Pillagers of Time by James LaFond

A diverse team of time-travelers are tasked with recovering lost genes and genius’ from the deep past. 16th Century Seneca Child Savant Three-Rivers, the first person recovered from the past, and the time-traveler that originally contacted him, become suspicious of their sponsors’ motives and begin a chronological insurrection.

Available at the James LaFond site store.

Your Trojan Whorse by James LaFond

The Manual of Female Ownership

Do you desire a sheath for your sword? Has the place where you sheathe your sword of love become a rancorous scabbard of animosity? Do you have too much vagina in your life? Is the vagina in your life negatively affecting your masculine serenity? Do you require A Manual of Female Ownership? If so, no longer must you cling blindly to the assumption that the soil where you sow your manly seed is a mine field of ethics, needs, virtues and negotiations. In Your Trojan Whorse you will learn to put your bitches in pusspective. On God’s gray earth, there are but four types of women: the Whore [including most married women], the Manizer, the Slave Girl, and the Priestess. So, Bro, buy this book and it’s only a matter of time before the bitch queens that have ruined your life will have their hairstyle altered to accommodate your beer coaster!

Available in paperback and in PDF.

Riding the Nightmare by James LaFond

Luther receives a mysterious text on his phone, and his life begins unraveling. Can he halt his own spontaneous devolution? Ben has a good job, a great boss, and an even better wife. Then he cracks open a fortune cookie which contains a chilling message.

Wake From Your Dream Place

The Devolution of Luther Watts (Novelette)

A teacher receives a mysterious text on his phone, and his life begins unraveling. Can he halt his own spontaneous devolution?

If It Seems Fates Are Against You

The Doom of Benjamin Long (Short story)

Ben has a good job, a great boss, and an even better wife. Then he cracks open a fortune cookie which contains a chilling message.

Available in PDF from the James LaFond site store.

God of War by James LaFond

The Deconstruction of Yule Alpha 7
He is a purpose-built time-jumper; a genetic reclamation asset created to kill primitive men, impregnate viable women, and abduct the most valuable children. Despite his origins he possesses human feelings, has absorbed certain ethics from those he had been designed to hunt, and has suffered a critical malfunction…

Yule Alpha 7 is a product of Mothercorp cast into the past a mere four years ago. After decades of cultural immersion with the target population he was designed to cull, his operational protocols have faltered. He has only a vague notion of his origins, but has none-the-less returned to his root timeframe intent on avenging himself against his own collective parent for the crime of having created him.

God of War takes place in the World of Organa—a one-way trip into a 24th Century corporate Valhalla as seen through the eyes of a genetically engineered person failing to come to terms with his origins. This brutal story postulates a scientific origin for at least one pagan god, and explores the question of military genetics, through the eyes of a conflicted man-hunter. Yule Alpha 7 is both doomed and damned, and has no higher aim than exacting a price from his evil creators.

Warning: extreme violence, brutality, and sexual situations

Available in PDF from the James LaFond site store.

Soter's Way by James LaFond

Archie Jones is the best janitorial engineer on Planet Earth. But could there be more to life than occupational perfection?

Archie Jones has a good life. His boss, the benevolent Mister Flynn, thinks so highly of him that there has been talk among his coworkers of Archie being entered in the inaugural running of the Janitorial Olympics. Not only does Archie have the best job imaginable he lives in the four-story house left by his dear departed parents, which he shares with five fastidious roommates. However, there is something troubling about the man who lives in the attic. When his other roommates find themselves in danger, it ultimately falls to Archie to seek the aid of the mysterious man who has never left his room.

Available at the James LaFond site store and in the anthology, Rise.

By This Axe! by James LaFond

This myopic adventure blends military science-fiction and mythic fantasy as Yule First Warrior of the Eternal Hall and God of War over Men is cast down from Heaven to wander 21st Century America in a brutal quest for a much coveted head that remains maddeningly attached to the body of a meddlesome prophet.

Parental Warning: Explicit sexual situations, extreme violence and brutality.

Available from the online store.

