By Esther Lauaki
A Werribee author has turned a “writing experiment” into a top-selling wrestling book.
David Farrell’s novel, Dropping the Belt, debuted this month as the No.1 wrestling book on Amazon.
“Dropping the belt is a wrestlers’ term for losing a championship,” Farrell said.
“In 2008, I made a wrestling doco in Canberra call
The Young and the Wrestlers.
“It was an underground show, filming the sixth-month lead-up to their equivalent of Wrestlemania.
“That was where I created the story idea about a girl who meets a guy who moonlights as a wrestler and what happens from there.”
Farrell put out a call to three anonymous ghostwriters online to get creative with the storyline.
“I’ve written a few novels, but this time I learned that there was this group of ghostwriters so I approached them to write to the theme and waited to see what they could come up with,” he said.
“I didn’t know where it was going and what I was going to get. It’s become this writing experiment.”
Farrell edited and stitched the stories together with his own words, but said he allowed the story to take on a path of its own.
“It’s got a niche audience … it’s a comedy,” he said. “You go into it hoping for the best.”
Copies of Dropping the Belt will be on sale at the Showdown Wrestling event at the Italian Sports Club of Werribee on Saturday, April 13, from 6.30pm.
