Interview with urban fiction author Noel Plaugher

Urban fiction author Noel Plaugher chats with me today about his new martial arts thriller, The Lady Dragon of Chinatown.

During his virtual book tour, Noel will be giving away a $25 Amazon or Barnes and Noble (winner’s choice) gift card to a lucky randomly drawn winner. To be entered for a chance to win, use the form below. To increase your chances of winning, feel free to visit his other tour stops and enter there, too!

Bio:
Well, after 9 claustrophobic months, I emerged…Hmm, let me skip forward a bit. I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. This was back in the 70s when the only millionaires anyone talked about were on “The Beverly Hillbillies,” and no one could conceive of a billionaire. Computers were something astronauts used.

I played guitar for as long as I can remember, and while attending the Musician’s Institute in Hollywood, Ca in 1990, I was a victim of violent crime. I had physical injuries accompanied by mental trauma. It was one of those pivotal events that made me make some life changes. I moved back to the SF Bay Area and began studying martial arts to deal with PTSD from the incident. I have been studying ever since.

I ran my own martial art school for 9 years, which is probably where a lot of the story ideas in my fiction come from, including the current book. I studied internal martial arts (Xing Yi, BaGua) which led me to study Qigong and eventually write a book about Qigong in 2015. From there I have been writing about martial arts and martial arts-oriented fiction in books and articles. I am a regular contributor to Black Belt magazine (digital and print editions). I moved to Atlanta, Georgia in 2005 with my family. Oddly, through it all, the most discussed subject is not martial arts, but people’s fascination and disbelief that I am not interested and know nothing about sports, and I am fine with that.

Welcome, Noel. Please tell us about your current release.
Maggie Long has only ever wanted to study martial arts, but it was forbidden. She found a teacher, Sifu Chang, to teach her in secret and she became a Kung Fu master.

After years in self-imposed exile, Maggie has returned to Chinatown to pursue her dream. The forces that govern Chinatown are working against her, and she’ll have to fight for her school and her life. Is she strong enough to withstand all the forces against her?

A martial art story set in a neon-soaked Chinatown of the 1970’s. The first book in a new series.

What inspired you to write this book?
I wanted to write a story that incorporated the themes and subjects that interest me the most which are martial arts, overcoming injustice, and the 70s. Oddly, those all go together. As I mentioned, I grew up in the 70s, and it was a time when I was just hearing about martial arts. Martial arts were mysterious and full of myth. There were big movies like “Enter the Dragon” and “Billy Jack,” and also plenty of lore that was often repeated as fact. You could order the secrets of Dim Mak, or the death touch, from Count Dante in the back of comic books. It was a popular belief that you had to register your hands as lethal weapons if you were a black belt. (Sadly, that myth is still believed by some to this day.) I wanted that kind of mythos to be a part of the story, and hopefully, I succeeded.

When I started studying martial arts in 1990, the culture hadn’t shifted from old-school ways yet. This was pre-MMA. It was still “The Karate Kid”-style school, which in my experience was pretty misogynist. In one of my first experiences, I saw a group of women black belts, and I remarked that I was encouraged by seeing them. The guy next to me said, “Yeah, but how good can they be?” I was floored by that remark and never really forgot it. That is why I wanted to have a female protagonist in the story who was kicking the crap out of that type of mindset. Also, I was not an athletic person when I started. I was kind of small, thin, and very afraid. In the beginning, I couldn’t relate to the stereotypical “Johnny Lawrence-type,” I found it reassuring that you didn’t have to be a “type” to be successful. I wanted an underdog for the story that I could relate to and hopefully, others could as well.

Excerpt from The Lady Dragon of Chinatown:
She crouched down a bit more and tried to get the image of the dragon aligned with her own in the street’s reflective water. When she stopped moving, she saw it: her face in the puddle with the dragon flying above her. She sensed the power of the omen, even if she couldn’t quite understand it herself. Staring intently into the pool holding the image, she then felt a sober knowledge envelope her. The moment was significant, and she wanted to imprint it on her memory forever. When she felt it had been secured, she took a deep breath and then slowly let it out. She rose and ran as if flying, all the way home.”

What exciting story are you working on next?
I wrote the follow-up to The Lady Dragon of Chinatown, and it should be in the mix soon. The story is a trilogy. The second book is called Revenge and I am very happy with it. The third book is in the offing, which really just means I am scrambling to complete it. All of the books have action and plenty of meaty story to sink your teeth into. Hopefully, readers will fall in love with the characters as much as I have. I am completely biased, of course.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?
That is a good question. I try to stay away from the label “writer.” For me, there is a lot of baggage associated with that title. When I hear it, I always think of some guy that is very aloof, in a turtleneck, smoking a pipe, and using a lot of 75-cent words. I just think of myself as someone who writes. I do other things as well, like clean the garage and pick up cat food when we’re out. I learned long ago to stay away from identifying with labels and I try to separate from them. There is a reason for it. For example, during the 2008 economic crisis, while financial hardships were a real factor, I had read and seen that many people, after losing their jobs, had a hard time with the fact that they weren’t their titles anymore. One day you’re the VP of Digital Acquisitions for the Pacific Rim, and the next you’re unemployed with a stack of meaningless business cards and no one reporting to you. That’s a big mind shift. Having had a lot of positions, titles, and such in my life, I decided not to fall into that trap, but to be happy with who I am, and not be defined by titles, occupations, etc. I am me, and not defined by what I do.

Do you write full-time? If so, what’s your workday like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?
I don’t write full-time, but I feel like I do since I am always working on something, whether that is an article or a book project. I am a realtor as well, and I still teach Qigong occasionally.

The only way I do anything is with a deadline, so if I don’t have one, I give myself one. I often have to block out time between family obligations, my other job, and my other pursuits. It’s not easy, that’s for sure. I have a favorite time to write, which is between 10:00 am and 12:00 pm and I don’t think I have ever written anything during that time.

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
Do I have a quirk? I bet that I have plenty, but I’m not sure if they are in my writing. I suppose others would really know better than I would. If I have to spot one myself, I would say it is that I like to inject a bit of the esoteric and also a bit of the completely made-up into the story. I think I have a lot of meaningless trivia in my head from being a fly on the wall through an unsupervised childhood, occupied with too much TV, and other things that I won’t mention. The tidbits find their way into the story though, I think.

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
A famous guitar player! I was completely into music for the first 22 years of my life. I played in bands since I was 12 or 13. My walls were plastered with posters of my favorite guitar players and I was obsessed with becoming a great guitar player myself. I spent hours practicing. I loved those great moments in front of a crowd. When I went to GIT (Musician’s Institute in Hollywood, CA) I was blown away by how good everyone was. It was a great experience despite how it ended. I learned a lot of great lessons applicable to writing and martial arts when I studied music though, such as: If you want to be good at something, it’s not how long you do it, it’s how often. A little bit counts. Be yourself. Don’t be afraid to be completely different. The highest level of understanding of something is improvisation. So many great lessons. That era is over, but the lessons are neatly tucked into my being and applied to everything I do.

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?
I appreciate their attention and giving me a shot! I hope they enjoy the story.

I would like to share one observation, as a guy that was reluctantly thrust into social media at the tender age of 40-something. I know people like to post a lot of stuff about themselves on social media, but never underestimate the power of just doing something and not telling a soul.

Links:
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