“James, was reading your plan on retiring from most of your non-fiction genres. What-the-fuck, Bro? You going soft in the head on me?”

-Allen Hoyt

Allen, as much as I value my knucklehead readership, you obviously included, it is so. First the why and then the how.

Why?

I am getting soft in the head.

In 2009 I decided to retire from work and write fulltime when I experienced a very real and pronounced reduction in my mental capacity. At that point I had to begin writing down work plans, display layouts and other day-to-day aspects of my ghetto grocer job and knew I wouldn’t be able to write much if I waited until my mid-sixties to begin. Since that time I have absorbed over a dozen serious concussions and I drink too much, armed with a fresh liver that saw very little action in my youth and prime. You do the math.

I have over a dozen books that have been in the works for 2-8 years which I forever put on hold to write stuff that sells, meaning on combat. Well, now that none of my stuff sells that write to sell motivation is gone.

Also, now that I have written, let me count… 15 books on how to beat piss, shit and snot out of our fellow humans I can’t remember what I’ve written ten even twenty years ago. I used to have it all on recall, but as the shadows gather the archives in the darkening mind recede further into the unretrievable mists.

How?

Dude, if you write me a question in an email or on the comment function on the main site, I will address it. I’m doing a lot of this currently by coaching for sanctuary as I bounce around the alimentary canal of the Great Satan. Some young writers have asked me to coach them and I leave it to them to write of it.

How I will address future crackpot mailbox questions, as I scramble to finish over 30 books before my mind is mush, will be to forward them to Matron Lockhart for addressing on a crackpot podcast [as soon as I conquer my techtardation and get Skype up again] or to one of the young fellas I coach, for video upload onto their site.

My eyes and brain are tiring and I have writing work undone, so, among other genres, I will stop writing “how to fight” stuff on 12/15/18, as I will be on the move at that point. This does not mean that is the end of the posts, as I have about 20 fight articles written and unposted.

I will be willing to write on fight concepts in the form of a fiction vignette.

I am also still open to writing commentary and analysis on boxing and MMA videos.

Also, as part of my biographical writing, I will be recording the fight experiences of those whose lives I chronicle.

As far as future writing my desire is to limit it to fiction, biography and myth by this time next year, provided I can complete those history projects now in progress which will be helped by not writing anymore knucklehead lit.

And, it is hoped, in the future, Allen, that if you like what I write and want more written advice, you might buy Letters from Planet Meathead, Being a Bad Man in a Worse World or Winter of a Fighting Life for instance.

Thanks Allen.

Fighting Smart: Boxing, Agonistics & Survival