“I make up stories, oft times heroic, always intense, and usually violent.” That’s how William Kely McClung describes his work—and given his background, it’s hard to imagine him writing any other way.
Long before he picked up a pen, Kely was earning black belts in half a dozen traditional martial arts disciplines, then traveling the world to study dozens more. His path into the film industry began in the most Kely way possible: by winning the brutal International Full Contact Stick Fighting Championships. From there, he moved from acting into directing, helming two acclaimed short films and three award-winning features. He’s been inducted into the Martial Arts Hall of Honors in Germany twice, and he still trains and teaches military, police, and private security operators across the globe.
Combat isn’t his only creative outlet. Kely’s pen and ink portrait of Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi hangs in the King Center in Atlanta, and his photography is represented at Michael-Warren Contemporary in Denver.
All of that intensity found its way onto the page with LOOP, Kely’s first novel—a wild sci-fi/horror action adventure that introduced readers to Bad Ass, Ula, and Jessie, who return in the upcoming sequel, THE INFECTED.
In spring 2023, Kely launched the Tommy Black Thriller Series with BLACK FIRE. For fans of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher and Robert Ludlum’s Jason Bourne, the series follows Tommy Black across the globe as he puts his talent for violence to a singular purpose: saving one life at a time, no matter who he has to kill.
Kely is currently finishing SUPER NINJA, a science fiction/fantasy superhero origin story slated for release in late spring 2024. Like everything else he’s made—on the page, on screen, or on the mat—expect it to be intense, emotional, and violent.
Buy his books at Amazon.com OR Amazon.co.uk
