Stephen Smoke

Stephen Smoke is the author of 21 novels, including Black Butterfly, Pacific Coast Highway, Pacific Blues, Trick of the Light, The Prince of Palos Verdes, and Cathedral of the Senses under his own and other names. Most were published by major New York publishers including HarperCollins, Warner Books, and others. He has also written ten non-fiction books.

Stephen has written and directed feature films, including “Street Crimes” (starring Dennis Farina) and “Final Impact,” and has written screenplays for others, including “Magic Kid.” All of Stephen’s HarperCollins novels–and most of the rest of his novels–have been optioned for film. Trick of the Light was published by Beyond Words (publisher of The Secret), and optioned by Hemdale Film Corporation (winner of two Academy Awards for Best Picture: “Platoon” and “The Last Emperor of China”).

In 2011 he published Cathedral of the Senses, which was the first novel with its own original embedded soundtrack (as an iBook for the iPad). It was also available in softcover and eBook (Kindle and Nook) formats. The songs on the album (“Cathedral of the Senses”) were written by Stephen and recorded mainly by musicians and singers living in Sedona. All the songs are available for download via iTunes, Amazon, and other popular music download sites.

In July of 2012 Stephen re-released Trick of the Light, which is the prequel to Cathedral of the Senses. Several years earlier he recorded an album (in support of the Trick of the Light novel) on which several well-known musicians, including Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member, Garth Hudson (the keyboard player for The Band), played on various tracks. The new edition of Trick of the Light was released in softcover and eBook formats, plus an enhanced iBook format for the iPad. The enhanced edition contains portions of the songs embedded at appropriate points in the novel. The songs are available at all popular music download sites.

The re-release of Trick of the Light coincided with the publication of the I, Walt Whitman novel (in softcover and eBook formats, along with an enhanced iBook version for the iPad). The enhanced edition contains parts of songs written by Stephen, embedded at appropriate places in the iBook.

Stephen founded and published Mystery Magazine, and published the first online mystery magazine (Hamilton Caine’s Mystery Digest).

He is also a published songwriter. He is a member of ASCAP and still performs regularly with his band.

Stephen continues to write. He is currently finishing up a new book, Parallel. The novel will be released in the fall of 2022. It is about a mid-fortyish lawyer who awakens in a parallel reality where, instead of being a lawyer, he is a faded rock star. Parallel explores the idea of how our choices determine the lives we experience. The novel is entertaining, provocative, and inspirational without being preachy. All the songs described in the book will be available on all popular streaming and download sites, including iTunes, Amazon Digital, Spotify, et al. when the book is published. For a limited time all the songs can be heard FREE in their entirety: Click Here.

Stephen is also the founder of Old Guys Still Rockin, a website that caters to 50+ very active men and women who grew up with rock and roll and still listen to and, in many cases, still play rock and roll music.

He is the author of the Bill of Responsibilities series and the Teen Bill of Responsibilities Course, which was taught in several Southern California schools.