It was the years of writing for music trade magazines that eventually led to Steve Parton becoming a published author. Things started with an idea for a short novel for, and starring, his two children. Spurned on by the success of the book in the eyes of a good handful the neighbourhood youngsters, Steve decided to start writing for people with attention spans greater than what’s required for an episode of Sponge Bob. He branched out to writing for film, composing three feature-length screenplays, and five short films (most of which were featured over the years at the Hamilton Film Festival).

In 2013, Steve was diagnosed with kidney cancer, the result of which he was bed-bound for many weeks. Ever the optimist, Steve saw his now-sedentary life as an opportunity to craft his first full-length novel, “Secret of the Ossuary”. His second book essentially wrote itself, as he had been journaling about his misadventures with cancer. He had had no plans to write a book about the disease (as most of the ones he’d read were not at all fun), but crazy adventures kept finding him. The result was his first autobiographical tome, “Cancer Trip: Curing Cancer with Humour. And Pot. And Chemo”.

To date, Steve has published five books.

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STEVE’S START AS A WRITER:

Since the early 90's, Steve Parton has been writing magazine articles, technical documents, business manuals, software manuals, teaching syllabi and music instruction books - all of which duly entertained the reader, providing the said reader was looking to play guitar, operate a sound system, or perhaps run a music school.

None of these topics, as it turns out, came even close to garnering the attention of Steve's children - hence Steve's foray into fiction writing.

One evening in 2009, Storytime in The Parton Household took a bit of a different turn when Steve's son and daughter (aged 4 and 5 respectively) wanted a chapter book read to them at bedtime. This was soon to replace standard beloved fare as was Dr. Suess and The Bearenstein Bears. By the end of Chapter 3 of the afore-mentioned chapter book, Steve and his kids all agreed that the novel was pure drivel. The actual phrase used was, "kinda thtupid."

After the kids fell asleep, Steve sat down and started composing what was to be his first book in a series written for his children. This time, there would be no torturous words like "Syllabi", no technical schematics, and no quiz at the end.

Four weeks, three re-writes, eight thousand words and fourteen chapters later, Steve emerged with his first completed novel: "Lost and Found on Mars", now required reading by all of Steve's kids' classmates, and at least a few children from the neighbouring schools who were read the story by their parents, or who are old enough to devour a chapter book alone.

Steve has also written three feature-length screenplays, and has written and directed five short films, most of which were featured over the years at the Hamilton Film Festival.