Last Thursday, while Britain was busy voting on its EU divorce, I managed to indulge two of my passions - writing and martial arts - with a fundraising launch of the
Zombies v. Ninjas series in Stonehouse Books, Kilkenny, Ireland.
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| Coach Gary (left) and author Ruby (right) at the launch of Zombies v. Ninjas |
It was a great event, well-attended and raising a good few euros for the club,
Evolution Martial Arts Academy. The whole thing turned into a signing fest when we came up with the idea of club members wearing their outfits. Readers were encouraged to ask anyone in karate regalia to sign their newly purchased books as the trilogy features all the club members. It was a unique experience for everyone.
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| Members of EMAA as featured in Zombies v. Ninjas |
The launch had been greatly anticipated. My ZvN trilogy was a rapid project, first chapters being penned in February 2015 and the final edit of the third book completed in May 2016 (they're only 40k words each). This project served several purposes - to have some fun writing really crazy stories, to see if I could produce some commercial work to a short timescale, and to keep my mind firmly fixed on the world of karate. The last is significant as, if you read this post on Sunday 26th June 2016, I will at that same time be enduring the extreme physical ordeal of my 1st Dan Black Belt karate grading. This is the culmination of five years of training for the oldest ninja in town. The fun starts at 10:00 a.m. and will finish (after my fellow ninjas have all taken turns to attack me with full force) several hours later when I'm in Primo restaurant that evening, holding a cold pint of Peroni in my trembling hand. Pass, fail or fall over (one doesn't necessarily preclude the other) this has been much harder than writing a novel. So then what? Write some facebook or blog posts about the Brexit? Revive my ambition to become a ballet dancer, scale Everest or just run naked into the sea?
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| Ex-pats head home after the Brexit vote |
On Monday 27th June (or whenever I'm physically able to raise a hand to the keyboard and cast a bruised and battered eye at the computer screen), I will launch myself at the next writing challenge. A series of murder mysteries, laced with dark humour, a natural spin-off from
Peril and
Dodge. The first of these is 22k words in so I'm optimistic about completion of that one in 2016. Maybe the occasional
Zombies v. Ninjas release will be thrown in between those murder mysteries. The karate, however, will not take a back seat. At
Evolution Martial Arts Academy we maintain our preparedness for the Zombie Apocalypse.
We will survive.
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