Den of the Ender by James LaFond

This sci-fi tale spans 20,000 years, from the Ice Age to 2843 and follows nine people caught in Time: Tusk, Ghost Walker of the Original People, is called upon to face a supernatural menace. Jay Bracken’s yearning for a normal life has ebbed since discovering he is a genetically engineered war-freak. However, his short-term goals: nubile companionship and the slaughter of foes, have not changed. Three-Rivers, the messiah of a doomed people, has merged with a spirit the medicine-men of Sunset call a ‘singularity,’ which he knows as The Sunken Star. Eddie thought that selling crack in East Baltimore was a rough job! Now he’s being sucked into some messed-up past—guts first—and is scared to death! Aristotle was spirited away from his Athenian enemies by people claiming to hail from 2,335 years in the future. And what an ‘Athenian’ future it is… Scooter played Cartels of Titan 2,062 times without a caffeine injection, causing his avatar to suffer a psychotic break and his uplink implant to flat-line, totally trashing his halo-drive. Now he sits unplugged and unable to interface. Brant has always lived alone with his parents and Lassie. But yesterday he got new parents, and a new Lassie; a nice Lassie, but not his Lassie. Randy Bracken followed his meat-head brother into a time-travel scheme run by some black mad scientist, and is now the most conflicted White Supremacist alive. If only he could get his hands on a bigger, better gun... Joan Henderson, CIA, was brutally raped in the most secure black ops facility in the world. Now she’s pregnant with the maniac’s child, and is heading up the search for her vanished attacker. Whatever he is, he owes her 18 years of child support, and Joan means to collect.

Available in paperback or Kindle edition.

Modern Agonistics Q&A with Author James LaFond

LL: Hello again, James!

Let's take a break from talking about Sickness of the Heart and take a look at Modern Agonistics. This book is a highly readable account of your eponymous collaboration with Chuck Goetz, encompassing every kind of brutal combat you could think of, and most astonishingly, involving other characters who willingly participate in this practice.

My first question has nothing to do with all that. How do you keep records? As you know, I am a big fan of spreadsheets, but I have learned that you are unfamiliar with this marvelous technology. Yet you recount here information from thousands of encounters. How do you do it?

JL: We used small spiral memo pads and recorded our bouts, the first few years we did everything on a 5-point system. You start with five points and call yourself out when you take five points. A blunt hit was 1, a slash or non vital stab 2, and a vital slash or stab 3. So if you slash me once and I stab you twice, you call yourself out, scoring a 0 on defense and a 2 on offense, where I record a 3 on defense and a 5 on offense. We were trying to workout what worked, what happened when two guys just went at it with weapons. After a while, when more people were involved, we only used this for testing and I retired from keeping track of anyone’s record but my own, really as an experiment. I wanted to hit 1,000 stick-fights so that the math would be self-evident and match this up with my injuries, in order to determine how safe it was.

LL: James, the motto of Modern Agonistics is "As real as you want it." It seems like a core value of this endeavor is genuine, full contact, competitive combat. How do you find people to do this with? When you are training a fighter how soon can you tell if he will be willing to go the distance in this way?

JL: Chuck came up with that motto and he was my first recruit. I asked athletes, martial artists and assorted weirdos if they would like to try it. Roughly 90% of the martial artists recoiled in horror, perhaps 70% of the athletes did the same, and about half of the strange eggs, said, “Why not?” I found hockey and lacrosse players most amicable to fighting with weapons.

LL: One aspect I enjoyed, particularly through Evolutions 1.3 - 1.5 and beyond, is that you experienced a form of arms race, almost as though you worked your way through the development of weapons and armor through history, including crafting weapons and armor yourselves, as you and your training partners advanced and gained experience and skill. How much of this was a conscious decision to expand your armory, versus a natural progression?

