Larry Garner is a Colorado native, and has traveled the United States extensively, much of it on the back of a motorcycle. He is a US Navy veteran (the source of his nickname), having spent six years serving the country he loves.
Larry learned to read at a very early age, thanks to his mother. Still an avid reader, Larry carries books with him pretty much wherever he goes. It’s not unusual for him to read three or four books a week, during meals and in the evenings after a hard day’s work in his or someone else’s garage.
Being exposed at a very young age to hot rods and motorcycles, Larry is a life-long gearhead, starting with modifying and customizing bicycles from the age of six to building custom cars, motorcycles, and numerous race vehicles. A talented custom painter, welder, and fabricator, Larry puts his touch on all of his vehicles, as well as those of many friends and others.
As could be expected, spending over fifty years riding motorcycles and driving hot rods brought Larry into contact with thousands of people and places. Experiences from amusing to heartwarming to downright terrifying were stored away, along with all the fascinating characters met over a lifetime of adventure.
As a young man, Larry hung around with some folks who were on the wilder side, spending time with outlaw bikers while still in high school as well as those who built and raced fast cars. There were the “characters”, those who made indelible impressions on everyone they met… the criminals, the con artists, the juicers and junkies, the hopelessly romantic, the twisted, the beautiful, the gifted and the hopelessly inept, along with the natural leaders, talented craftsmen, and of course, the women.
Alcohol and drugs made their way into the circles Larry frequented, and he knew many who succumbed to excessively enjoying them. Some paid the ultimate price for their pleasures, including close friends.
A natural story-teller, Larry was called upon at gatherings and in barrooms to regale his compatriots with tales about his and his cohorts’ exploits. Many over the years suggested writing these stories down, but Larry resisted, mostly fearing that having written documentation would cause many people incarceration, retribution, and divorce.
The writing idea nagged at him, though. He finally started writing seriously after a serious knee injury and subsequent knee replacement surgery kept him at home for an extended period of time. Fiction seemed like a likely forum, using characters, locations, and incidents from his past as fodder for a fictional story with lots of action, some violence, drugs, alcohol, motorcycles, hot rods, and women. Publication wasn’t something he considered, thinking he’d put the manuscript in a three-ring binder and pass it around to friends for their entertainment.
As the end of the nearly 600-page book neared, Larry’s wife Marcia started pressuring him to produce real books. In a process that consumed a few months and nearly took all the fun out of writing the story, the manuscript was edited, re-written, re-edited, submitted, and finally accepted for publication at CreateSpace, a subsidiary of Amazon. No thought was ever given to submitting the manuscript to mainstream publishing houses, as one of Larry’s main strengths is honesty and he could face the truth that the chances of his being selected for publication were slim to none. As an independent author, he could get the book published and distributed in a relatively short period of time, and have the satisfaction of being a published author.
D-E-D, DEAD was the first novel’s title, and it was a finalist in the prestigious Colorado Book Awards in 2013 in the Crime/Mystery category. Having written, published, and distributed copies to readers, libraries, and book stores, Larry decided to write another novel, completely different from the first. But the readers were asking for more…they wanted to know what was next for the characters from the first novel.A sequel was decided upon.
Ded Reckoning: Vengeance Takes a Road Trip was the second novel in what is now the “Hammer” series of action crime novels. It was a finalist in the Colorado Book Awards in 2017 in the Thriller category.
Danger Every Direction is the third novel in the “Hammer” series, to be published in mid-November of 2021.It is once again set in the San Luis Valley of Colorado.
Larry :"Animal" Garner 