John Paxton Sheriff began writing during his fifteen years in the British Army. His first successes came while living in New South Wales and Queensland in the '60s and '70s with his wife and three children. His short stories have been published in Adam, a now defunct Australian men's magazine, in Australian, UK and Irish magazines such as Australian Women's Weekly, Woman & Home, and in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine in New York. He also wrote crime short stories for Scottish publishers D.C. Thomson. For many years John was a freelance feature writer for two North Wales newspaper groups. Since 1995 he has published four books on writing technique, thirty-five Western novels, and seven crime novels in two separate series. John is a tutor for Writers' News and on-line college WritersCollege.com, and is a member of the Society of Authors.