JL: We wanted to try different weapons. It was gross act of morbid curiosity in many cases. The evolutionary aspect was just that, not planned. At first we added armor, then we took it away as we got better and narrowed the weapon set. If you are only dealing with one type of weapon you can minimize your armor, unless it is a pole axe or some other crushing extension weapon. We eventually settled for what most primitive warriors have settled with, using a round flexible stick to train, spar and compete with, as this generalizes to many other skills. We did not start out looking at it from an escrima point of view, but did end up using an escrima weapon set, stick and knife with limited machete.

LL: How did you come up with the idea to chain the opponent's weapons together? Has this ever been tried by anyone else?

JL: We didn’t chain the weapons together but held the chain between us, which gives the option to quit, by dropping it and keeps the encounter tense for spectators and does not allow resting. This was Hollywood inspired, I am afraid to say. I don’t have any historical basis for this. Gladiators were forced into close contact by a lanista armed with a prodding weapon. The chain was a way to replicate that forced proximity without getting extra people involved. We had enough trouble getting fighters, let alone officials. Besides, if there are officials for a new sport it can come under fire from the state athletic commission. Realizing this, we decided that taking responsibility for your safety and your opponent’s safety—by breaking off when the other guy is in trouble—was realistic practice for defending oneself on the street. This jived with the fact that more and more of our participants saw this as a type of reality based survival practice.

LL: This book has a lot of informative pictures, particularly in a yellow-walled, red-carpeted dungeon of punishment, as well as detailed instructions on stick fighting drills and techniques. Anyone who enjoyed Sean's recent videos (featuring James LaFond in a red t-shirt, and Sean Glass occasionally sans shirt) will get a lot out of Modern Agonistics, the book. How much do you think a fighter can advance through books and video?

JL: The “dungeon of punishment” was Sifu Edgar Livingston’s Tai-Chi school. He was aligned with Saint Jude’s Children’s hospital, the only honest charity we were able to find. We even got ripped off by the Maryland Diabetes Associate, who refused to credit us with the $260 donation we made because they said they only filled out paperwork on $1000 or more and the meathead I sent down with the money believed the thieves in their office.

Book learning combat depends on the person. In order to learn from books you need relevant experience and a partner. You cannot use a book alone unless you are an experienced fighter with some self-coaching ability. Realistically, books that I write as instructionals are reference works for trainers and coaches and for people who are being or have been trained and coached in similar activities.

Videos, on the other hand, are almost identical to the instruction had in the martial arts setting, which is a fair learning environment. The gym setting is better than learning via the ‘monkey see, monkey do” martial arts method. In boxing your goal is to be able to verbally coach a fighter who is looking at the guy that he is fighting while listening to you. In this sense the boxing and stick fighting books are much more useful for the coach than for the fighter. The videos are better for the fighter, especially the novice. Some fighters, with a governor on their ego and an ability to conduct an analysis of their body mechanics, have successfully become formidable combatants through books and videos. One of the ways this self-critique and self-coaching ability can be cultivated is by retooling your skill set in slow motion while you are injured.

LL: James, you cover scoring quite a bit here, including the importance of self scoring and the rationale behind determining when a fighter has been eliminated from competition. How does this fit in with your gaming writing? Do you have any active gaming projects right now?

JL: Once, when I was fighting Don Plot in 2006, with 10-inch polypropylene dagas I had him dialed in with the knife. He was just a stick-fighter and every time he advanced I stabbed him in the throat or face and the four corner judges saw no point. He looks at me, and says, “You better do it again.”

We move around and I stick him again and he chuckled. “I guess you’ll have to rip my head off before they notice.”

What I did was lifted my foot for the next stab and made a theatrical kill and they called the point. This points up the ridiculousness of judges scoring any fight with blades. I am the most experienced knife and machete fighter in the United States [though certainly not the best] and I cannot watch two guys that I have trained go at it and know what happened. In many cases a fighter does not know that he hit another fighter, especially when they are amped up. Calling yourself out is the only way. This was essentially how bare knuckle boxing worked.

