Friday, July 26, 2013

Stick and Move - Guest Blog Post by Ted Goeglein author of Flicker & Burn - A Cold Fury Novel

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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