Sarah Castille | Fighting Your Fear

Readers often ask how I became interested in MMA, and I always point to my father. If not for him, I would never have become interested in the world of martial arts, and I would never have learned lessons that carried through my life and my writing.

When I was ten years old, my father joined a local karate class. After watching a female black belt instructor break four boards with her hand, he decided his four daughters should join, too. He wanted us to have the confidence to walk down the street at night, knowing we could defend ourselves. And the board breaking was pretty cool.

Over the next fifteen years, I learned how to break boards with my hands, feet and head. I fought men twice my size and walked around with my forearms permanently bruised from blocking their punches. I gained the confidence my father wanted me to have. But that wasn't all I learned.

The owner of the club, Sensei J, believed that karate wasn't limited to the dojo. A giant of a man, with the confidence and alpha male swagger that informs all my heroes, he had a voice so loud my teeth would chatter when he counted punching reps in Japanese. He suffered no fools, took no prisoners, and made no allowances for the fact I was the only female student, skinny and weak, with a voice so soft no one could hear me.

So he made me lead the class warm-ups every night, shouting the reps in Japanese, and if a single person couldn't hear me, it was fifty push-ups on my knuckles and the class had to repeat the exercise again. No one wants to piss of an entire karate class. I learned how to shout. And how to shout loud.

And when it came to sparring practice, he always paired me up with Rabid Rick. I think he was sadist at heart.

Rabid Rick had long sandy brown hair that reached his waist, pale blue, almost pupil-less, "psycho eyes", and unnaturally sharp incisors. He started every fight by screaming at his opponents and then stomping the floor so hard the ground would shake. "Feral" is the word my father used to describe him. I just ran away. However, the day came when I had to face Rabid Rick in a tournament, attended by the head sensei of our particular style of karate, all the way for Japan.

Sensei J came over to me before the fight and patted me on the arm. I expected words of support and encouragement. Instead he said, "Count." And then he walked away.

Facing off against each other, Rabid Rick fixed me with a crazy psycho stare and drew his finger across his neck, mafia-style. He opened his mouth for his usual scream and I beat him to it, shouting "one" in Japanese. I put everything into that shout, imagining fifty angry karate students daring me not to be heard. Rabid Rick startled and I moved in with a punch, scoring a point in the first few seconds of the match. My first point ever. And against Rabid Rick.

I wish I could say I won that fight, but I didn’t. Still, I fought a good fight. And in the end, I didn’t quit.

My new release, IN YOUR CORNER, is an erotic romance about fighters. My hero, Renegade, is an MMA fighter who has lost his way, but finds it as he pursues the woman who broke his heart. The story isn’t about the ins and outs of fighting. It’s about fighting the things that scare us. And finding that one person worth fighting for.

Thanks very much to Fresh Fiction for hosting me today!

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