I just signed the contract with Medallion Press to publish Suckerpunch. My great agent Margaret worked with the Medallion staff to work everything out, and it all looks great.

I didn’t see anything in there about firstborn children or souls, but the crew at Medallion are a cheeky, clever bunch…my kind of folks!

Pretty cool – I used to get these updates and drool over the deals while I worked on my stuff.

“Jeremy Brown’s SUCKERPUNCH, pitched as Elmore Leonard meets Fight Club, featuring a wise-cracking, southpaw heavyweight, a modern-day cage fighter trying to shake his criminal past as he works his way toward the title, to Helen Rosburg at Medallion Press, in a nice deal, by Margaret O’Connor at Renaissance (World English).”

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Publishers Lunch is the industry’s “daily essential read,” now shared with more than 40,000 publishing people every day. Each report gathers together stories from all over the web and print of interest to the professional trade book community, along with original reporting, plus a little perspective and the occasional wisecrack added in.

My fantastic agent Margaret secured a deal with the great crew at Medallion Press, and Suckerpunch and Woodshed Wallace will be published in 2011!

You have one year to prepare for the jaw-busting action and neck-torquing plot twists, so get your page turning techniques trained into muscle memory.

The latest revision is being reviewed by my agent, and will hopefully go out to editors soon.

Back up – what the what is Suckerpunch?

Suckerpunch is the first book in a series featuring heavyweight mixed martial artist Aaron “Woodshed” Wallace, who is stuck on no-name cards for tiny organizations. Woody is trying to put his violent (and, ahem, possibly illegal) past behind him with help from his trainer and mentor, Brazilian jiu jitsu black belt Gil Hobbes.

When Banzai Eddie Takanori – president of MMA’s largest organization, Warrior Inc. – offers Woody a short-notice fight against a highly favored poster boy, Woody sees his shot at salvation.

By the time Woody figures out he’s just a pawn in a high-stakes game between psychopaths, he’s in way too deep.

Good thing he knows how to take a punch.

And give a few back…