Mick Foley (born Michael Francis Foley, June 7, 1965, Bloomington, Indiana) is a retired American professional wrestler, four-time WWE Hardcore Champion, three-time WWE Champion, two-time WWE Hall of Famer, and the New York Times number one bestselling author of one of the most successful sports memoirs in modern publishing. He wrestled under the names Cactus Jack, Mankind, Dude Love, and his own name across a career spanning Japan, Mexico, Extreme Championship Wrestling, World Championship Wrestling, and the WWE.
Have a Nice Day! A Tale of Blood and Sweatsocks (Regan Books, 1999) debuted at number one on the New York Times Best Sellers list and stayed on the list for more than six months, an unprecedented run for a sports memoir at the time. Foley wrote the entire book by hand on yellow legal pads, more than seven hundred pages, without a ghostwriter and without an outline, in roughly fifty days while still actively wrestling, an approach he has continued for the books that followed. The book is widely cited as the title that proved professional wrestlers could write their own books, and is one of the best-selling sports memoirs of all time.
His follow-up memoirs include Foley Is Good: And the Real World Is Faker Than Wrestling (HarperCollins, 2001), The Hardcore Diaries (Pocket Books, 2007), and Countdown to Lockdown (Grand Central, 2010), each also a New York Times bestseller and each handwritten on yellow legal pads. He has also written fiction including the novels Tietam Brown (Knopf, 2003), Scooter (Knopf, 2005), and the children's books Mick Foley's Christmas Chaos and Mick Foley's Halloween Hijinx. He has been a regular keynote speaker at the National Book Festival and other literary events.
Outside of wrestling and writing he tours as a stand-up comedian, runs Foley and Friends Boys and Girls Club fundraising events, and has been a longtime ambassador for RAINN (the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network), the Christmas tree industry, and the relief work he helped fund in Sierra Leone. He lives on Long Island, New York.
A note from Richard: Mick Foley is one of my models for how a writer can actually get a book done. He sat down with a stack of yellow legal pads and filled more than seven hundred handwritten pages of Have a Nice Day! in about fifty days, all while still working a full wrestling schedule, no ghostwriter, no outline. He hit number one on the New York Times list with that book and did the same thing again on the books that followed. I think about that discipline often when I am working through my own manuscripts. The work gets done because you do the work.
