Neighbors: Ward Larsen

As a commercial airline pilot, Sarasota native Ward Larsen found himself with a considerable amount of down time. An avid reader of the spy-thriller genre, he found himself dissatisfied with some of the books he was reading and decided to try his hand at writing.

“I thought, ‘Hey, I could probably do this,’” says Larsen. “I wasn’t trying to do it professionally, I just wrote in my free time. It was a huge learning process. My first book took me about eight years.”

Larsen self-published the book and sold it locally, where it was promoted by Circle Books on St. Armands Circle. The book quickly earned a solid reputation among local readers, and it eventually caught the attention of Oceanview Publishing on Longboat Key.

“I was lucky,” he says. “It’s really hard to get published. There are a lot of good writers out there who will never have the opportunity to be heard.”

As a former U.S. Air Force fighter pilot who is trained in aircraft accident investigation (he has also worked as a federal law-enforcement officer), Larsen says he incorporates a lot of his military and flying experience into his writing, which is largely focused on aviation and Jason Bourne-style spy stories.

“I think my military experience gives me a better understanding of the topics I write about,” said Larsen. “My most recent book is about a CIA drone that’s lost in North Africa, which is really similar to what actually ended up happening when the CIA lost a drone in Iran, so I thought I was pretty on top of that one.”

Today, Larsen has honed his craft and is an award-winning author of four books. His most recent work, “Fly By Night,” was recently honored with the Florida Book Awards Gold Medal for Popular Fiction, and his first book, “The Perfect Assassin,” is currently being adapted into a screenplay for a motion picture through Amber Entertainment.

Larsen splits his time between commercial flying and writing, and he says that although his irregular schedule can be challenging, he makes time to write whenever he can, and that his success has taken him by surprise.

A few weeks ago, “The Perfect Assassin” was chosen as Amazon’s book of the day, and it quickly shot up to the fourth most-purchased book on Kindle.

“E-books have really leveled the playing field for authors,” says Larsen. “Now, big publishers aren’t the only ones who can get books out there.”