I used my role playing game designing projects to bridge the reality fiction gap for others. I did three, with none of them, including the last, being playable by video game paced minds. In order to accurately pursue a combat simulation on paper it needs to be conducted at a pace that is at least 100 times slower than the action being simulated. What I used these role playing designs for Tribes, Fights and Triumph for was transferring my combat experience into a form that made a combat scenario builder for writing fiction. Although I don’t write that way—I don’t plot fights—someone else who does plot action scenes could use it like that.

I have yet to convert my 200 page Tribes sourcebook into fiction. I am in possession of over 20 excellent illustrations for the World of Oth and, as soon as I finish Drink Deep of Night, Seven Moons Deep, The Spiral Case and Yusef of the Dusk, I intend to begin publishing pocket-sized paperback novelettes of about 700-800 words, with Richard and Joseph’s fine art work as covers.

LL: Readers, this book has a ton of highly amusing anecdotes, pictures of men trying to hurt each other while wearing gladiator gear, valuable and detailed instructions and more. We know from Winter of a Fighting Life what this book cost James to write. I think there is nothing out there like Modern Agonistics, and strongly encourage you to pick up a hard copy or Kindle edition.

JL: One final word, Lynn. When I was promoting events for charity, I made sure that I stocked the front row with a few blood-thirsty babes, to whom I gave free tickets to and it worked like charm—with those meatheads fighting like savages for female approval. Thanks, Lynn, for reminding me of the good old days. I hope some young guys out there have some of their own to look forward to.

PS: Don't miss this video of James and Damien (a prominent figure in Modern Agonistics) fighting.  James is using a sword and shield, and Damien is using a pole flail.  More videos are available at James's main site, under the Modern Agonistics link.

(c) James LaFond & Lynn Lockhart

The Broken Dance by James LaFond

The Broken Dance is LaFond's monumental work on the history of boxing from pre-history to the death of Alexander.  The Broken Dance is available in PDF as three separate volumes, or as a complete collection.  The first two volumes are also available in paperback.

The Broken Dance: Volume I: The First Boxers

A Fighter’s View of Prize-fighting from Gilgamesh to Goliath with 47 original illustrations by Joseph Bellofatto, Jr.

A systematic investigation of the origins of boxing; a biomechanical index of boxing methods; an exploration of sacral prizefighting in Babylon; the methods of the stick-fighting boxers of Egypt; and the secrets of the mysterious boxer kings of Crete. This is the first of three volumes that comprise The Broken Dance.

Available in PDF and paperback.

The Broken Dance: Volume II: The Gods of Boxing

The Gods of Boxing is a comprehensive study of ancient Greek boxing contests, training, methods, politics, and personalities. Every aspect of the ancient boxer's life is uncovered. Meet the heroes, villains, gods, and even a pre-Christian saint, who fought before the sacred altars of Thunderchief and the lesser Olympians.

Available in PDF and paperback.

The Broken Dance: Volume III: All-Power-Fighting

A study of ancient Greek combat arts including: the arts and culture of arête [warrior-virtue], pale [wrestling], pentathlon [five exercises], pankration [all-power-thing]; rankings of historical fighters; appendices; and a 1000+ word Hellenik Glossary. 145+ pages, 31 illustrations by Joseph Bellofatto, Jr.

Available in PDF.

The Broken Dance: The Complete Collection

A Figther's View Of Boxing & Prize-Fighting From Pre-History to the Death Of Alexander. More than 100 exclusive illustrations by Joseph Bellofatto Jr. The First Boxers, The Gods of Boxing, All-Power-Fighting. 454+ pages, 147 illustrations by Joseph Bellofatto, Jr.; all three volumes collected in a single file.

Available in PDF.

