BOXING AND
ROMANCE
CAROL MALONE ON THE WRITING OF FIGHT CARD ROMANCE: LADIES NIGHT ...
I wrote Fight
Card Romance: Ladies Night on a
dare.
A couple of years ago, my friend and mentor, Paul Bishop, along
with his good friend, Mel Odom, created the Fight Card series – fast action
boxing tales inspired by the fight pulps of the ‘40s and ‘50s. Being part of a monthly writers group mentored
by Paul, I was familiar with these novels and intrigued by their punchy
style. When Paul offered my husband, Tim,
the opportunity to write a Fight Card novella, I saw only one major problem – Tim,
raised with four sisters, can’t abide sports. He never played sports of any
kind, nor does he like to sit and watch sports on TV He considers it wasting time.
On
the other hand, I was raised with four older brothers. When I wasn’t blowing up a Lionel train set
with my brother’s dart-shooting-tank-truck, I was outside shooting arrows into
a bale of hay, riding my grandmother’s horse, or zipping down sloping hills on
my brothers’ sled like my hair was on fire. I learned how to score a baseball
game well before learning my ABC’s.
Sports was a way of life with four brothers – ice
skating, skiing, hockey, water skiing, basketball, football, bowling, and
baseball. Weekends in my family were spend watching Friday Night Fights with my dad, attending my brother’s baseball games
on Saturday afternoons, and bowling with the whole family on Saturday evenings.
I ran track, played tennis, and was on my college’s volleyball team. I am a
die-hard Dodger devotee – and, like Tommy Lasorda, if I get cut, I bleed Dodger
Blue. My dream was to be a batgirl – not one who chased after Adam West, but
the kind who takes care of the bats for all those hunky ballplayers.
I read all the previous Fight Card novels and
loved them. If Tim wasn’t going to take
a crack at a Fight Card story, then I wanted to get in the ring. The series to
that point was essentially guy sports stories written for tough-minded,
fight-loving male fans, so I was a little tenuous, wondering if I would be
accepted into the brotherhood.
I was determined to approach Paul about an
assignment, but figured the best thing to do would be to start writing a Fight Card
story and surprise him at our next writers group meeting. I was already writing romance with some form
of suspense and action – I was hoping it wouldn’t be much different.
So, without Paul’s knowledge, I started to write Ladies Night in March, 2012, all the
while working on other romantic manuscripts. For boxing research, I watched
fights from the 50's on YouTube, typing the descriptions of the punches into my
computer while announcers describe the action. I rounded out the research with
old LA city maps, period photos, boxing statistics, and scads of boxing
technique videos.
With trepidation, I brought the first chapters of Ladies Night to the once a month writers
group and was overwhelmed with the excited acceptance. Paul encouraged me to
continue. He’d had a notion in his head
to expand the Fight Card brand – which he’d already done by adding in a series
of Fight Card MMA novels – to include Fight Card Romance novels, and Ladies Night looked like it might fill
the niche.
Working with my book coach Beth Barany (http://bethbarany.com) on my previous
romantic fiction, I put aside the prosaic stuff and concentrated on my Fight Card
book. Beth kept reviewing the manuscript, teaching me invaluable skills to make
the process run smoothly.
With his real world background in police interrogation,
Paul knows how to make criminals sweat. I often felt the cold-cop experience of
Paul’s suspect-breaking techniques
when I wrote a couple of chapters he thought were a crime. Yet, under his
tutelage, I experienced phenomenal growth. I went from writing very bad romance
to creating a well-turned sports-romance novel. Paul is confident, but time
will tell if it will be accepted by the die-hard fans of the great Fight Card
stories.
I couldn’t have written Ladies Night without Paul and Beth’s expert influence and their uncompromising
declarations, from time to time, that some of my writing did indeed – suck. But
they also offered praise and reassurance, and forced me to keep at it until I
got it right. Just like a heavyweight
champion needs the right trainer and the right cornermen, so too does a writer.
