I was seventeen when I first stepped onto a mat. I’d wanted to be a writer for as long as I could remember, but I’d only recently gotten the urge—and the guts—to try martial arts. Little did I know, as I bowed into that tiny backyard dojo, that I was beginning a journey that would shape my life and enrich my writing in completely unexpected ways.
At my first dojo we did a combination of martial arts, but I fell in love with the beauty and the roughness of judo. There was nothing like the feeling of making my opponent fly through the air when I caught him or her with a big hip throw. And once I got the hang of chokes, they became my favorite—the great equalizer for a small judoka like me.
But one of the most surprising and appealing aspects of my time in the dojo was the people, of all backgrounds and ages, learning and struggling alongside each other. I’ll never forget one of my first sessions. To my humiliation, an eight-year-old who’d already spent four years on the mat patiently and expertly corrected my technique as I practiced on a lady in her fifties. We were all laughing and sweating together by the end of the night, the age gaps all but forgotten.
As I spent more time in the dojo, teens who I never would have gotten to know in the stratified atmosphere of my high school became friends in the dojo. Raw beginners like me worked out with former judo Olympians. It was a different world in the dojo, and I was drawn to it, even before I really understood why.
I took my love of judo with me when I moved to Washington State, and I became one of twelve founding members of Ippon Judo Dojo. Soon our judo team had grown to over one hundred active members, from chemical engineers, to police officers, to MMA fighters, to all sorts of kids, including one who eventually made the 2008 and 2012 Olympic teams. I gained an appreciation for the competitive spirit, the drive, and the big dreams of some of my teammates. But mostly I gained friendship—an extended family formed through the mutual sacrifice, the ruts and the high points, the dedication and support that come with training together.
In my writer’s heart a story was forming about the camaraderie, the challenges, the tension and the understanding that training in martial arts makes possible. I wanted to share the fascinating world of fighters with readers in a unique way—a way anyone, martial artist or not, could identify with.
My main character, a boy named Venture Delving, started to tell me about his dream to be a champion fighter, in a world where unarmed fighting was the dominant sport, and where a champion’s prize was fortune enough to change a man’s life forever. But what if that society—and its martial arts community—was rigidly divided by class? Would the unifying experience of training in martial arts enable the characters to overcome such divisions, such prejudices?
I began to explore this question through a novel, originally titled Venture. That novel turned into a series, starting with Venture Untamed and Venture Unleashed.
In the Venture books, Venture Delving is a bonded servant, a member of the lowest class in the world. Already fatherless, when he loses his mother, he veers from energetic to out of control. But when Venture’s rage saves the life of Jade, his best friend and his master’s daughter, Venture finds himself in the last place he ever expected—a center renowned for training young boys to be professional fighters.
When Venture realizes he’s fallen in love with Jade, he knows that the only way he’ll ever have her, the only way he’ll ever be free to live the life he’s meant to live, is to defy convention, common sense, the trust of those he cares about most—and sometimes the law—and become the best fighter in the world, the Champion of All Richland. Venture must battle not only rival fighters, but the ghosts of his past and the members of the privileged Crested warrior class who stand between him and his dream.
As this bonded servant’s story developed, I realized what it was that had drawn me to the dojo, that compelled me to spend hour after hour on the mat, even when I was just a white belt, constantly getting mat-burned and bruised up. It was a unique sense of freedom. Freedom to battle it out with my teammates and to smile afterward. Freedom to cast aside other concerns for a moment and just work at this craft. Freedom to form unlikely friendships.
Most of Venture’s teammates forget about Venture’s class once they get to know him as a fighter, and for Venture, a troubled past vanishes in those moments on the mat. But the Crested warrior class’s opposition and the reality of Venture’s life off the mat threaten the freedom he enjoys in being a fighter.
I am no champion, no star. But I know something about that freedom, and about the type of friendship, the challenge, and the accomplishment that can only happen in the dojo.
“It’s a different world in there,” Venture’s master Grant Fieldstone says as Venture stands outside the doors of the fighting center, anxious to enter and step onto the mat for the first time.
And whenever I step onto the mat, I get to be a part of that world. A world where impossible dreams and unexpected friendships are born. Where challenges are faced and freedom is won.
