FIGHT CARD DEBUTS!

FIGHT CARD DEBUTS!

When I was a kid, I had a soft spot for tough guys. I loved them in the movies, on television, and the guys I met in real life. Okay, maybe I still have a soft spot for them. That’s one of the reasons I loved all the Spenser books Robert B. Parker wrote.

A few years ago, I had a chance to write a boxing novella for an editor, something I’d always wanted to try. That one had a supernatural element to it, but the boxing was clean and the 1950s atmosphere was strong, at least in my opinion. I also loved the first-person voice I came up with for the character and I enjoyed sinking into the world.

At any rate, I released the short story on Kindle and it caught the attention of Paul Bishop, a career LAPD detective, who — like me — grew up on pulps, Gold Medal novels, and the idea of tough guys. We ended up talking about the story, about our mutual loves and wistfully wishing that someone still wrote stories like that. The more we talked, the more we realized we wanted to do that. BTW, Paul is a bestselling writer and a television star as well (Take The Money And Run).

So we decided we would write those stories. We set them back in the 1950s. My character, Mickey Flynn, is a merchant marine sailor who’s tough as nails. Paul’s character is Patrick Flynn, an LAPD detective on Chief Parker’s infamous Hat Squad. The brothers grew up in an orphanage in Chicago where they were taught the “sweet science” by Father Tim. The orphanage is nicknamed Our Lady of the Glass Jaw.

Once other writers found out what we were doing, a few of them wanted on board and we gladly let them. (There were a lot of orphans that went through Our Lady of the Glass Jaw!) Next up is Eric Beetner’s Split Decision, and that will be out in December.

These beautiful covers are by Keith Birdsong.

Paul and I had a lot of fun with these first two books, and we’re already planning the next round for our characters. So if you like tough guys, boxing, noir, crime stories, and pulps, I hope you’ll find something in these books that you like. Let us know.

ROUGH EDGES REVIEWS FELONY FISTS!

ROUGH EDGES REVIEWS FELONY FISTS!

THANKS TO JAMES REASONER OVER AT HIS ROUGH EDGES BLOG FOR THE FIRST REVIEW OF FELONY FISTS . . .

The eagerly-awaited Fight Card series makes its debut with the novel Felony Fists, written by Paul Bishop under the house-name Jack Tunney. Set in 1954, an era that really resonates with me, it's the story of Patrick "Felony" Flynn, a Los Angeles cop who's also an amateur boxer. Flynn gets a chance to combine those two parts of his life when he's offered a promotion to Detective that involves him taking down a fighter owned by gangster Mickey Cohen, thereby thwarting Cohen's attempt to take over the boxing game in LA.

As if that's not enough for Flynn to deal with, Bishop also includes counterfeiting, kidnapping, and a beautiful redheaded torch singer, as well as setting up the back-story for the rest of the series, which will be written by assorted top-notch hardboiled authors. He does a great job of capturing the time period with its swanky nightclubs, sweaty boxing gyms, and seedy back alleys. The story races along at a fine pace, culminating in an epic battle in the ring between Flynn and Cohen's fighter.

Boxing scenes are harder to write than you might think, but Bishop makes the action easy to follow for the reader, as well as skillfully mixing the fisticuffs with the hardboiled crime angle. I haven't read a lot of boxing fiction – Robert E. Howard's boxing stories are some of my favorites among his work, and the Battlin' Jack Murdock scenes in Daredevil #1 by Stan Lee and Bill Everett are still etched in my mind more than forty years later – but Bishop's efforts here are right up there with those yarns. Felony Fists is a great debut for what promises to be a highly entertaining series.

And next up is The Cutman, by Mel Odom writing as Jack Tunney.

FIGHT CARD ~ AVAILABLE NOW!

FIGHT CARD ~ AVAILABLE NOW!

THE NEW PULPTASTIC SERIES FIGHT CARD, CREATED BY MYSELF AND FELLOW WRITER MEL ODOM (UNDER THE PSEUDONYM JACK TUNNEY), IS INSPIRED BY THE FIGHT PULPS OF THE '30s AND '40s, SUCH AS FIGHT STORIES MAGAZINE AND THE SAILOR STEVE COSTIGAN TALES WRITTEN BY ROBERT E. HOWARD . . .

THE FIRST TWO BOOKS IN THE SERIES, FELONY FISTS (PAUL BISHOP) AND THE CUTMAN (MEL ODOM) ARE AVAILABLE NOW . . .

FIGHT CARD: THE CUTMAN

JACK TUNNEY

Havana, Cuba. 1954.

Mickey Flynn is an ex-Korean War vet turned merchant marine. He was born in the ghettos of Chicago and raised in an orphanage with his younger brother, Patrick. He was one of several young men who received an education from the nuns at St. Vincent’s.

But he was also taught the "sweet science" by Father Tim, a Golden Gloves boxer and retired police officer who only knew one way to bring a troubled boy to manhood. Father Tim worked with his young charges, taught them how to jab and punch and throw a hook that seemed to come out of nowhere. When the young men left St. Vincent's (Our Lady of the Glass Jaw), they were changed, fit and ready to take on the troubles the encountered around the world, no matter where they found them.

