“A masterly communicator” —Kirkus Reviews | ||||
Welcome to my Fiction & Nonfiction — Steven Key Meyers Available through your favorite bookseller |
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Save the Max Man! A Novella Inspired By a True Story Although 13-year-old Max’s spinal surgery leaves him paralyzed and on a ventilator, his prognosis for full recovery is good—so long as he gets to rehabilitation promptly. But his insurance company’s demand for a $6,000 copay grounds the mediflight. Whose greed is in play, anyway? Smash-and-Grab Press 2020, paper $9, 96 pp., ISBN 978-1-7330465-2-7; ebook $2.99 978-1-7330465-5-8. Cover by Todd Engel
A Family Romance A Novel
Tasty takes on American life over 40 years, as seen through the remarkable careers of journalist Nat Handler and his wife Viv Handler. Smash-and-Grab Press 2020, paper $15.95, 316 pp., ISBN 978-1-7330465-1-0; ebook 978-1-7368333-6-0. Cover by Todd Engel
A Journal of the Plague Year,
Here I collect plays I wrote before turning novelist, including the title piece (as a pandemic offering, read the .pdf here,), an antic one-man adaptation Chesterfield to His Son and Dr. Knox and Mr. Banner, which examines same-sex desire in 1851 London. Smash-and-Grab Press 2019, paper $14.99, 392 pp., ISBN 978-1-7330465-0-3. Cover by Todd Engel Queer’s Progress A Novel
My first novel (written in 1995-96), about a first, disastrous love affair. Smash-and-Grab Press revised edition 2021, paper, 204 pp., ISBN 978-1-7330465-3-4; ebook 978-1-7330465-7-2. Cover by Todd Engel “The kind of novel Chandler or Hammett might write today” —M. Lee Alexander (Detective Fiction)
All That Money A Novel Inspired by Real Events Inspired by the 1934 kidnapping of heiress Alice Speed Stoll, All That Money
is a fast-moving, rollicking ride with
Lucie and Harry—and
Special Agent Joe Albright sniffing out the trail! Smash-and-Grab Press revised edition 2021, paper, 168 pp., ISBN 978-1-7368333-0-8; ebook 978-1-7368333-1-5. Cover by Todd Engel “A crackling good read!” —Toronto Post City Magazines Good People A Novel A fast, funny, heartfelt story about the 1980s comedy-club boom—by One Who Was There. Smash-and-Grab Press revised edition 2021, paper, 222 pp., ISBN 978-1-7330465-8-9; ebook 978-1-7330465-9-6. Cover by Todd Engel “The first published examination of the works of Harvey Joiner!” —Indiana Magazine of History The Man in the Balloon: My lively biographical study, impeccably researched and copiously
illustrated, is the first about Harvey Joiner, once a
famous American painter. It brings Joiner to life as a 25-year-old prankster in
the rip-roaring river town of Jeffersonville, Indiana. The witty wood-engraved advertising
images he’s produced since he was a teenager ceasing to
sell, he begins to paint the pictures he’ll become known for—landscapes
filtering through
personal responses and meanings the light falling from the forest canopy—while promoting himself nonstop. But Joiner will stave off adulthood a little longer with a series of
pranks, launching hot-air balloons of increasing size, until his
masterwork—seen to be carrying a man in its basket—soars across the Ohio
River and over the rooftops of Louisville, Kentucky. Before his wondrous year is out, Joiner wins
the commission of a lifetime and paints his enormous
masterpiece, Ruth Gleaning in the Fields of Boaz, for the Christian Church in Utica, Indiana. Analyzing the Bible story of how
Ruth achieves security, he places the young widow in harvest fields at
day’s end, a moment of respite he makes personal by
recalling his own widowed mother’s dilemma and depicting the fields
of his boyhood. Excerpt (.pdf, 4.35 MB) Author’s Note Biblio Publishing 2013, paper, 125 pp. ISBN 978-1-62249-101-8. Photograph from Notable Men of Kentucky at the Beginning of the 20th Century (1901-1902), by Benjamin La Bree (Louisville: George G. Fetter, 1902, p.119) BIO Completing my pandemic project of republishing my books through The Smash-and-Grab Press left me with an orphan: The original edition of My Mad Russian: Three Tales included two short pieces left out of the revised edition; here in .pdf is one of them, an amusing story about gaming the California lottery, Big Luck.
and Other Plays and Adaptations
Harvey Joiner’s Wondrous 1877
I was born on a farm in western Colorado, earned degrees in English Lit at New York’s City College and Columbia University, currently live in the Midwest, and can sometimes be reached at stevenkeymeyers@stevenkeymeyers.com.