DELRAY BEACH – His creativity has helped Maurice Shalmi survive the Great Depression, thrive after dropping out of high school at 16 to support his family, become a successful interior designer, and facilitate the vision of future biological warfare.

Shalmi, 77, a resident of Delray Beach for the past 11 years, recently began working on a sequel to his first book, “Tunnels: An Evil Conspiracy Confronts the World,” published in 2001. But before the sequel is published, Shalmi said he hopes more readers become interested in his first book.

“Our world today is under biological terror, never before known to man,” Shalmi said. “ ‘Tunnels’ will give the reader a true sense of what could happen to the free world and its people when a vicious group of conspirators unleashes their terror.”

Shalmi said he wrote 500 pages by hand on vicious leaders, mountains, caves, biological weapons, killing, unlimited financial resources for worldwide blackmail, and conspirators with no heart or soul.

After paying a line editor $2,000, Shalmi had a fiction story complete with exotic locales, a man filled with evil after witnessing a bloody Slovenian revolution, and six destructive tyrants.

He said he wants readers to open their minds to his novel that he said one day could become a major motion picture.

“I hope with Sept. 11 approaching that people will read this book. Anyone with any imagination could turn this into an appealing script,” he said.

“Tunnels: An Evil Conspiracy Confronts the World” is available at www.xlibris.com or www.amazon.com.