In this feature, I ask a fellow author seven questions about their lives and their work. My hope is that it will help you grow more acquainted with their talents and personalities, their work, and their love of the written word. This week, we’ve got wrestling biographer and horror author, John Cosper!
John as you and I grew acquainted, we learned we had quite a bit in common, including being indie authors operating out of Southern Indiana. But, unlike myself, you’ve got a large assortment of work outside of fiction. Tell me how your love for wrestling prompted you to write so many wrestling biographies?
It all started with me looking for something new to do. It was late 2012. I had just left working in theater behind for good – almost. That’s another story. To that point I had written sketch, plays, screenplays, and science fiction, and I had just started a gig writing children’s ministry curriculum. So you, know, pro wrestling just felt like the natural first step.
Kidding.
I loved wrestling since I was a kid, and in my mid 20a, I started reading books about it, beginning with Mick Foley’s Have a Nice Day. I discovered some wonderful writers like Mark James were writing histories of entire promotions and cities. Mark covered Memphis very well, but he hadn’t touched the number two town in the Memphis promotion, Louisville.
So I wrote the book on Louisville. Then I wrote one about indie wrestlers, as I started going to indie shows and fell in love with it. And once you start, you don’t want to stop. I spoke to Kenny “Starmaker” Bolin from OVW and wrote his autobiography. Then others started coming to me.
Some books I wrote because I was approached. Many I wrote because it was a story I wanted to tell. Wrestling’s a hard business to quit, and long story short, so is writing about wrestling.
Apart from wrestling, you’ve written the excellent Dead Park series which lands in that Twilight Zone/Outer Limits sweet spot for me. After writing so many biographies, is fiction ever intimidating? Or do you find it freeing?
It’s a definite release. I’m not worried about getting historical details or – if I’m being honest – continuity within the world I created. I don’t sketch this universe of Dead Park out in numerous notebooks. I go where the ideas take me. As a result, I’ve written more books that I expected to (five so far, including the upcoming book for this year), and there are at least two more to come after.
You do a lot of events. Seems like you’re always somewhere with one book or another, many times alongside the subject of your biography. Any fun fan interactions that will stick with you? Or even just something you’ve experienced alongside one of these legends of the ring?
Too many to recall! One of my favorite moments was being in Ft. Wayne with the late Hurricane JJ Maguire. Maguire’s from Kentucky, and he was Jimmy Hart’s songwriting partner at WWF and WCW as well as in Hulk Hogan’s Wrestling Boot Band. We were at a fan fest, and JJ knew all the legends who were there. I have this memory of standing with him being surrounded by Greg Valentine, Brutus Beefcake, Demolition, and thinking… it’s Saturday morning, and this was my Saturday mornings as a kid!
Another fun memory: being introduced at the Cauliflower Alley Club in Las Vegas by the legendary Jim Ross. That was very cool, and such an honor.
What inspired you to write the Dead Park Books and how many more do you think are on the horizon?
That all came together just the right idea, right place, right time. My dad passed away in 2021, and right before he got sick, he texted me a dream he had had as an idea for a horror story. That story took place in an office.
A few months after he passed, I was driving, thinking about the story he’d sent me, when I realized I had 2 other stories I really liked that were both horror-related and took place in an office. I started writing these three stories as a trilogy for a single book. Then I found another office horror story. And another. And another! I guess 25+ years working in an office among cubicles did something to me.
The first book accidentally set up the premise for a trilogy. Dead Park Plaza is the office building that was built on the grounds of a secret military base, alongside a mall and a suburb. So of course, book two was the mall. Book three was… well, a stand alone about a company at Dead Park Plaza, then book four was about the suburb.
Book five will go back to the office building, again. I hadn’t planned on doing another volume about the office, but the ideas kept coming. I should add many of the stories in each book are old stories that I’d written years before – some as screenplays, or short films, and some as fiction – and had never clicked. They’ve all found a home in the strange world of Dead Park.
Right now, I have a total of 7 planned. If you’d asked me last year, I’d have said five. That final book keeps getting delayed by more story.
Who are your literary heroes? And why are you drawn to their work?
As a kid, I loved Douglas Adams and Tom Clancy. Clancy for his incredible storytelling, and Douglas Adams fort the humor. I also grew to love C.S. Lewis, more for his non-fiction than fiction, but I especially like The Screwtape Letters.
As an adult, I became a big James Bond fan and have read almost all the Ian Fleming novels and many of the John Gardners. I’m a big Grey Man (Mark Greaney) fan too, and I like The Saint series by Leslie Charteris. On the non-fiction side, I like Malcolm Gladwell a lot, and for humor, I love Sloan Crosley.
I guess I’m attracted to all for different reasons. I want to tell stories like Malcolm Gladwell. I love spy thrillers, and I love humor. And even though I’m not writing much for ministry like I used to, I really like how C.S. Lewis shared his faith. And Sloane, I want to be funny like she is. Just a brilliant writer, a modern day Dorothy Parker.
Imagine that you’re teaching a class for young writer’s with loads of passion but zero practical experience. What one piece of writing advice would you want them to leave with?
Finish. That’s what separates writers from non-writers. At some point, you gotta let it go and let other people have the chance to find it. Oh, and get good at self promotion. And when you do, let me know how, because I’m still learning that too!
Tell folks where they can find you online and where they should start if they want to check out your writing.
My fiction is at www.deadparkbooks.com and my wrestling books at www.eatsleepwrestle.com
My social media links are on both website.
Thanks for the interview, John! It’s always a pleasure to chat with you.
The pleasure’s all mine!
