Hello, fellow disciples! We've been searching far and wide for individuals who have cultivated for a long time. This month, we bring to you an interview with anasianamateur, the author of No Dogs Allowed.

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Tell us a bit about yourself!

I'm a Korean American currently residing in California. My heart and home reside in Los Angeles, but I've temporarily moved to Central California for the time being! I'm an avid reader, K-Pop enthusiast, and have a strong proclivity for writing characters as chaotically neutral as possible. Sometimes I succeed :)

What is your writing process? Do you outline everything or write as things come to mind? Why?

Every story I've written has typically come from an initial idea bug and off-the-cuff prologue. The first 5-15 chapters of the story are typically done without any outlining, because it gives me space to figure out all the details of the story: who the characters are, their weaknesses, their strengths, their key relationships, and what the entire story is going to say. I do pay the consequence of those chapters usually being the more rough/error-prone ones because of it.

After those chapters, I make a (extremely disorganized) notes page that has just about everything about the story from the plot to what type of cereal the characters prefer. From there, I loosely outline every single chapter up until the ending. Which sounds a bit neurotic, but it gives me parts of the story to look forward to :) Usually when I know what I want the story to say, a lot of the book sorts itself out as I go.

From there, I just write! 

What are some things that influenced your story?

My family has a big impact on what I write in terms of the characters' more domestic experiences. A lot of places they go, food they eat, jokes they have, sayings they say, are all very closely tied to my family's habits. Almost all the places the main characters in NO DOGS ALLOWED visit are places I often go to myself. A lot of the advice that's given to characters are echoes of advice my mother would often give me.

I've always been a devout reader, and I love all kinds of stories. But I think it dawned on me just how little Asian, particularly Korean, representation there was in stories that DIDN'T revolve around them being Asian, that weren't just K-Dramas. There was a large lack of casual or integrated Korean-American representation, and it made me sad. I figured I ought to write some myself.

Each book I've written is very easily traced back to what the biggest struggle was at that point in my life. I think writing went from being an escape, to being a response. It gave me a stable ground to face my issues with lower stakes, and have the space to respond to them in the way I chose to. NO DOGS ALLOWED follows that very accordingly.

Tell us about the main character of one of your stories. What inspired their creation?

Kane King is the other main character of NO DOGS ALLOWED, aside from the main narrator, Echo Yun. I love Echo, but I think Kane was a character very close to my heart because he's a story that's been in the works far longer than readers might realize.

I mention it in my bonus chapter in the story, but Kane's story, both in its logistics and its emotion, is one I came up with for a different story years before I wrote NO DOGS ALLOWED. He ended up being put into this story because I felt it was a good fit for him.

Kane is largely inspired by a slightly younger me, really. He and I shared a lot of similar struggles and personality traits (flaws and virtues alike). His character in the beginning is a lot like talking to my younger self, and his character in the end is a lot like talking to my current self.

What were some challenges you experienced while writing the story?

NO DOGS ALLOWED deals with a large cast of characters, modernized mythology, an entire fictional sport, a cross-continental mafia, and a very hefty plot.

It's definitely my most ambitious story to date. Not only because of all that, but because of trying to do all that well, and still have time to develop the main two characters in a somewhat-believable way. I think the biggest challenge was just trying to fit in everything I wanted, while not losing track of any of the ongoing plotlines in the process. 

What message do you hope your story will tell your readers?

Past all the chaos this story endures, I hope, at its base, readers find it to be a story of victory.

The story's main question stands as what does it REALLY mean to win? And what makes someone a "winner"? The story redefines "winning" throughout, sometimes making it a person, sometimes making it a trophy, other times making it a concept.

I want readers to see that there's no race in life that you win, and now, you're a winner. There are no winners and no losers. You win and you lose and you learn. The champion is determined by you. You get to decide what's a win and what's a loss, when to walk away and when to fight. You are worth betting on. You're worth the win you want.

If you woke up in a time or place that was very different from reality, what would you do?

Depends on how enjoyable it is. If so, I'll pursue my dream of being a recluse. If not, then, back to reality for me.

If there was something you could learn (i.e., some spell, some martial arts, etc.) like the main character in your book, what would it be?

I try to write about topics I at least have some knowledge or experience in, but for this story, the one thing that I had absolutely no clue about was the motorcycle aspect. Truthfully, I don't even bike. Maybe my vision of being a nomadic biker could take off if I raced as well as Echo.

Would you rather go through a lifetime of never finding love or be willing to go through several lifetimes of hardships just to save your love? Why?

So brutal. Probably the latter. Something painless but cowardly about the first option. Lifetimes for love sounds noble, and far more rewarding.

What is your favorite creature from Asian mythology or folklore? Why?

Bulgae or gumiho! Bulgae are fire dogs from Korean mythology. They're said to be from kingdoms of darkness and are in constant pursuit of the sun and the moon, and cause eclipses when they bite them to try and bring them back to their king. I was always amused by the story.

Gumiho are more popular, the 9-tailed fox that plays as a beautiful woman or man to eat your liver. I sort of love the wickedness. 

What is your favorite Asian myth? Why?

I used to own a book of Korean fables that I'd re-read to no end when I was young, and one of them was called The Tiger and The Rabbit, and was about how a tiger would be continuously tricked out of eating a rabbit by the rabbit's cleverness. I loved the humor of it when I was younger, and appreciated the wisdom of it being older.

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Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us, anasianamateur! We wish you the best of luck in your writing endeavors.

Until the next chapter, fellow disciples!