Mark Shepherd, son of Carol May and Robert May Sr. was born Robert Mark May Jr. in Tampa, Florida on September 19, 1961.
His father, a Green Beret in the U. S. Army, died in 1968 near New Port Richey, Florida, during a night parachute jump training exercise. Capt. Robert May, Sr. was commissioned in the U.S. Army in 1960, and saw active duty in 1960 and 1961.
Within a year of his father’s death his mother remarried, and the family moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma. He attended Carver Middle School and Washington High School in Tulsa, and graduated in 1979 from Jenks High School.
At fifteen he made his first professional writing sale, a science fiction poem that appeared in the spring ’77 issue of Green’s Magazine, for which he received the whopping sum of $2 and a contributor copy.
That same summer he co-wrote and edited “Ganymede Jones: On the Outskirts of Space,” a science fiction radio serial which aired on Tulsa station KMOD for one season. Soon after leaving that project he sold a science article on Black Holes to Fantastic Science Fiction, which appeared in the April 1979 issue.
He worked a variety of jobs, including zoo keeper (nocturnal animals), every fast food franchise in existence, dishwasher, barback , DJ, process server, bartender and in 1981 became a contributing editor for Tulsa Week Magazine, for which he wrote horror and science fiction.
A long hiatus in sales followed as he focused on novel writing. He produced two books which never sold.
“Good thing, too,” he says. “They were really awful.”
During this period he played bass in a rock band, Retrospect, and spent two years gigging in bars. Disenchanted with the music business, he returned to writing, an occupation where one didn’t have to duck flying beer bottles.
In 1990 he began collaborating with Mercedes Lackey on the SERRAted edge urban fantasy series with the novel Wheels of Fire. Another collaboration with Mercedes followed, Prison of Souls and a solo project, Escape from Roksamur, both novel tie-ins based on the best selling role playing computer game The Bard’s Tale.
His first published solo work, Elvendude, is an elves-in-the-mall urban fantasy set in Dallas, Texas. Within weeks of its release it appeared on the Locus magazine bestseller list. The sequel, Spiritride, set in Albuquerque, New Mexico, came out in April of 1997.
After the completion of Spiritride he began experimenting and learning the ways of MIDI, and with a Roland XP-50 Music Workstation composed and produced four electronica albums, including the soundtrack for this novel, Blackrose Avenue.
In 1990-91 he was a volunteer for Shanti, an AIDS victim assistance program.
He lives on planet Earth with his lover Matt and three cats, Gizmo, Max and Mutant.