Now Mick's in Havana, working on WIDE BERTHA, his ship. After surviving a fierce storm at sea, the last thing Mick and the crew need to do is get crossways with the Italian organized crime flooding Havana, but it doesn't take much to put him in the cross hairs of a vengeful mob boss working for Lucky Luciano.

Unable to get free of bad luck and unfortunate circumstance, Mick ends up in the ring in an illegal boxing match fighting a human killing machine.

FIGHT CARD: FELONY FISTS

JACK TUNNEY

Los Angeles 1954

Patrick “Felony” Flynn has been fighting all his life. Learning the “sweet science” from Father Tim the fighting priest at St. Vincent’s, the Chicago orphanage where Pat and his older brother Mickey were raised, Pat has battled his way around the world – first with the Navy and now with the Los Angeles Police Department.

Legendary LAPD chief William Parker is on a rampage to clean up both the department and the city. His elite crew of detectives known as The Hat Squad is his blunt instrument – dedicated, honest, and fearless. Promotion from patrol to detective is Pat’s goal, but he also yearns to be one of the elite.

And his fists are going to give him the chance.

Gangster Mickey Cohen runs LA’s rackets, and murderous heavyweight Solomon King is Cohen’s key to taking over the fight game. Chief Parker wants wants Patrick “Felony” Flynn to stop him – a tall order for middleweight ship’s champion with no professional record.

Leading with his chin, and with his partner, LA’s first black detective Tombstone Jones, covering his back, Patrick Flynn and his Felony Fists are about to fight for his future, the future of the department, and the future of Los Angeles.

The Quiet Man

It's hard to believe that John Wayne filmed this one after shooting Rio Bravo, where he played a scene-chewing pistoleer helping Dean Martin clean up a town.  And it's kind of strange watching Wayne in something that isn't a Western.

But here it is.

The Quiet Man isn't even an action movie.  At least, not until the legendary fight at the end of the movie.  It's a romance and a comedy of errors as an American marries an Irish woman and doesn't quite understand all the implications of the dowry her brother is supposed to pay for her.

The story is deep and moving, based on a short story by Maurice Walsh that was originally published in The Saturday Evening Post.

I'm posting it here, as a boxing blog, because it's a great little movie and has that tremendous boxing sequence at the end that has to be seen to be believed.

THE CUTMAN

I intend for my first Fight Cards novel to be an homage of sorts to Robert E. Howard's Sailor Steve Costigan stories.  Mickey Flynn is a throwback to that kind of hero, only moved into the 1950s.  I'm staying with a first-person point of view and have tried to capture the language and richess of that kind of two-fisted brawler.

Howard was a wonderful writer, and not just of Conan stories.  I'm also looking forward to the new movie coming out later this year.



FIGHT FICTION: REDISCOVERING JIM TULLY!

FIGHT FICTION: REDISCOVERING JIM TULLY!

KNOWN FOR HIS HARD-BOILED, REALISTIC BOOKS ABOUT THE OUTCASTS AND VAGABONDS OF AMERICA – THE HOBOS AND BOXERS, IRISH DITCH DIGGERS AND PROSTITUTES, CIRCUS CARNIES AND PRISONERS – EARNED JIM TULLY RAVE REVIEWS IN NATIONAL PUBLICATIONS AND CELEBRATED COMMENTS FROM THE LIKES OF H.L. MENCKEN AND GEORGE JEAN NATHAN . . . THE CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER HAS A COOL ARTICLE TODAY REDISCOVERING JIM TULLY, ONE OF OHIO’S FORGOTTEN SONS . . .

Jim Tully hardly fit the portrait of the poet as a young man, at least the one of popular imagination. He came out of St. Marys, Ohio, the son of poor, alcohol-bedeviled Irish immigrants -- "shanty Irish," he called his family.

After his mother died young, he spent six brutal years in a Cincinnati orphanage and another year in virtual bondage to a cruel farmer. At 14, he ran away to spend six years riding the rails as a "road kid," a sort of junior hobo.

He then went on the small-town boxing circuit as a featherweight, survived the hot furnaces of chain-making factories in Columbus and Kent, and worked as a traveling tree surgeon, even tending the trees of future U.S. senator and president, Warren G. Harding . . .

FOR THE FULL ARTICLE CLICK HERE

KEVIN I. SLAUGHTER MAINTAINS JIM TULLY’S LADIES IN THE PARLOR BLOG. TO CHECK IT OUT CLICK HERE

HAT TIP TO JOHN STICKNEY

Gary Phillips Joins The Fight Card!

Gary Phillips puts on the gloves and joins the Fight Card roster!  After talking with Bob Randisi, Gary liked the idea of doing a boxing story set in the 1950s.

With all the novels, comics, and short stories he's done, Gary is going to bring an exciting tale to the line up.

Fans may know him from his Ivan Monk novels or the hard-edged comics noir he's pounded out, like High Rollers and The Jook.