Modern Agonistics by James LaFond

Modern Agonistics is not a style, art or system. It is simply a format for training, experimentation and competition with weapons. The goals of the participants range from cross-training, self-defense and thrill-seeking, to craftwork [like weapon and armor fabrication] and attempts to reconstruct extinct fighting arts. Practitioners of over two-dozen fighting arts have utilized this format since 1998 without sustaining serious injury. Participants have been both male and female, and have ranged in age from 11 to 65; in size from 75 to 375 pounds, and in experience from novice to professional. Most participants have been males in their late teens and early twenties. We have no dues, rituals, traditions or barriers. This is simply a network for combat weaponry enthusiasts. We are just a curious group of fighters. If you want to participate you are welcome. Our motto is "as real as you want it." Agonistics is an ancient Hellenic term that translates as "contest-preparation." The root is Agon meaning "contest." The English word agony was borrowed from the ancient Greek term for "contestant's suffering" referring to the trials of a combatant. This is admittedly a terrible term to use in modern America, as virtually everyone misreads agonistics as agnostics which is also from the ancient Greek and means "no knowledge" and is used as a self-descriptive term by people who are not sure about the existence of divinity. My favorite misreading of agonistics was when the Baltimore City Paper ran our ad for a seminar at Sifu Clark's in 2005 as Modern Antagonistics. Some guy called me and wanted to know if we were a network for hate groups.

Available in paperback and PDF.

Note from Lynn Lockhart:  The paperback edition available through Amazon was published later and includes more content, including charming descriptions of agons (meets or tournaments) that took place in 2014, as well as a great deal of technical coaching material.  This is a book you will want in hard copy if (when) times get tougher.

Menthol Rampage by James LaFond

A Harm City Novelette, with a cast of made-for-noir Characters drawn from the Author's urban oral history.

Imagine if you were stricken with a condition that caused you to become deathly ill in the presence of cigarette smoke. Imagine also that your girlfriend and coworkers—and the world in general—kept blowing it in your face. Imagine further, that you are a lowly, scrawny carpenter, who, when you 'snap', and decide to strike back at the world, has only the contents of your tool belt with which to even the score, even as the cops hunt you through the streets of Harm City like a rabid dog? Under such conditions, how many smokers could you take off of the planet?

Welcome to the dark flowering of Jay Jay Brooks, a man who will never again take the crap the world hurls at him.

Available in paperback and PDF.

Taboo You by James LaFond

James LaFond has been banned from a writers’ group because of the content of his work, barred from the AAMMA because of his writing, barred from USA Boxing because of his involvement in stick-fighting, rejected by four publishers on politically correct grounds, dumped by nine women, kicked out by three women, attacked by members of six black ghetto gangs, targeted for death by BASH [Baltimore Area Skin Heads] and the Wasted Youth [white street gang], threatened by three police officers, harassed by eight police officers, chased through the nighted streets of Baltimore by feral pit bulls, pursued through the streets of Baltimore by numerous pairs of rednecks in pickup trucks, was once chased down a back alley by a gear-head in a yellow mustang, was once hunted through the ghetto by a scorned psychobitch with a blade, has been homeless, was once barred from three high school classes for reading, walked away from an $80,000 a year management job without giving notice to take up writing for an annual salary of $198, will be homeless, has turned down 13 promotion offers and 9 management positions, and is generally regarded as either insane or eccentric depending on which Baltimoron you ask. Taboo You is his advice for living such a life if you so choose, and how to survive with dignity, as an individual, in our sick tribal world.

Taboo You is available in paperback and as a PDF.

Predation by James LaFond

In this eye-opening piece the author utilizes 16 brutal and hilarious true tales to illustrate how those who hunt us make lethality-enhancing and risk-limiting choices in their endless quest to separate us from our money, our virginity, our piece-of-mind, and our body.

Available as a PDF in the site store.  

Behind the Sunset Veil by James LaFond

The Sunset Saga Book 3, Cities of Dust, Part 2

Behind the Sunset Veil tells the story of eight individuals involved in the struggle to bend Space-Time for Man’s own purposes:

-Mister Sigmund Shuei a 29th Century time-traveler stranded in the savage 21st Century. 

-Jay Bracken, a time-traveler rapidly losing his mind due to Translocation Psychosis. 

-Charlie Robinson, a scientist surrounded by adventurers trying not to lose his relevance. 

-Three-Rivers, having stolen the Whiteman’s thunder, has the ability to bend Time, and has decided that it is about SpaceTime to turn the tables on the Whites—as soon as he and his totemic squirrel cop some weed. 

