Bio
Stephen Romano may be the hardest working man in multi-media showbiz you’ve never actually heard of.
He is a best-selling author, screenwriter, fillmmaker, illustrator and independent publisher, whose unique jack-of-all-trades approach to the genres of thrillers, crime fiction, horror, sci-fi and exploitation film has produced innovative, award-winning work. His short stories, novels, comic books and film projects are characterized by a singular unflinching intensity, dealing with highly personal and often controversial subject matter, and have garnered international success and critical acclaim from some of the most respected authors and media sources in the world.
Stephen is the screenwriter of INCIDENT ON AND OFF A MOUNTAIN ROAD for Showtime’s Emmy Award-winning MASTERS OF HORROR television series and has written more than fourteen feature films, many of them released internationally by Lifetime Networks, including the top-rated NEXT DOOR NIGHTMARE, WEB CAM GIRLS, DEADLY INFLUENCER, SHE IS NOT YOUR DAUGHTER and ESCAPING MY STALKER, which is his favorite of these. It was directed by the man who played Johnny Cage in the first Mortal Kombat movie. "That one has the most me in it," Romano says. "I was on set every day and I learned a lot from Linden. The irony is that I had to train to do all this twice. Once in the eighties and then again later when filmmaking evolved digitally." Speaking of the eighties, one of Stephen's first teachers was legendary Texas filmmaker Al Reinert, who invited young Romano into the editing room on his Oscar-nominated documentary FOR ALL MANKIND. Stephen was just fourteen years old.
His father, Rock Romano, is an acclaimed musician and fine artist. His uncle Joe wrote songs for the Muppets.
Stephen is the author of RESURRECTION EXPRESS, a spectacularly-praised high octane thriller novel from Gallery Books and Pocket Books at Simon and Schuster. He is the co-author of BLACK LIGHT, a supernatural fast-action/suspense novel from Mulholland Books at Little Brown and Company, on which he collaborated with top Hollywood screenwriters Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan of the billion dollar SAW franchise. His professionally-commisioned e-book for the Amazon Kindle Worlds series, WAYWARD PINES: BEFORE THE FALL, was a popular success, enjoying many months on the best-seller list. Other novels include the award-winning illustrated work SHOCK FESTIVAL, which features an elaborate alternative 'mockumentary' history of tacky exploitation movies from the 1970s and 1980s, brought to life with over six hundred "rare memorabilia items" expressly created by Romano and company. The book is one-of-a-kind and highly acclaimed, with one reviewer calling it "a genuine revelation, an event that's rarely if ever been done before: the merging of fact and fiction into something too outrageous to be the truth and too disarmingly ghastly/gorgeous to be anything but."
He is the author and editor of many comic books and graphic novels, including ZOMBIE, THE BEYOND, HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY and GATES OF HELL, which are based on the infamous horror films of Lucio Fulci. BOTTOMFEEDER, based on his own unflinching screenplay, was hailed by Dread Central as "an experience that will make your skin crawl." (They meant that in a good way.) Stephen's post-apocalyptic graphic novel WASTELAND 1989, is a hugely ambitious sci-fi mind-bender. His extreme horror series MANIAC and MANIAC 2: ROADKILL, based on the 1980 slasher film, is some of the most intense and confrontational fright-in-four-colors you will ever read.
Stephen is the author of over one hundred short stories, all of which are presented in collections such as THE RIOT ACT (2006). His work in this medium is also spectacularly-acclaimed. Best-selling author John Skipp called it "some of the most urgent, blistering, breathlessly paced, microscopically observed, mordantly hilarious, heartbreakingly hopeless, and utterly devastating bloodbath fiction ever burned into print." Champion mojo storyteller Joe R. Lansdale would like you to know that "Stephen Romano isn't fucking around." Check out some of Stephen's other reviews RIGHT HERE.
Stephen has written official sequels to the legendary PHANTASM horror film series and the cult classic BUBBA HO-TEP. The latter of those, BUBBA NOSFERATU: CURSE OF THE SHE VAMPIRES, ended up in "development hell," yet bizarrely remains on his IMDb Pro page almost twenty years since it was not made. Seriously. Go look.
Stephen recently completed his first full-length feature film as director, the indie crime-drama/horror thriller WHAT DID YOU DO? The film is now eying a healthy festival run, starting in early 2027. It is a dark, hard-hitting and highly original work of cinema. For more information on WHAT DID YOU DO? check out our news blog section and also the film's official website.
His entire professional career has been based in Austin, Texas, where he currently lives with his wife Julie and their two cats, Korben and Alice. They're both boys.