Jujitsu and the Best Compliment I’ve Ever Gotten

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Shamelessly lifted from one of Larry’s posts from the Book of Faces. Do y’all want me to keep moving things here? Is there anyone who only sees his stuff here? Sound off in the comments! —Jack

I’m having a lot of fun in jujitsu lately. I woke up thinking about it.

So anyways, a couple weeks back I’m rolling with Bo Smith who is a brown belt (and the guy who got me doing this stuff to begin with after he beat my ass in an ECQC evo). I’ve rolled with Bo a bunch, and if I he hasn’t tapped me in 30 seconds its because he wants me to learn something.

So at one point I’m in side control, but can’t manage to get anything out of him from there, so I go north south and try to get a choke. Bo of course, being really good and not at all worried lets me because he’s curious what I’m going to go for. Doing this puts all my 280 pounds of awesome fluffiness on Bo’s head in a smother. He easily escaped my clumsy high calorie white belt choke attempt, but afterwards told me that for the first time I made it so he had to work, and that he’d never let me get that position on him again. 😀

Now to the people who don’t do jujitsu, this doesn’t sound like much, but to me that was one of the best compliments I’ve ever gotten and has been a huge motivator and boost to my self esteem. Because after a year straight of getting my ass beaten by higher belts, merely not sucking for ten seconds is a huge win!  

However, since then I’ve tried to get to that position on other white belts, and holy moly, that is not the place you want to let a really big dude like me get to. I’ve pulled that off a few times now. Most of the white belts are like 20+ years younger than me and way more athletic, so doing anything other than gassing out and croaking makes me feel like a bad ass. 😀

If any of you guys are on the fence about trying jujitsu, I highly recommend it. I’m down about 30 pounds this year (and it ain’t like I’ve been eating well, because with deadlines comes snacks) and it’s been great. You will however probably get injured, so be sure to swallow your pride and tap early and often. There’s no shame in that. My rotator cuff still aches from when I tore it in January.  But still, totally worth it.
I’ve always had a combative personality and enjoyed fighting. Now that I’m fifty this is about the only way I can have fun with that kind of thing and not die. It is fun to check your ego at the door and get your ass kicked. It’s exhausting and sometimes painful, but I’m having a great time. My plan is to keep this up as long as my body will let me.

November 2025 Writing Update

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I got the edits back for American Paladin. Working on those now. Due this month.

Then I’ve got the MHI Memoirs collab with Les Johnson waiting for me. Hoping to be done with that by the end of the year.

Then it’s back to regular MHI for #9, MH Trespass, followed by Academy of Outcasts 3.
Jason Cordova is working on the sequel to Fever and Steve Diamond is working on the sequel to Servants of War.

Academy of Outcasts – Out tomorrow 10/7

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Academy of Outcasts is in stores tomorrow, and available in eBook, Kindle Unlimited, and audio.

All Oz Carnavon ever wanted was to become a master mage.


Except, to do so requires the natural gifts or wealth necessary to secure an appointment to one of the prestigious magical academies in the Core City at the center of the seven realms. Oz had neither.

He was born without magical talent, serving in the elemental plane of fire, a nightmarish hellscape of treacherous lava and vicious monsters, where life is cheap, and escape is rare. But Carnavons never give up.

When Oz fakes his death to get out of his family’s contract and crosses the Nexus gate to sneak into the Core, everything seems to be going according to plan… Until he gets blamed for an assassination attempt on the fire realm’s ambassador.

Now, Oz must become a fugitive in a vast magical city, while trying to earn a place among the magical academies which have nothing but disdain for his kind. And the clock is ticking, because in one week, the most dangerous wizard in the realm of fire is coming to track him down and drag him back to hell.

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This was a really fun story to write. It’s my first foray in the Progression Fantasy genre, and it came out really well. In fact I was enjoying myself so much that I went ahead and wrote the second book as soon as I finished the first one. I almost never do that.