Questions for Mike Brewer about Vunak

[Bullseye]

Hi Mike,

I have been reading your posts about your training (and your training with Paul Vunak), and I'd like to ask you a few questions. If you don't mind.

Regarding environmental training, is that something that you did with Paul Vunak, or did you add this to your training later?

Same with training while drunk, or impaired. Did Paul Vunak do this or encourage you to do it?

I think that training like this is excellent, and can only be a positive thing. Training while drunk, tired, or emotionally wrought, or distracted, teaches us to be functional in any state. And surely that's what it's all about.

Regarding the stories about Paul Vunak's streetfighting ie:looking for fights in bars, getting dropped off in bad areas and then having to fight his way back, ect. Are the stories true? Or is there an element of "chinese whispers" in there somewhere where things have been exaggerated?

I don't intend any offence with these questions about Vunak's background, nor do I want to gossip. The fact is, I have been inspired by what you have written about Vunak, and would like to know more.

Thanks.

[Guest]

Mike. Write a book. Please.

[Bullseye]

Hi Mike,

Thanks for your reply. It's fascinating stuff. I agree with Michael Wright, you really should write a book about your training and fighting experiences.

[treelizard]

Anyone want to solicit publishers?

How much of a cut do we get?

[Bullseye]

Hi Mike,

I think the idea of expanding a book from your posts on here would be a great idea. Your posts contain a lot of sound info on martial arts teachin/training combined with a lot of anecdotal material as well.

Plus, you know how to write in an entertaining, engaging way. When you have time you should go for it.

[Guest]

I'll help in any way I can Mike, and my cut is a training session and a few beers, the former before the latter

[treelizard]

I have a lot of editing and proofreading experience, including one midnight marathon book proofreading project under my belt!

Anyway, your best bet is to get a book proposal together and THEN look for publishing companies.

[g-bells]

but it would be a great addition to the MA world with all the BS going on with JKD, sure would be nice to have a book from one with so much personal experience

just my 2 cents though

[treelizard]

Starting to sound like work...

Get one of your groupies to do it for you!

http://www.shepardagency.com/writing_proposals.html

[Tant01]

Another one for the archives!

The environmental training was something that evolved from training with Vunak, for sure. We didn't do that in classes, per se, but a few of the rowdier types would often get together and work on ideas like those with one another. As for getting into fights as a method of training, it's not something I can recommend in good conscience these days. It was, in all honesty, a pretty horrible way to treat other people, and one of the few regrets I have in my life. .....

Like I said, it's not a period I'm particularly happy remembering, and if I ever acted like that again, I'd fully expect to be shot. These days, I'm far more involved with trying to be a good person, and far less concerned with being a streetfighter.

Training drunk was not something I did in those days. .....
...
...
Hope that provides some answers.

It seems interesting that there would be so MANY parallels in the experiences... the resulting wisdom and kindness and patience...(goodness?)

While I can not claim the lineage, the training and recreational research are similar. How about PRETENDING to be drunk?

Talk about dirty tricks, eh?

[g-bells]

Mr Brewer,
so whens the book coming out?

[g-bells]

Mr Brewer,

Not sure i'm qualified to give any advice


question?- I attended a few seminar given by one of Vu's Phase I instructors- Dave Durch, ever heard of him?

[Hot_Wings]

My take on publishing a book…

Do it yourself and sell it on amazon.com. My parents own a small company that does orders and fulfillment for other people. One of them has 4 books on amazon.com. It doesn’t take as much as you might think to dump out a book. If you have ever read one of Jim Cramer’s books then you will know what I mean.

The kind of book that you are going to write is one of the easiest of them all to write. You want to write about your own experiences. You all ready have all the material that you need. You just need to organize it and put it on paper. It’s not as hard as it seems. Here is what you do. You get a tape recorder, about 20 tapes, and you just put in a tape recorder and start talking about various incidents. When you done is a tirade about something then take a big pause and say a number on the tape. Organize your numbers into notes in a tablet. Number one would usually be, “When I was born” or whatever the begging is of course.