-Aristotle, father of logic and science. 

-Arlene Higgins, a time-hunter tasked with bringing Aristotle forward before he is murdered in the wake of Alexander’s untimely death in 323 B.C. 

-Sebastian de Canete, a 16th Century Franciscan monk working as Arlene’s translator. 

-Joan Henderson, CIA, investigating a man that appears to be a genetic weapon. 

Behind the Sunset Veil is at once a rollicking science-fiction adventure and a darkly illuminated fantasy that veers between 17th Century messianic conclaves, and the 21st Century Narcostate, to vivid scenes of ancient Hellenic life.

Available in paperback and in pdf at the James LaFond site store.

Buzz Bunny by James LaFond; Q&A with Author

© 2017 James LaFond

What do you get when you cross The Wire, Watership Down and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest? You get James LaFond's novella Buzz Bunny. This is the story of Tamar, a reserved boy with an active imagination and the target of harrowing bullying by the Simpson boys. Tamar is befriended by another victim of the Simpson's, recently reincarnated as a telepathic rabbit, and the two set out to exact their revenge.

LL: James, Tamar is tormented at school, on the bus, in the park, and his own home is no refuge. Is there anywhere in Baltimore a kid can relax? Is this why they all get high all the time? Now that I think about it, Tamar did have some peace and quiet in the library, but somehow I doubt there are huge crowds there.

JL: There is no safe place for a boy in Baltimore—none. I invented the library sanctuary in a whimsy.

LL: Are you surprised that these types of revenge killings don't happen more often than they do?

JL: I am saddened that these types of revenge killings do not happen regularly.

LL: Have you ever had a pet?

JL: There was Friskie, our hero dog, a beagle-fox terrier mix who survived a shooting, bit a hornet in half that was menacing us little tykes, survived a mauling by a mixed Cywolf-hound and was a true family pet from 2 to 17 years. There was Ace, my flaky stray mutt who went insane after her puppies died and had to be put down. There was Buddy, who was my four-legged pal, a Border Collie-Terrier mix who I saw get hit by a truck. Took the bumper right in the head and became mean thereafter and served as a good watchdog for my stepmother after I moved to Baltimore and he went the rest of the way nuts.

Then there was Bear, who was six inches long when I got him, a Manchester terrier who weighed 15 pounds and broke a 20-30 pound choke chain. I kept him on a 30 yard chain run in the large yard of the Baltimore house I rented with an 80-pound test choke chain, resulting in him repeatedly snapping the swing-set chain I used for his run as he ran after larger dogs who came around while his love—the Germen shepherd bitch next door, was in heat. Once, as she walked around him—her owners let her wander the yard, which she did not leave—but as he was too short to mount her, he looked at me for help and whine-snarled. I chained him by the porch and he barked aggressively. The giant gal came over and stood next to the porch and he repeatedly climbed on her back but kept sliding off onto the pavement. My wife thought I was a nut for doing this—but I was trying to help him out. Once I was eating my way through a pizza at 1 a.m. after work when I heard his run snap again as he went after a large Irish setter. I—in bare feet, shorts, and nothing else—then began chasing him around Cedonia as he chased this poor 100 pound dog, eventually treeing the poor thing on his master’s porch. Bear then led me on a merry chase. As I tried to cut him off over a curb I skidded onto my chest in the middle of White Avenue and noticed that he stopped and looked to see if I was okay. So I groaned and rolled over in a fetal position. When the little bastard started sniffing my face I grabbed his ass and carried him home while he tried to bite me.

Bear bit a neighbor girl in the face and Dante in the face—a mean little bastard. I gave him to a prison guard who had a pitbull and a German shepherd. I would walk by once a week to say high and when I came to the fence he would attack the two larger dogs until they backed off—only he would be petted by me, he being my owner after all. He had the most savage growl.

Big Rich, the prison guard loved, Bear, but when I came over to visit the last time, he said, “Jesus, I feel like the only white guy in the locker room—this little bastard loves you.”

