Barry Vass was born and raised in Ontario, California. He attended college in Pomona, California, and Honolulu, Hawaii, where he studied Business Economics and learned to sail. He eventually moved to New Orleans, Louisiana, where he worked as a bartender in a well-known jazz club on Bourbon Street for several years, then relocated to Las Vegas, where he worked "behind the tables" in several major hotel-casinos. He essentially got the writing bug when his first novel, Bombing Runs, which detailed the life of a rogue policewoman patrolling the Las Vegas Strip in the middle of the night, was named a semifinalist in the 2005 William Faulkner Creative Writing Competition. He currently lives in Lancaster, Ohio. The Mardi Gras Two-Step, scheduled for release in May 2014, is his fifth novel.

Semifinalist, Bombing Runs, 2005 William Faulkner Creative Writing Competition. Both Another Day In Paradise, his third novel, and Portals, his fourth, have been endorsed by Compulsion Reads.