About the Author

Gregory Ellis was born to a welder and a homemaker in rural Iowa. At eight years old, a chance encounter with Japanese culture and samurai history lit something in him that never went out. It carried him through a Bachelor of Arts in Japanese Language and Literature at the University of Iowa, and then across the Pacific for fifteen years of life in Tokyo and Yokohama.

In Japan, he trained under a traditional blood oath in Tenshin Shoden Katori Shinto-ryu, one of the oldest surviving martial traditions in the country, eventually reaching mastery rank and serving as a translator of the school's canonical text. He raised a family, built a career as a Japanese translator, and navigated the narrow path available to a foreigner operating fluently inside the language and culture.

In 2007 he transitioned into information technology. He earned a Master of Business Administration in 2011 and relocated to Seattle, Washington, where he spent nearly two decades as a Senior Technical Program Manager in Fortune 100 technology companies during the peak of the cloud-computing expansion.

At the time of this writing, he has retired from the industry and is pursuing a Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology at Northwest University, with the intention of serving men navigating crisis, identity, and the difficult passages between who they were and who they need to become.

He lives in Kirkland, Washington.