Horace Stanley McCoy was born on April 14, 1897, in Pegram, Tennessee. His father was a traveling salesman, and as a teenager McCoy joined him for awhile before enlisting in the U.S. Army Air Corps during WWI. Returning from the war he settled in Dallas where he began a career in journalism. More interested in storytelling than reporting, McCoy quickly switched to a fictional career, publishing more than a dozen detective stories in Black Mask in the 1930s. He moved to Hollywood in 1931 to try acting, but had more success as a script writer. McCoy's first novel, They Shoot Horses Don't They, set during the Depression‐era dance marathons, was published in 1935. At the height of his writing career in 1948 he wrote the hardboiled classic Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, and later that year suffered a mild heart attack. McCoy died from a third heart attack at his home in Beverly Hills on December 15, 1955.