Larry D. Sweazy (pronounced: Swayzee) was born in Anderson, Indiana, and currently resides in the Hoosier state. Larry is a two-time winner of the WWA (Western Writers of America) Spur award. He won for Best Short Fiction in 2005 for the short story, "The Promotion," and in 2013 for The Coyote Tracker (Josiah Wolfe, Texas Ranger #5) for Best Original Mass Market Paperback. The Coyote Tracker also won the 2013 Elmer Kelton Book Award. He was nominated for a SMFS (Short Mystery Fiction Society) Derringer award in 2007 for the short story, "See Also Murder." His first novel, The Rattlesnake Season (Josiah Wolfe #1), was a finalist in the Best Books of 2010 Indiana literary competition. His second novel, The Scorpion Trail (Josiah Wolfe #2) won the 2011 Will Rogers Medallion Award for Western Fiction and the 2011 Best Books of Indiana literary competition in the fiction category. The Scorpion Trail (Josiah Wolfe #2) is the first Western to ever win the Best Books of Indiana. The Cougar's Prey (Josiah Wolfe #4) won the 2012 Will Rogers Medallion Award for Western Fiction, making Larry a two-time back-to-back winner of the award. He has published over 50 non-fiction articles and short stories, which have appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine; Boys' Life; Hardboiled; Amazon Shorts, and several other publications and anthologies. Larry is the author of the Josiah Wolfe, Texas Ranger series (Berkley) and the Lucas Fume series (Berkley), a standalone thriller, The Devil's Bones (Five Star). A mystery series featuring freelance indexer Marjorie Trumaine will begin in May, 2015 with the first book in the series, See Also Murder (Seventh Street Books). Another mystery novel, A Thousand Falling Crows (Seventh Street Books), is set to publish in early 2016. Larry lives in Indiana with his wife, Rose.

Larry D. Sweazy (pronounced Sway-zee) was born in and grew up in the Anderson, Indiana area. He watched a lot of 1960s westerns like Bonanza, The Rifleman, and the Wild, Wild, West as a kid. He also liked Batman, Star Trek, and The Twilight Zone, Baretta, and most of the 1970s cop shows. He was an early reader, picking up whatever paperbacks were laying around the house, whether they were over his head or not. Like a lot of writers, Larry was restless and worked a lot of jobs; he served in the U.S. Air Force, was a restaurant manager, insurance salesman, and janitor, until he began working in the publishing industry as a back-of-the-book indexer in 1998. Books, movies, and TV shows provided Larry with an escape from the troubles of every day life, and in his early twenties, he began to think he might be able to tell stories and become a writer. He was 49 when he published his first novel, The Rattlesnake Season.

Larry is the author of nineteen novels, He won the WWA (Western Writers of America) Spur award for Best Short Fiction in 2005 and for Best Paperback Original in 2013.  He also won the 2011 and 2012 Will Rogers Medallion Award for Western Fiction for books in the Josiah Wolfe series. He was nominated for a Derringer award in 2007 (for the short story "See Also Murder"), and was a finalist in the Best Books of Indiana literary competition in 2010.  Larry was awarded the Best Books in Indiana in 2011 for The Scorpion Trail. And in 2013, Larry received the inaugural Elmer Kelton Fiction Book of the Year for The Coyote Tracker, presented by the AWA (Academy of Western Artists). He also won the 2019 Willa Award (Best Original Softcover), and was shortlisted for 2020 Indiana Authors Award, Genre category--both for See Also Proof. He won the 2020 WF Peacemaker Best Western Award for The Return of the Wolf.  His first Trusty Dawson novel, Lost Mountain Pass, has been nominated as a 2022 WWA Spur Award finalist, a 2022 WF Peacemaker Award finalist, and a 2022 Will Rogers Medallion Award finalist. Winter Seeks Out the Lonely has been was a 2022 Will Rogers Medallion Award medalist and shortlisted for the 2022 Indiana Authors Award. His books have been translated by major publishers in Italy and Turkey.  Larry has published over one hundred nonfiction articles and short stories, which have appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine; The Adventure of the Missing Detective: And 25 of the Year's Finest Crime and Mystery Stories!; Boys' Life; Hardboiled, and several other publications and anthologies.

photo by Rose M. Sweazy

Larry also speaks and teaches writing courses based on his twenty-three years of experience working fulltime in the publishing industry. He has previously served on the faculty and board of directors for the Midwest Writers Workshop, and on the faculty for the Indiana Writers Center. He also conducts writing workshops at libraries and other locations throughout the country.  As a speaker, Larry speaks regularly at libraries, schools, community centers, and other venues. He continues to work in the indexing field daily. See the Indexing Services page for more information. He currently lives in Noblesville, Indiana with his wife, Rose, where he is hard at work on his next novel.

photo by Larry D. Sweazy