Jay MacLarty was born in Spirit Lake, Iowa, and grew up in the Midwest (Iowa, Nebraska, and Minnesota). As an adult, he has lived for extended periods in Florida, California, Nevada, and Colorado. He's been married twice ("not very successful at that"), and has two children.

Always an avid reader, MacLarty finally turned his attention toward the written word, working nights and weekends on a lengthy and sweeping ethnic saga. The manuscript was "well reviewed," but judged "too long and literary" for a first-time novelist, and he was told to "go write the popular book first."

That book became The Courier – the first in a series starring common-man hero Simon Leonidovich – a high-tech thriller, drawing on MacLarty’s unique background of business, politics, and high-tech. He is currently working on a stand-alone work of fiction.

MacLarty now spends much of his time "on the road," searching for new adventures, new stories, new voices.