Once you have about 20 tapes of material then you will also have some sort of guideline for your book material. By instinct, you will know in your head what to cover and when to cover it. Talking to the tapes is like going down memory lane without having to write it out at the time. Having to write things can slow the train of thought to a new author. Kind of like martial arts, you have to go too slow in the beginning and think about sentence structure and what not, if you try to just type it right out in a stream. Instead, use your better communication skill of talking and just use tapes to record the information.

Next, you want to save about 2000 bucks for printing costs. If you want to do it cheaply then here is what you do. Go to your local college and find the graphic arts department. Find yourself a senior student in graphic arts and pay them 100 bucks to make a book cover for you. This person can also take pictures for you at the same time. Most graphic design courses teach basic photography and also commercial photography because graphic design involves the editing of photos. So, for very cheap money you can get a good cover art and photo shoot for your book if you find a student at your local college. It’s a one time easy job and you don’t have a deadline for it so a lot of students will most likely do the task for you. Also, graphic design is a competitive field; senior students often pass the classes without doing a lot of work to pad their resumes. This means that some of them will do graphic design work of any kind just to get some work under their belt for a job, let alone the money.

Once that’s done then you need to hire an English teacher to proof read and organize your book. This one will cost a bit more but certainly don’t let anyone charge you more than 300 for the deed. It’s your personal story, not a textbook. Editing should be rather right up their ally. They do personal stories all the time because that’s what most students are told to write about anyway because, like you, they all ready have all the material for this kind of writing.

Once that’s done then you have a book my friend and all you need to do then is go to a print shop and have them do a price quote for 500-2000 copies of the book. Don’t Place an Order yet! You don’t know what price you need to charge yet and have printed on the book.

Now you call amazon.com and Boarders Books and Music and Barnes and Noble online start working out all the details of what it will cost to have your books on all the online retailers. It’s pretty straight forward; they have any easy to follow process designed for the laymen to follow. I’ll warn you right now, they will take a lion’s share of the book price. That’s why you don’t want to have your book actually printed until you work out all the details of the arrangements with the online retailers. Once that’s figured in then you price the book accordingly. How you price the book is up to you, however, I would suggest charging a little more than what you would think right now.

You might say to yourself, 15 bucks maybe, but if that is the case then you need to charge 20 or 25 because the book should be discounted some to reflect that it is a deal to get it online rather than in a bookstore. Even if you never make a deal to have your book in the bookstore it’s a good idea to set up your pricing structure so that you can. That way, if your book takes off, then you will not have to go through another printing without selling out the first order of books.

I say do this yourself because if you go to a publisher then you won’t see a dime on your books and they will want to charge a lot more for your book than you will want too. Then, before you know it, it’s heavily discounted in the bookstores and everyone thinks that you book is crap because of it. Your book might be great, but everyone knows that Martial Arts books have a limited audience. The publishers know this and will not give you hardly any money for your book. They know, or think, that it will just be a quick fad to a limited audience and if they want any money out of it then they will have to make it quick and hard. That means a cheaply printed book that costs a chuck of change to get and gets discounted heavily very fast.

They want to make a quick buck of your life’s experience. A lot of authors don’t mind this because they can pace out their knowledge piecemeal and just write two or three books that tell the same amount of info that one could. But first timers are the ones that tell it all and get hosed by the big publishers because they write a great book that has everything in it and it goes out of print in less than a year.

Besides, now a days, most print shops do “Print on Demand” printing for specialty books like yours. That means they will still want a lions share of the profits without putty hardly any money up front at all. Screw that! Just print it yourself on your credit card in small lots and keep them out of it. At least that way, you will make money off the book, that is of course if it sells.

Have a good one.

[Tant01]

I'm a published (amatuer) photographer, maybe I could take the pictures if you use them? My eye for detail and composition is fair to exceptional...

Oh and I'll be happy with taking the pictures. No need to cut me into your profits...

;-)

~R

[g-bells]

First, you're a potential reader of whatever book ends up coming together, so yours is the only input I really give a damn about. It's going to be a book about how martial arts and my experiences in them have shaped and changed my life, so it's not really advice I'm after, but feedback. You're totally qualified to give your opinion, right?

As for Dave Church, yes, his name sounds very familiar.

Mr Brewer,

From reading your posts and the experiences you have had/having will make for a great book that can give insite into what it takes to be prolific at MA.

If i can think of anything for feedback i will do so and maybe it will be helpful