherty is dropped at Father\u2019s Tim\u2019s doorstep, all alone in the world after tragedy takes his pa in WWII, his ma to her grief, and his only other living relative, Aunt Alice, to heart failure. Angry with God, furious with his own grief and fear of abandonment, what Jimmy craves most is a family of his own. Through an uncanny ability to recognize boxing talent, Father Tim knows Jimmy\u2019s heart beats boxing, and gives him a shot at being a contender. Since all orphans must leave the orphanage at the age of eighteen, Father Tim wisely puts Jimmy on a train to L.A. to box for an old friend.<\/p>\n

Jimmy meets Pops Dominic, his new manager and trainer \u2013 and Pops\u2019 beautiful daughter, Lindy, who\u2019s sweeter than apple pie. Jimmy can\u2019t resist Lindy\u2019s charms. She offers him acceptance, fierce loyalty, and love. Sneaking off to marrying Lindy raises Pops\u2019 blood pressure, but having Lindy in his corner gives Jimmy what he hasn\u2019t had in his life for nine years \u2013 a family.<\/p>\n

When Lindy is arrested for murdering a boxer with ties to a gangster, Jimmy is forced to join forces with the arresting detective \u2013 who would like to do much more with Lindy than put her in handcuffs \u2013 in a desperate search for the real killer. Ladies Night<\/i> \u2013 boxing, suspense and romance \u2013 proves love can be murder \u2013 in and out of the ring.<\/p>\n

When Paul found out what I was doing, he couldn\u2019t have been more supportive.\u00a0 He had already created the Fight Card<\/i> spin-off series, Fight Card MMA<\/i>, and had a crazy notion to widen Fight Card\u2019s<\/i> readership even further with a Fight Card Romance<\/i> brand.\u00a0 Ladies Night<\/i> became the flagship title for Fight Card Romance<\/i>, and I couldn\u2019t be more thrilled.<\/p>\n

Find out more about Fight Card Romance and other Fight Card brands here:<\/i><\/b> www.fightcardbooks.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Honored by her college for literary excellence, author Carol Malone has played make-believe all her life and started writing romantic tales in high school. Raised with four older brothers, sports was the center of her family\u2019s life. To this day, she still bleeds Dodger Blue. Carol writes pulse-pounding, noir sports stories with a passionate twist, inviting fans to jump in a front row seat and cheer for the underdog.   In the world of new pulp writing, this question is turning heads … Carol Malone   Before I can tell you about Fight Card Romance, I need to explain a little about the traditional Fight Card. In 2012, a dear friend of mine, mentor and author Paul Bishop, and his pal, Mel Odom, created Fight Card \u2013 a series of 25,000 word novellas inspired by the pulse-pounding fight pulps so popular from the \u201830s to the \u201850s.\u00a0 In the 1920s, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90,87,91],"tags":[270,273],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3731"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3731"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3731\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3739,"href":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3731\/revisions\/3739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}