Author: Johhny D. Boggs
Born: 1962
Bio: Booklist has called Johnny D. Boggs "among the best western writers at work today."  He has won the prestigious Spur Award from Western Writers of America twice, in 2006 for his novel Cam Ford, and in 2002 for his short story "A Piano at Dead Man's Crossing." His novels Ten and Me and The Hart Brand were Spur finalists in 2000 and 2007, and he won the Western Heritage Wrangler Award in 2004 for his novel Spark on the Prairie.
 
Born in 1962, Boggs grew up on a farm near Timmonsville, South Carolina, around the old stamping grounds of Revolutionary War hero Francis Marion (chronicled in his frontier novel The Despoilers).  He knew he wanted to be a writer at an early age.
 
"Kids my age would want to play characters from a popular
 
TV show or movie like Steve McGarret or Cool Hand Luke," he recalls.  "I was too busy making up my own characters and playing them.  I wrote my first story in third grade and was hooked.  I also started writing stories -- super hero or detective stories mostly, not Westerns -- and selling them to my classmates for a nickel or dime.  My royalties were a lot higher then."
 
After receiving a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of South Carolina in 1984, Boggs took a job in the Dallas Times Herald  sports department, working his way up to assistant sports editor when the paper folded in 1991.  In 1992, Boggs joined the Fort Worth Star-Telegram sports department and was again an assistant sports editor when he left in 1998 to concentrate on his novels and free-lance writing.