ABOUT

An accomplished novelist, screenwriter, musician, and businessman, Stephen Smoke successfully navigates the worlds of art and business. He is the author of 17 novels, including Black Butterfly, Pacific Coast Highway, and Pacific Blues, under his own and other names. He has also written eight non-fiction books. Mr. Smoke has written and directed feature films, including Street Crimes (starring Dennis Farina) and Final Impact, and has written screenplays for others, including Magic Kid.

He founded and published Mystery Magazine, and published the first online mystery magazine (Hamilton Caine's Mystery Digest, on CompuServe) in 1984.

Mr. Smoke is also a published songwriter and in 1989 recorded an album (in support of his novel, Trick of the Light) on which several well-known musicians, including Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member, Garth Hudson (the keyboard player in Bob Dylan’s backup band, The Band), played on various tracks. He is also a member of ASCAP and regularly collects royalties for music he has written for feature films. He occasionally plays at local coffeehouses and other small venues in the South Bay. His CD Mixed Blessing includes the two songs Garth Hudson played on for the Trick of the Light album as well as several other songs he wrote.

In 1997, his company, Onlineseminars, produced one of the first continuing education for-credit online courses. Later, with a partner, he published the first Standards for Online Learning.

In the mid 90s Mr. Smoke started working on his Bill of Responsibilities series and in 2002 finished work on the Teen Bill of Responsibilities Course, which is now taught in several Southern California schools. The author is actively involved with various corporate entities, teachers groups and community organizations in order to bring the FREE program to schools around the country. His book, the Corporate Bill of Responsibilities, also has a companion Workshop.

In January 2007 Mr. Smoke published Writing the Novel, a workbook based on a previous workbook, Stephen Smoke’s Mystery Writing Course. He reworked that course into a classroom course and taught three 8-week sessions at the Palos Verdes Art Center during 2006. “The immediate feedback I received every week helped me to refine the course exercises to the degree that I know the course works…if students actually do the exercises.”

Mr. Smoke is currently finishing his new novel, Cathedral of the Senses, the follow-up to his very successful Trick of the Light novel (Beyond Words, 1989).