About the Author

Larry Brooks is the award-winning USA Today bestselling author of six novels and four writing craft books, including the bestselling Story Engineering, and his latest, Great Stories Don’t Write Themselves, both from Writers Digest Books. He  and frequently teaches at workshops and conferences nationally and internationally. 

He has been adding content to this website, www.storyfix.com, since he launched it in 2010. The site has been voted the #1 writing craft site on the internet, to the Writers Digest Magazine “Best Websites for Writers” list seven times, and to various other best of lists. 

Larry grew up in Portland, Oregon, where he graduated with a business degree from Portland State University. His creative writing teacher there, a New York Times bestselling author, was his first mentor.

Before his full-time occupation as a writer, he spent 17 years in corporate communications as the Lead Copywriter, Creative Director and eventually a partner in one of the largest marketing communications agencies in the Western United States. He was writing fiction on the side the entire time (including six novels that remain unpublished, but were, he says, priceless clinics that showed him what not to do), including teaching classes for the Oregon Writers Colony.

Prior endeavors included stints as a Personel Manager (he likes to quote Clint Eastwood, who famously said as Dirtry Harry, “Personnel? Personnel is for assholes.” At least, perhaps exclusively, within fiction. He also spent a short time as a freshman stockbroker, and was drafted as a pitcher by the Texas Rangers out of high school, where he played in the minor leagues for five seasons. 

He landed his first agent as a screenwriter. A couple of his scripts were optioned, and he was a top-ten finalist in the Nichol Fellowship competition in 2002. This, he says, was where he learned more about the craft of storytelling in one month that he’d learned in over a decade of writing novels (his imputus for one day becoming a teacher of the craft to hungry novelists). So when his wife suggested he turn one of those optioned screenplays into a novel, he wisely took her advice. The result was his first published novel, Darkness Bound (2000, Onxy/Penguin Putnam), which became a USA Today bestseller. Five other novels followed, including Bait and Switch, which Publishers Weekly assigned named to their “Best Books of 2004/Mass Market” list (after a starred review, a “Best of 2004” list nod, and an Editors Choice for July of that year. 

Check out the Novels page on this website to learn more about his fiction. 

Larry published his first writing craft book, Story Engineering, in 2011. That title became a #1 Amazon.com bestseller in several writing/craft categories, and continues to be a go-to source for writers and teachers. You can learn more about all four of his writing books on the Craft Books page.

Larry lives in Chandler, Arizona with his wife, Laura, who is an artist. He can be reached via the Contact page/form on this website.