About

An accomplished novelist, screenwriter, musician, and businessman, Stephen Smoke successfully navigates the worlds of art and business. He is the author of 19 novels, including Black Butterfly, Pacific Coast Highway, Pacific Blues, and The Prince of Palos Verdes 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.

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.”

In 2008 Stephen published a mystery entitled The Prince of Palos Verdes.

Since finishing that book Stephen has been working on the novel/project Cathedral of the Senses, the follow-up to his successful inspirational/metaphysical novel, Trick of the Light (Beyond Words, 1989). Over the past year and a half he wrote the novel and most of the songs. The novel and a companion music album containing songs written by Stephen and recorded by other artists will be released in the spring of 2010. This website offers excerpts from the book and downloads of the music.