The motto of Black Irish Books (yes, we have one) is “Get in the ring.”

Black Irish Books is not Amazon. It’s not Barnes & Noble. No cookbooks, no diet books, no tell-all autobiographies.

Everything we do is for writers and artists—novelists and screenwriters, filmmakers, dancers, actors, photographers, entrepreneurs of all kinds. Our stuff aims to help you in two arenas.

1. Fighting the inner war against Resistance, i.e. fear, self-doubt, procrastination, arrogance, perfectionism, etc.

2. Mastering craft and professionalism. The nuts and bolts of storytelling in all its forms.

Our aim is to be one-stop shopping—a professional resource for every one of us in the trenches, fighting the war of art.

Black Irish Books is named in honor of our partner, Shawn Coyne.

When you think of the Irish, what usually comes to mind is the fair-haired, blue- or green-eyed physical type (think Denis Leary or Meg Ryan). But there’s another brand of Irishman (George Clooney comes to mind), dark-haired, dark-eyed, perhaps a tad unstable, even dangerous. Legend has it that this DNA entered the Irish bloodstream around 1588 via the shipwrecked mariners of the Spanish Armada.

Black Irishmen are famous for being pugnacious and confrontational. Great bar-room brawlers. Boxing champs of the early 20th Century (Jim Fitzsimmons, Gene Tunney) were often black Irish. Hence our boxing glove logo. (We originally had a shot glass on a bar with a tear tracking down one side, but we decided that was a tad melodramatic.)

Want more? Read Lunchpail Manifesto.