Richard Levangie trained in Shotokan karate under hachidans Tony and Danny Tam at Halifax ISKF for nearly two decades. He earned his second degree black belt and taught in the club’s youth program for a decade.
In the early 1990s, a long period of chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia and daily migraines led doctors to diagnose a prolactinoma, a common and very treatable pituitary tumour. But the treatment didn’t work, and his symptoms never went away.
In 2011, further investigation revealed what had, in fact, been there all along: a rare hybrid neuroendocrine tumour. And it filled his brain cavity.
Neurosurgery in 2012 saved his life, but cost him his sense of smell and taste and left him without pituitary function. It took thirteen years before he felt well enough to return to a dojo. He trains today with the Silver Cranes, a Nova Scotia martial arts class at the Halifax ISKF for the over-fifty crowd.
Levangie began writing Red Tiger in 2017, sold it to Galleon Books in 2023, and it arrives in 2026.
Red Tiger is an adult fantasy about a fighter who refuses to give up no matter how many times he gets knocked down.