On the Scene with author and educator Gregory Shepherd

Author and educator Gregory Shepherd grew up in New Jersey. He attended college for a time but didn’t enjoy it and dropped out to go to London for eight months. Back in the States, he made his way to Hawaii in the 1970s where he completed his bachelor’s degree at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

After that, Shepherd moved to Japan and studied Zen Buddhism for four years at a temple in Kamakura. He was the recipient of a fellowship from the Japanese Ministry of Education to research contemporary Japanese music at Tokyo University of the Arts. He traveled regularly to South Korea and learned through friends what things were like in the north — a bleak, brutal and bizarre society unlike any other on Earth. The stories Shepherd heard about North Korea stuck with him.

He returned to Hawaii in 1987 and made his home here. He currently teaches at Kauai Community College and “moonlighted” for 17 years as a freelance classical music reviewer at the Honolulu Advertiser.

In 2013 Shepherd released a memoir, “A Straight Road with 99 Curves.” Six years later came “Sea of Fire,” a contemporary thriller in which disgraced former Joint Special Operations Command sniper Patrick Featherstone, a student of Zen Buddhism living in Japan, is given a chance to redeem himself by tracking down a rogue CIA agent who defected to North Korea.

Shepherd continued Featherstone’s adventures this year with his latest book “Rings of Fire,” released in February. The novel follows Featherstone in his new post as head of security for the 2021 Tokyo Olympic Games.

Your characters exist in a slightly different universe than ours. What was your strategy in creating it?

When I first started writing “Sea of Fire,” it was my first novel and I was kind of like, “Let’s try that. Let’s try this.” The ending of it is fantasy, but there’s always been that smoldering tension on the Korean peninsula and for it to finally culminate — in fiction, at least — in the way it does is my book just seemed to be satisfying.

Your discussion of the technical aspects of long-range sniping is very convincing. Do you shoot or did you have an experienced military sniper as a technical advisor — or both?

Both. I shoot and I have a person I know who was actually a sniper. He was very good about answering all my questions.

How did you develop the character of Patrick Featherstone?

The way I get into his character is I put myself into him — not completely — and then I extrapolate. He’s got a lot of demons and psychological baggage from the past. Everyone has baggage, and so what I do is I take whatever (baggage) I have and, with the use of imagination, just put myself in the position of someone who’s in his position.

What got you interested in writing fiction?

It was one of those bucket-list things. I had some time, and I like thrillers because when they’re well done they telescope life into this magnifying glass image. I like that dynamic.

What advice do you have for people who want to be published novelists?

Get a lot of people you trust for honest feedback to read what you write. I wrote “Sea of Fire,” and put it down, and then I read it again and made some changes based on what people said. Then I got an agent. An agent gives you much more credibility.

What’s next?

Another book, “Sea of Bones.” Patrick Featherstone is going to be in Hawaii at Pearl Harbor, but this one is kind of going off on a different tangent. I don’t want them all to be about a guy going out to solve the problems of the world and then comes home. I’m also writing a musical that will be performed as complete staged production (on Kauai) in 2022.

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Reach John Berger at jberger@staradvertiser.com.