Steven R. Boyett was born in Atlanta, Georgia, grew up all over Florida, and attended the University of Tampa on a writing scholarship before quitting to write his first novel, Ariel, when he was nineteen. Soon after Ariel was published he moved from Florida to Los Angeles, California, where he continued to write fiction and screenplays as well as teach college writing courses, seminars, and workshops. He has published stories in literary, science fiction, fantasy, and horror anthologies and magazines, as well as publishing articles and comic books. In the early nineties his imprint Sneaker Press published chapbooks by the poets Carrie Etter and the late Nancy Lambert. Steve has also been a martial arts instructor, professional paper marbler, advertising copywriter, proofreader, typesetter, writing teacher, and website designer and editor. In 2000, Steve took some time off from writing. He learned to play the didgeridoo and began composing and DJing electronic music. As a DJ he has played clubs, conventions, parties, Burning Man, and sporting events. He produces three of the world's most popular music podcasts: Podrunner, Podrunner: Intervals, and Groovelectric.

“Niko’s race through Hell is one of the greatest supernatural adventure stories of recent memory. . . . A damned good story” (Cory Doctorow). Decades ago, a young rock and blues guitarist and junkie named Niko signed in blood on the dotted line and in return became the stuff of music legend. But when the love of his damned life grows mortally and mysteriously ill, he realizes he has lost more than he bargained for—and that was not part of the deal. So Niko sets out on a harrowing journey from the streets of Los Angeles through the downtown subway tunnels and across the red-lit plain of the most vividly realized hell since Dante to play the gig of his mortgaged life and win back the purloined soul of his lost love.Mortality Bridge remixes Orpheus, Dante, Faust, the Crossroads legend, and more in a beautiful, brutal, and surprisingly funny quest across a Hieronymus Bosch landscape of myth, music, and mayhem, and across an inner terrain of addiction, damnation, and redemption.