Rope Burn

For fifteen years, Luke has kept Stan Weizenschmidt's indie wrestling promotion from falling apart. He books the matches, mops up the blood, smooths over disasters, and somehow holds down a day job in IT.

He's the man behind the curtain - close enough to touch the dream but never quite in it.

When a devastating in-ring injury threatens the future of the promotion, Luke watches the world he's sacrificed everything for begin to crack. A locker room divided. A rival promoter circling. A boss who treats loyalty as currency. And a choice Luke has been avoiding for years: stay in the orbit of a business that will never love him back, or finally walk away.

Rope Burn is a novel about passion, sacrifice, and the slow realization that the things we love can also be the things that consume us. Set in the gritty, colorful backstage world of independent professional wrestling, it's a story for anyone who has ever given too much of themselves to something that didn't give enough back.

Drawing on years inside the indie wrestling world, Kirk Sheppard delivers an authentic portrait of a business built on spectacle and held together by the people who refuse to let go.