It’s an old boxing term – jab your opponent (stick) and get
away (move) before she can do it back. It’s also a good description of how my
protagonist, Sara Jane Rispoli, fights her way through the COLD FURY trilogy.
In FLICKER & BURN, she comes out swinging again, this time even harder.
I boxed at a place in Chicago, Windy City Gym, which had been
around since the early 1920’s and looked it, with warped floorboards, sweat-
and bloodstained rings, and slowly twirling heavy bags. Real fighters trained
there, people who wanted to be pros, including one of the toughest young women
I’ve ever known.
She gave me the idea for Sara Jane to be a boxer.
It’s a sport that requires strength, but even more,
dexterity and smarts. The young woman – I’ll call her Rosa – had all of that in
abundance. She was one part gladiator, one part ballerina, and a hundred
percent Einstein. If she got hit, Rosa learned from it on her feet, reacting in
a way that made sure she didn’t get hit twice. And she employed the wisest move
in boxing – if she was getting hurt, she ran. Not out of the ring, of course,
but in a way that made an opponent chase her.
And then she’d stop abruptly, feet planted, body squared,
and throw a left hook.
I learned a lot by watching Rosa and put almost all of it
into Sara Jane. Throughout the trilogy, my heroine knows when to stick, when to
move, and above all, she never stops fighting.
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