By GAGE WILSON
For Glasgow News 1
Stacks of newly printed paperbacks alongside ominous red gemstones lined a front table at One More Chapter on a recent Saturday morning. Local author J.R. Shepard welcomed readers into the world he has been building – in one form or another – for over a decade.
“I started putting pen to paper in 2017,” he recollected. “And finished the first draft in 2019, but I came up with the idea and one of the first characters about 30 years ago.”
Dozens of friends and fans filtered through the bookstore’s doors when the signing began at 10 a.m., forming a steady line between shelves. Some arrived eager to catch up with Shepard; others came ready to step into “The Gathering,” the first installment in his planned young adult fantasy trilogy.
Shepard described the book as a coming-of-age story, but its scope stretches far beyond one young hero’s inner journey.
At the center is Aticus, a self-described “misplaced soul” caught in forces larger than himself. After crossing paths with an eccentric dwarf and a ragtag band of allies, Aticus finds himself pulled into a dangerous confrontation with a goblin king, an encounter that sends the group spiraling into a high-stakes quest.
While the story’s dwarf received special mention from the author, Shepard noted that each member of the cast represents a different aspect of his own personality, from stoic to smart-aleck.
“It’s a group of diverse characters that come together, that would’ve never come together under other circumstances,” he explained. “They come together in an adventure that will shape who they are.”
It is classic high fantasy terrain – ancient relics and an encroaching darkness – and Shepard readily acknowledges the influence of writers like J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. Like those authors, he builds a layered world with its own history and mythology.
Yet the foundation of “The Gathering” is uniquely personal. Some of its landscapes and characters were inspired by a Dungeons and Dragons campaign he created but never had the chance to play.
“A group of friends had asked me to a D and D game, because I was usually the Dungeon Master,” he said. “So I put this world together and these characters to play and it fell through and never happened.”
Instead of gathering around a game table, the story continued to evolve in notebooks and imagination, gradually transforming into the novel now in readers’ hands.
Between signing copies and chatting with attendees, Shepard spoke about the long road from idea to publication.
Shepard said he hopes to complete the trilogy’s second installment by the end of the year, continuing the saga of Aticus, the Bloodstone and the widening shadow over the realm.
Beyond the trilogy, Shepard has plans to expand his universe with novellas focusing on secondary characters who piqued readers’ interest.
“I was writing this and my ‘beta readers’ that finished it, there was a lot of characters that they wanted to see more of,” he said. “And it may have been a character that you just saw a few chapters in the book.”
For a few hours Saturday, the quiet hum of a Cave City bookstore carried hints of dwarves, necromancers and ancient artifacts – proof that even the most far-flung fantasy worlds sometimes begin close to home.
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