That is my dog history. My wife had a number of Greyhounds she adopted but they were hers—Faye is like Duchess Dolittle, every animal that meets her becoming like men before a goddess.

Oh yes, once I returned into the bedroom to kiss her good night on my way to work after Bear had taken my spot in bed and heard him snarl like a gargoyle and dared not place my face close to the bed. You could not see this twerp in the dark—coal black.

Another time, I woke up on my morning off with one of those morning erections that plague younger men—yes, fellas, they eventually go away! As I walked to the bathroom and Faye groaned, “I hope my mother isn’t coming down the hallway”—she must have been channeling, because Bear jumped off the ground, jaws snapping, trying to rip my manhood off. I grabbed and spun and he took a piece of my tail instead.

Yep, that’s all my man-dog stuff.

I no longer have time for a pet.

LL:  Thanks, James.  Buzz Bunny is available in paperback, and as a PDF download.

Lesser Angels of our Nature by James LaFond

This troubling memoir chronicles the aggression of ideas that fuels the violence and inequity that engulfs us. The author, James LaFond, recounts tales of prejudice and hatred as he retraces his life from innocent boyhood, through a troubled youth and savage adulthood, and into fatalistic middle-age; a life lived within a violent, fractured, self-hating society at war with its own reason for being.


Buy a copy in Kindle or paperback, or a pdf from the James LaFond store.

Winter of a Fighting Life; Q&A with Author James LaFond

Note to readers:

Winter of a Fighting Life is James's "kinetic memoir," a walk, at times a shuffle, down through the memories of his relentlessly tested and injured earthly coil. The book includes several pictures of the rarely seen author. Readers with a medical background may take interest in the photos as well.

LL: James, this book starts out as a humorous medical diary and reminiscence. How do you stay so sanguine about the damage you have suffered and the ongoing pain you deal with?

JL: The pain of a man’s damaged tendons, ligaments and nerves are nothing compared to the pain of being a soft little boy unable to preserve even a shred of autonomy in the face of a bullying world of sadistic teens and adults. I can only imagine how much more it would hurt to be a soft, helpless man and that cures me of second guessing my combative pursuits.

LL: I can't detect any trace of self pity in the telling of these injuries, especially notable in the cases where you weren't asking for it (when you were attacked at work or injured in the course of your work). How does the ability to recount your struggles without a tone of complaint fit into the masculine virtues?

JL: The discipline of accepting the outcome of combat is ancient and is pursued by me in my writing as a means of self-teaching. The writing helps relieve the nagging doubts. Placing myself in perspective as an idiot kid who didn’t see it coming helps round out the experience which becomes part of the evolving self.

LL: I want to explore the nature of different masculine relationships, which are mostly hidden from me, but which I find fascinating and without which a man's life would surely be missing something of great value.

There were many passages that struck me as meaningful, particularly those with your brother, your BB gun battles, Lions and Tigers, and of course your one great fight with him. You emerged from that fight with a lifelong truce and friendship.

You have also written many times about the Banno family, and this passage about a match with Dante illustrates the relationship between youth and respected elder so beautifully:

Dante said, from the not so cozy confines of our bloody clinch, “What are you doin’ Mister Jim? You’re fouling me.”
I growled, “And when I’m done thumbin’ yah I’m tossin’ yer ass down the stairwell!”
“Why Mister Jim?”
“Because yer killin’ me kid!”
Dante then broke the clinch and said to the gathered witnesses, “I quit; I’m done—draw. Anybody else wanna go?”

Has your combat practice brought you deeper into these relationships than might otherwise have been, especially given your Taboo nature?

