In addition to writing full time, he juggles enough extras to keep three people busy. "Well, I'm a big reader, of course, as most writers are.  I enjoy collecting books as well, minor league stuff, first moderns, and then I have a hundred-year old coal-fired forge on which someday I intend to make great things.  My wife is a sculptor, and we own a gallery, so I am involved in that world.  Mostly I carry heavy objects around for her.  I also spend a great deal of time on our ranch where I grew up, a country estate with swimming pool i.e., an old farm house with a horse tank."

You'd think a man with that much going on might feel the need to slow down on his writing, but as it turns out, he's just finished the next book in what looks to be a series.

"I just sent in the second of the Hook Runyon series to my publisher.  It's essentially about the most bizarre collection of passengers to ever board a train.  I'm also doing a rewrite on a manuscript about a mad doctor and another about an archeologist.  In between, I make regular trips to the psychiatrist, or should."

With that sort of docket I had to ask where Sheldon looks for inspiration. His answer?

"I'm not so much inspired as driven, not unlike the gerbil   running toward what it believes to be the horizon.  In all seriousness, solitude and work are essential.  In the final analysis, I find inspiration more of an effect than a cause.  Like exercise, writing feels so good when it's over that I'm compelled to do it again.  I simply can't imagine not writing."

Seems like a good idea to me. And Sheldon has managed to wrangle up a little advanced praise for The Yard Dog, too.

"Pungent as the coal smoke hanging over a railroad yard, Sheldon Russell's elegantly written The Yard Dog offers a fascinating glimpse of raw passions in an unusual World War II setting that is true to its time and place. As Oklahoma as Woody Guthrie, The Yard Dog is bound for glory."-- Carolyn Hart, author of Dare to Die

"The era of the Greatest Generation is brought vividly to life in Sheldon Russell's outstanding novel, The Yard Dog, a compelling story of crime, conspiracy, and disillusionment set in an American POW camp at the end of WWII. The plot is gripping, the writing is crisp, and the setting is both historically accurate and immensely evocative. This is a terrific novel." -- William Bernhardt, author of Nemesis: The Final Case of Eliot Ness

James A. Moore is the award winning author of the Serenity Falls trilogy and Deeper. He lives in the suburbs of Atlanta and writes thrillers and young adult thrillers. His latest release is the short story collection Slices.