Edenderry author signs five-year book deal

Edenderry-based author, Steve Downes has just signed a five-year book deal with BLKDOG Publishing for a new series of murder-mysteries. The first in the new three book series, 'Fyre and Stone – The Spectre Games' was released earlier this month and is the seventh novel from this prolific writer of crime novels, poetry and children’s books.

In the darkness of a Victorian Dublin night, a killer stalks innocent women for sport. Two men from the same city but vastly different worlds are thrown together into a reluctant and volatile partnership to solve this series of brutal murders across the city.

Sebastian Fyre is a wealthy young Lord with an unshakable belief that he can communicate with the dead. John Stone is a tough inner-city cop who grew up in the Victorian slum tenements of the city he now patrols.

Fyre and Stone attempt to hunt down a conspiracy of killers, while trying to avoid becoming prey themselves. The dead are proving to be as dangerous as the living.

The Spectre Games is the first in the series of three novels featuring Fyre and Stone.

Steve Downes, based in Edenderry, is a poet and author. He was educated in N.U.I. Maynooth, where he received a Degree in Classical History and a Masters in Cultural Anthropology.

A published poet since 1996, Steve's poetry collections to-date are The Pagan Field, Cityscapes, Urbania, A Human Veneer, A Landscape For Yourself and Dawn at Midnight (mid-term anthology).

His first novel was published in 2013 and his novels to-date are Cosmogonic Marbles, Temporal Tome, Gadzooks Armageddon (the Botolf Chronicles), Warworld, Murder on the Alpha Centauri Express, The Italian Lady and Fyre & Stone (BLKDOG Publishing).

Steve has also published four children’s Books: The Upstairs Cat Three Book Series and Gross Gary and the Slug and Slime Pie.

The author who continues to write in many genres is also passionate about Irish historical architecture. He has exhibited from his collections of historical photographs with the Lost Graveyards Exhibition in 2017 and A Landscape for Yourself exhibited in 2018.

During lockdown Steve taught himself how to paint abstracts, having never painted before. He has reissued his Upstairs Cat children's books and his novella, The Italian Lady, with his own new cover designs.