JL: This past weekend I met two emasculated young men who fairly winced at my presence as if the testosterone wafting off of my heavy brow ridge and back hair might poison them. In this and many work and social situations I come off and feel like a relative badass. But among fighting men, men who were trained and born to fight, I am a fourth rate physical specimen. The only area, as a fighter, in which I rate as formidable is the psychological one. This has been ingrained in my through competing and training with real “studs” like Dante, and has shown me my place, as a fringe character, an adviser, an interloper, a coach, a trainer, a scout, a writer. I’m enough of a man that the truly bad men respect me, but not so caught up in physicality and ego that I can’t bridge the emasculation gap to the drones of the Dark Mother. I am also better at adapting than more formidable men because I’m used to working from a poor leverage position. The fighting arts have taken me from castoff and tormented nerd to alienated whack-job young man to crackpot old man. The prerequisite of being a taboo man is lethality. I have developed that. The prime requisite is alienation which God gifted me with when he set me apart and beneath the rest of my kind.

LL: I want to tie this in to your recent writings on The Vile Root. Without spoiling the book for readers, I want to ask you if some validation or support from your family might have changed the course of your fighting career? Would it be reasonable to wonder if they had taken an interest in your pursuits, that you might have been satisfied sooner, and changed course to seek other activities? Or were you destined to live this Fighting Life?

JL: What my family was drove me to the fighting path. Their support may have resulted in me going to college and becoming some repellent cipher or a scholar. I am lucky that my family swallowed the Great Lie with such gusto that it repelled me and set me on my way. Physically, I never possessed a pro quality body, which meant that I would accomplish less and stay in it longer, which is a not unremarkable pattern. Few coaches excelled at a pro level and few pros excel at coaching. Also, where the accomplished elite fighter shies away from humiliating himself by showcasing his diminished ability, the mediocre fighter often gets better as he ages since his entire game is skill and learning, so he is tempted to hang around, knowing he’s better than he was when he was young.

LL: Thank you, James.

There are three ways you can own "Winter of a Fighting Life," as a PDF directly from the author, in paperback or Kindle edition:

PDF at JL store

Paperback

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(c) 2017 James LaFond & Lynn Lockhart

When You're Food by James LaFond

When You're Food, A Fighter's View of Predatory Aggression is the classic Harm City title from James LaFond.  Step into the feral predatory matrix of 21st century Baltimore, as only a trained fighter living as a pedestrian resident and worker can show it to you.

Engaging urban survival guide, brutal oral history and outrageous memoir, this disturbing book makes the case that civilization is a lie, human society is essentially cannibalistic, and you are on the menu. If you like Harm City you will love this; it's LaFond at his most politically incorrect.
Amazon (paperback):  When You're Food

James LaFond store (pdf version):  When You're Food

The Greatest Boxer, ranking the top 144 boxers by James LaFond

The Greatest Boxer is James LaFond's definitive analysis of 144 boxers.

Who really was the Greatest? This one–of-a-kind survey is rounded out with sections on the history of boxing, the history and use of boxing equipment, the social impact of boxing, its morphology as a modern spectacle, including its relationship to MMA, as well as biographies of some of the earliest and most influential gloved boxers.
A must have for scholars of the sport and those with the masculine need to sort and rank the warriors they admire.

Amazon link (paperback):  The Greatest Boxer -- Amazon

James LaFond store (pdf version):  The Greatest Boxer -- JL store

Black & Pale: Fruit of The Deceiver Omnibus Edition by James LaFond

Black & Pale is the collection of Fruit of the Deceiver and Forty Hands of Night in a single volume.

In the year 1201, in the midst of the worst famine in recorded history, the adults of Egypt waged a war of extermination upon its children. Nearly every child of one of the wealthiest and militarily secure nations on earth, was hunted, captured, killed, and then eaten, by strangers, parents, and grandparents. Though the poor had nothing else to eat but their young and their dead, the wealthy engaged in child-eating—as well as the gourmet preparation of overweight people—as a culinary art. The travelling doctor, Abd al-Latif, left a detailed, yet reluctant, account of this year of grisly feasting. This is his story. This omnibus edition includes the novella Fruit of The Deceiver, the novel Forty Hands of Night, the never before published vignette Seeds of The Deceiver, and the short The Song of Jeannot.

See the previous posts for each book:

Fruit of the Deceiver

Forty Hands of Night

Use the Amazon link to below to purchase a copy.

Black & Pale

Purchase a pdf from the James LaFond site store:

pdf version