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Mike D. Shepherd

Born: Keokuk, Iowa
Pen Name: Mike Shepherd

Connection to Illinois: Shepherd lives just outside of Springfield, Illinois.

Biography: Mike D. Shepherd served as a reporter for Armed Forces Radio with the US Air Force in Vietnam from July of 1967 through August of 1968. He received an award from TIME-LIFE Publishing for meritorious reporting at the Siege of Khe Sanh. Shepherd's harrowing account of the battle and 77-day siege of the Khe Sanh Combat Base in 1968 during the Vietnam War was the cover story of August 2013 issue of ''Vietnam'' magazine - “Hunkering Down in a Place Called Khe Sanh”. Mike was one of the first to file reports from Khe Sanh, which turned into one of the bloodiest battles of the war, and perhaps the most controversial. The siege of Khe Sanh saw American and South Vietnamese forces suffer 703 killed, 2,642 wounded, and 7 missing.Mike served as a combat reporter with the Seventh Air Force Combat News Unit in Da Nang with the U.S. Air Force in Vietnam from July of 1967 through August of 1968. He received an award from TIME-LIFE Publishing for meritorious reporting at the Siege of Khe Sanh. Other articles published in ''Vietnam'' magazine include: “Rescue at Kham Duc” in June 2014 issueand the cover story, “A Valley Soaked in Rain & Blood” in the October 2015 issue which is available online at [http://www.historynet.com/a-valley-soaked-in-rain-blood.htm HistoryNet’s website]. The online version of the article provides a link to recordings of the author’s radio interviews with members of the 1st Cavalry Division, who are featured in Mike’s story about the A Shau Valley battleground in South Vietnam. Shepherd worked in public relations and is retired from the State of Illinois.


Awards:
  • TIME-LIFE Publishing award for meritorious reporting at the ''Siege of Khe Sanh''

Primary Literary Genre(s): Fiction

Primary Audience(s): Adult readers

E-Mail: mikeshepherd800@gmail.com
on WorldCat: http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=mike++d.++shepherd


Selected Titles

  Collage /
ISBN: 1491769947 OCLC: 919630326

"Collage is a collection of short stories, poems, and prose about my life experiences and members of my family."

Days of rage :
ISBN: 0595425720 OCLC: 169902047

iUniverse, New York : ©2007.

  Days of rage :
ISBN: 1450267114 OCLC: 690258965

iUniverse, New York : 2010.

  From Ban Xon to Wardak /
ISBN: 1475979827 OCLC: 837140339

iUniverse, Inc., Bloomington, Ind. : 2013.

Tavang Sing, the son of a CIA mercenary and a woman who lived in the Hmong village of Ban Xon in Laos, was born after his father was captured by the Pathet Lao in that country's civil war in the 1960's. After his birth his mother took him to Chicago, where as a teenager he became involved with a street gang. But, with the help of a stranger, who turns out to be his long lost father, Tavang left the gang. He then graduated from high school and Northwestern University, and joined the Peace Corps in Laos. Upon his return, he graduated from the University of Chicago School of Law. he then became a lawyer, and eventually a politician. After the September 11, 2001 al-Qaeda attack on the World Trade Center in New York City, Tavang joined the military to exact revenge on Osama bin Laden, one of the masterminds of 9/11.

  Like another lifetime in another world
ISBN: 1491729406 OCLC: 874720269

iUniverse LLC, Bloomington, Ind. : 2014.

This is the story of Mick Scott, some of which is based on the author's Vietnam wartime experiences as an Air Force correspondent for Armed Forces Radio. In the fictionalized version of events, on his way to Vietnam, Scott is ordered to report to U.S. Intelligence in San Francisco where he is recruited for a special assignment. It entails finding a Saigon street kid who is the long-lost son of a top North Vietnamese Communist official; perhaps Ho Chi Minh himself. Once found, intelligence hopes to use the kid as a pawn in peace negotiations. Meanwhile, Scott travels throughout Vietnam as a reporter, which provides a vehicle to impart what is happening in arguably the most pivotal year of the war; 1967-68, with the Tet Offensive as the catalytic episode. As the story progresses, he crosses paths with a double agent, and the infamous Panther Lady, who is riding around Saigon on a motorbike gunning down G. Is. Along with them, the kid intelligence wants him to find, and his drinking buddy Bobby, Scott becomes entangled in a sticky web of intrigue and deceit.

The legend of Lovea Duval /
ISBN: 1450200567 OCLC: 697535276

iUniverse, Inc., New York : 2010.

 

 

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