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Gold and Black Illustrated Vol28, Digital1

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GOLD AND BLACK ILLUSTRATED VOLUME 28, ISSUE 1 9 F ew knew one of Kory Sheets' hobbies while he was at Purdue. Perhaps nobody. The former running back is a writer, work- ing now on a novel while also developing his E-book publishing company, 24KPub- lishing. Those hobbies have become his focus since the free agent — he's not yet retired — hasn't played following an injury in Oakland in training camp in 2014. This summer, we caught up with the for- mer Boilermaker (2005-08). Gold and Black: What made you in- terested in publishing? Sheets: "Well, I was writing a book and I was trying to get it published but I was having trouble doing it. A buddy of mine — it was actually (former Purdue teammate) Greg Or- ton — he actually tore his Achilles about a month or two before I did (in 2014), and one day we were talking about what each other was doing. He told me he was writing books, and I was curious about it. I had known him for a while and nev- er thought he'd be writing books. He sent me a link and got me started publishing my own online books, and I've been doing that ever since." Gold and Black: You mentioned it was your own writing of a book that started this. Have you finished it? Sheets: "I'm still writing the book. I put it on pause because I was building the company. I want to have a fi- nal edition (of the company), so that when I do launch my book, it will have a lot better (reception), so that's really what I'm working on now, building a following for myself." Gold and Black: What is the book about? What are your interests? Sheets: "It's a novel about a twin brother and sister that from birth, the sister has been saving the brother. They lose their parents around their sophomore year of high school, and the two basically go down two different paths and it follows their journey. Until a point in the book, when the sister literally goes out of her way in her mind, body and soul to protect her brother and get him out of the situations that he's finding himself. At the beginning and end of the book, she's forced to choose between the man that she loves and her twin brother." Gold and Black: I don't think a lot of people, when you were playing here, would have guessed that writ- ing was a hobby. Sheets: "Yeah, a lot of my buddies when they saw me reading those books, they were like, 'Yo, I didn't know you were into stuff like that.' But I was like, 'Yeah man, there's a lot about me you don't know.'" Gold and Black: Did you think this would be the future while you were playing? Sheets: "It was nothing more than a hobby. I never really had told anyone I was going to do it. My girlfriend at the time caught me writing one day, and I showed her some of the stuff. She thought it was good. But it's something that I kept to myself." Gold and Black: You got that last oppor- tunity in the NFL in Oakland in 2014, but got hurt, with a torn Achilles, in training camp. Was it disappointing after, in that you had an opportunity, a good opportunity, but it was cut short? Are you OK with it now? Sheets: "Now, I'm OK with it, but at the time, I was pretty crushed because it wasn't my fault why I couldn't play any more. It was the injury. It was the doctor not doing his job the correct way the first time. Part of that was on me, because I had dealt with an (Achilles') injury before and had a doctor I trusted that I didn't go to because he was on the other side of the country. So if I had been more picky about who exactly was operating on me, I probably would still be playing somewhere now. "The team doctor basically just patched it, but didn't re- ally fix it." Gold and Black: It had to take a while to get over that. Sheets: "Yeah, I'd say about a year-and-a-half, I was down about it. I had to sit a year, then another year, and once I sat out that second year, teams were pretty much like, 'Yeah, he's done for.' That wasn't the case in my eyes, but you get to that age when people start predicting your future whether you're doing well or not." — As told to Kyle Charters Photo by Tom Campbell

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