Four months from now, my first thriller, Bear Brawl, hits bookstores across the country and let me tell you how I got here.
Many of you have been reading this Manologue column for the better part of two years, and a lot of you have been reading my books for well over a decade (thank you!). If you’re a new reader, I’ve spent most of my career writing biographies of athletes and larger-than-life personalities. My most recent book was the definitive biography of “Macho Man” Randy Savage, which John Cena was kind enough to endorse. Before that came Charlie Ward, “Mean” Joe Greene and plenty of others.
But Macho Man was my bucket list biography and the last one I wanted to write before turning the page (pun intended) on my journalism-based books and moving into fiction. Thrillers, in particular.
This is a decision I’ve plotted for a long time and on November 10th of this year, my debut thriller, Bear Brawl, comes out from Blackstone Publishing. It’s about a man who hunts down and fights the rogue black bear that killed his mom and put his brother in a wheelchair. No guns. No knives. Just a fist-to-paw battle for revenge. Alpha male versus apex predator. Man versus beast.
You. Will. Love. It.
The idea was born from two of my favorite novels ever written: Jaws by Peter Benchley and First Blood by David Morrell. If you’ve only seen the movies, do yourself a favor and read both books. They’re phenomenal.
For years I’d been jotting down thriller ideas in notebooks, but I couldn’t shake this one. It all started while hiking through Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Park with my son. Everywhere we turned there were signs warning us about bears. We’d laugh, look at each other and start asking increasingly ridiculous questions.
“What if somebody actually fought one?”
“Could someone win?”
“How?”
These questions never left me.
But the road from “idea” to “major thriller book release” is a long and windy one and since a lot of you have written me DMs and questions on social media about it, I wanted to lay it out for you because I’ve always found behind-the-scenes columns fascinating.
And before we get into it, if you’ve ever wondered how you’d fare in a fight against a half-ton black bear, head over to BearBrawl.com. We built a simulator where you plug in your height, weight, strength and fighting style, then click “Run the Fight.” Let me know how it goes. Better yet, pre-order the book now. In publishing, pre-orders matter more than most readers realize. They influence everything from retailer orders to bestseller lists to how aggressively a publisher supports a launch.
Now let me show you how the literary sausage is made:
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First, the work. I love hiking and I love trails and being in the mountains but I’m not a hunter and I’m not a zoologist, which means I’m not a black bear expert. But what I am is a research hound. I interviewed over 300 people for my books on the history of the Seattle Supersonics and Charlie Ward, along with digging up thousands of sources across all media. Double all that for Macho Man. So I took all that digging and exploring energy and made my new subject black bears, their environment, and the people who hunt them. Books. YouTube pages. Newspaper articles. Scientific papers. Trips to the zoo. Expert interviews.
Once I had a solid base with that, I went about the creative side of building a character, his motivation and a world where I could take this premise to its logical extreme. Why would a guy do this? What kind of guy would be capable of taking on a bear? What would the circumstances be around the hunt? What are the other stakes and subplots? And finally, how would he do it?
Once I had all that down, I wrote for the better part of a year until I had a first draft. Then I let that sit for 30 days and knocked out my second pass, and third and fourth until I loved it and was ready to send it out.
Typically, authors send their books to an agent and a bunch of publishers and kind of go fishing with the idea. I’d had my share of that with all of my non-fiction biographies. In this case, I knew EXACTLY the publisher I wanted to work with and I zeroed in on them. I’ve written 400+ issues of my personal newsletter, Books & Biceps, and I’ve recommended over 350 books. I know the publishers who would crush a book like this with marketing and promotion and who would “get it”.
I wrote ONE proposal letter and ONE outreach, and let them know I was going nowhere else unless they said ‘no’. I laid out why I knew they were perfect for the book and why I was a good fit as well. The acquisitions editor I met agreed to read the book, he loved it, then the team loved it, then the publisher loved it and… boom… we made a deal!
That’s not how it usually works. My Macho Man biography went to multiple publishers. 1996 went to even more. But one thing I’ve learned after publishing books for fifteen years is that finding the right fit is critical. You don’t just want someone willing to publish your book. You want people who genuinely believe in it, champion it and are excited to fight for it every single day.
Blackstone was that publisher for me.
Then the second marathon begins.
Editorial notes. More editorial notes. Line edits. Copy edits. Cover design (my favorite part outside of writing). Marketing meetings. Sales meetings. Promotional graphics. Advanced reader copies. Swag. Website design. Events. Interviews. Social media. Excerpts. Audiobook production. Sales materials. Retail outreach. Blurb requests. Incredible book teaser trailers like this one.
You spend a year writing the book and then you spend another year making sure people know it exists. You’re thinking about every audience that might connect with your story. Thriller readers. Outdoor enthusiasts. Hikers. Wrestlers. UFC fans. Action movie lovers. Book clubs. Podcast listeners. YouTubers. Influencers. Media outlets. You start building a giant map of everyone who might enjoy your book, then you and your publisher spend months introducing them to it. You’re also sending it to authors and asking for coveted “blurbs”, which are one sentence endorsements of your book that you always see on covers. In this case, we’ve gotten some incredible ones already, from Edgar Award-winning author Eli Cranor to NY Times bestsellers Alex Hutchinson and Stayton Bonner to heavyweight boxer/author Ed Latimore to an early boost from Kirsten Fleming of the New York Post.
Which is why everything always comes back to the book. It’s gotta be awesome.
All of this is also happening against the backdrop of an onslaught of articles saying “guys don’t read anymore”. Bestselling author Brad Stulberg, who Greg did a great interview with here, writes about this often and he has a great line that reading books is like going to the gym for your mind. I agree with this and I’d say it’s even more true for fiction.
As for men who read, the numbers aren’t great, to be sure, but I’d argue that when you write books that appeal to men, men can and do read. Look at Jack Carr and Brad Thor’s books. Every release dominates the charts. And Bear Brawl is for all of us: men who read, men who haven’t read in a while, and men who are thinking about starting to read. That’s why we have this killer logline:
Part First Blood and part Jaws, this book takes you on a blockbuster adventure with heart-pounding scenes, humor, heart, bear history, William Faulkner (you’ll see), and family. You’re dropped into the action from the first sentence, the pages fly by, covering tracking, training, fighting, philosophy, pain, grief, love and a cast of unforgettable characters you’ll root for like you’re watching your favorite action movie.
Like I said, a book I know you’ll love.
If this behind-the-scenes look was fun, pre-order Bear Brawl today or head over to BearBrawl.com and see how long you’d last against a black bear. Then let’s prove something together. Men still read.
You just have to give us a book we can’t put down.
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Jon Finkel
Editor-in-Chief, Midlife Male
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Check out my latest books at jonfinkel.com
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