Fight scenes are tricky to write. It’s hard to pack clear description into few words and keep that sense of speed and surprise one gets in a real fight – It helps if you know what you are doing.

I really didn’t want to write: “She bounced him off the wall.” I wanted to write how she bounced him off the wall.

In order to find out, I enrolled in a self-defense class that was supposed to last ten weeks. I figured that would give me a feel for it. It not only gave me a feel for it, it gave me real hunger to learn more.

It turned out my instructor taught defense skills to several police constabularies in England and in Wales, and I ended up the only non-police officer permitted into those classes, clocking up an extra 18 months of training before returning home to Australia, where I then taught Atemi-Jutsu for five years in Western Australia, South Australia, the Northern Territory and Victoria.

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