1 Thousand Years in the Making.

My first book, Mark of the Shaolin -Tigers of Wulin Book 1 - came out on April of this year.  For 20 years I had been creating this story in my mind of a Shaolin Warrior Monk and a Wudang Taoist Warrior and thought one day I'd write it but was in no rush. See, I loved reading and loved Kung Fu but could never find Kung Fu fiction. Not any that I liked anyway. The stories weren't the problem, it came down to "he punched him" and little more that could really be called Kung Fu fiction. Even fantasy seemed to be limited to "he thrust the spear" or a deeply descriptive account of riding a horse into battle only to have a pay off of "they fought for what seemed like hours....".
In the meantime I had become a teacher of He-Style Taijiquan and wrote a guidebook for my students. There was (& still is) so little information on this method out there that I hoped to provide my students with easy access to the history and theory behind what our lineage says is the original method of Taijiquan. But then the Head Representative of He Family told me to turn it into the definitive English language manual of our Taijiquan. The writing was easy, the next part not so much. So in an attempt to meet publishers and learn about the process of having a book released I decided to write the first part of the story that had been growing in my mind. All of the legends, creation myths, rebellions/militias, wondrous and near mystical Martial Arts had woven their way into this story and writing the first book was as easy as watching a movie and transcribing what you saw on the screen. Six days after putting a small piece of it online I was working with Satalyte and everything just took off from there (including deciding to release the manual that started all this with Satalyte). In the time between signing and release I'd written the follow up 3 (or 4, can't remember) parts to the series. This story is complete in my mind so there's little effort required. That's not meant in a bragging way, just that this story took my 20 years to create before I put finger to keyboard.
These stories a full of historical/mythical (depending on your point of view) tales that Martial Artist search years to find. Most I know have a library of books that have provided tiny pieces of information in each. Well, this series brings all of those together and shows how they are interconnected. There's Shaolin, there's Wudang. Those names most will know. But there's also more obscure methods detailed in a manner that I have never seen in any book even up to this day. Perhaps the best way I can put it is to use the words of my teacher when she read Mark of the Shaolin. She said she had thought it would be very difficult to write fight scenes with so much detail but was surprised at how accurate these depictions were (my words, her exact words not coming to mind but the sentiment is the same).

Mark of the Shaolin is available through Satalyte Publishing,
www.satalyte.com.au