Rob Steiner

Biography

Rob Steiner lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with his wife, daughter, and rascal-cats Clover and Catullus.

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Where to find Rob Steiner online

Series

Journals of Natta Magus
A wizard from an alternate 21st century where magic powers the world is stranded in Augustan Rome.
Citizen Magus
Price: $2.99 USD.
Shadow Magus
Price: $4.99 USD.
Wounded Magus
Price: $4.99 USD.
Codex Antonius
In a universe where the Roman Empire survived and spawned an interstellar civilization, Marcus Antonius Cordus fights to free humanity from enslavement by a merciless alien intelligence that has watched humanity since its beginnings.

Books

Wounded Magus
Series: Journals of Natta Magus. Price: $4.99 USD. Words: 90,880. Language: English. Published: October 15, 2018 by Quarkfolio Books. Categories: Fiction » Fantasy » Historical, Fiction » Alternative history
Twenty-first century wizard, Natta Magus, has to fight his way through pirates, daemonic hordes, and his own dark temptations to not only stop the apocalypse, but save the granddaughter of Cleopatra from the Torture Goddess herself. Just another day for him in the Roman Empire.
Shadow Magus
Series: Journals of Natta Magus. Price: $4.99 USD. Words: 105,780. Language: English. Published: October 15, 2018 by Quarkfolio Books. Categories: Fiction » Fantasy » Historical, Fiction » Alternative history
Natta Magus is getting used to life in Augustan Rome, despite its lack of twenty-first century perks. But the Roman government has noticed his magical talents, and calls on him when a religious artifact is stolen. Natta discovers the thief is a magus as powerful as him, which should be impossible in this era. Unlike him, the magus wants Rome to die screaming.
Codex Antonius: Muses of Roma, Muses of Terra, Muses of the Republic
Series: Codex Antonius. Price: $8.99 USD. Words: 395,830. Language: English. Published: August 16, 2018 by Quarkfolio Books. Categories: Fiction » Alternative history, Fiction » Science fiction » Space opera
In a universe where the Roman Empire survived and spawned an interstellar civilization, Marcus Antonius Cordus fights to free humanity from enslavement by a merciless alien intelligence that has watched humanity since its beginnings. Now you can get all three volumes in the Codex Antonius series (MUSES OF ROMA, MUSES OF TERRA, and MUSES OF THE REPUBLIC) in one low-priced ebook.
Muses of the Republic
Series: Codex Antonius. Price: $4.99 USD. Words: 150,250. Language: English. Published: August 16, 2018 by Quarkfolio Books. Categories: Fiction » Alternative history, Fiction » Science fiction » Space opera
When Marcus Antonius Cordus learns the sentient alien Muse virus has infected the Zhonguo Sphere’s emperor, he leads a team of Praetorians, rogues, and Zhonguo defectors to the Muse home world to destroy the Muse strains once and for all. But the Muses have plans of their own. Can he save the Republic when the Muses force him to choose between his duty as Consul and his loyalty to his friends?
Muses of Terra
Series: Codex Antonius. Price: $4.99 USD. Words: 104,470. Language: English. Published: August 16, 2018 by Quarkfolio Books. Categories: Fiction » Alternative history, Fiction » Science fiction » Space opera
Marcus Antonius Cordus thought he’d left his past behind when he escaped Terra six years ago. But when a new Muse strain invades Roman space—one even feared by the strain infecting Cordus—he is forced to choose between the freedom he’s always wanted and stopping the apocalypse that he was born to prevent.
Citizen Magus
Series: Journals of Natta Magus. Price: $2.99 USD. Words: 97,690. Language: English. Published: October 27, 2015 by Quarkfolio Books. Categories: Fiction » Fantasy » Historical, Fiction » Historical » Classical Greece & Rome
Remington Blakes, a magus from a 21st century where magic powers the world, has a big problem. His former mentor, William Ford, stranded him in ancient Rome without a memory as to how or why. So when Ford conjures daemons to kidnap a senator’s young daughter, Remi tracks him to the Germanic frontier to not only rescue the child, but learn the terrible secret behind why he left Remi in Rome.
Muses of Roma
Series: Codex Antonius. Price: $2.99 USD. Words: 139,750. Language: English. Published: December 13, 2013 by Quarkfolio Books. Categories: Fiction » Science fiction » Space opera, Fiction » Alternative history
Star freighter captain, Kaeso Aemelius, a blacklisted security agent from Roman rival world Libertus, is asked by his former commanders to help a high-ranking Roman official defect. When Kaeso learns the defector's terrifying secret, can he protect his crew from Roman and Liberti forces, who would lay waste to entire worlds to stop them from revealing the civilization-shattering truth?
Zervakan
Price: $3.99 USD. Words: 108,980. Language: English. Published: January 30, 2013 . Categories: Fiction » Fantasy » Epic
When two bands of light appear in the sky spanning the horizons, the Recindian Compact asks disgraced history professor Taran Abraeu to accompany a secret diplomatic mission to the homeland of the legendary Mystics. But can Taran overcome the scorn of his countrymen toward his "supernaturalist" beliefs to fight a horrifying enemy that only he among all his people can comprehend?
About Those Probes...
Price: $0.99 USD. Words: 1,910. Language: English. Published: December 20, 2011 . Categories: Fiction » Science fiction » General, Fiction » Science fiction » Short stories
A short story with a humorous and somewhat insensitive take on alien abductions. Harry Hindman has been repeatedly abducted by aliens since he was sixteen. Now, with the end of the world near, he finds out just what was up with those probes...
A Goblin Seeks a Career Change
Price: $0.99 USD. Words: 5,370. Language: English. Published: December 20, 2011 . Categories: Fiction » Young adult or teen » Fantasy, Fiction » Fantasy » Short stories
What's a poor goblin to do when a life of pillaging, barn burning, and general mayhem has lost its luster? Find out in this short story about Gorko, a goblin who wants to discover the world outside his Cave and Kin.
Aspect of Pale Night
Price: $3.99 USD. Words: 65,260. Language: English. Published: November 3, 2011 . Categories: Fiction » Mystery & detective » Women Sleuths, Fiction » Mystery & detective » General
Detroit tech-blogger Toni Dzielny gets a mysterious computer disc in the mail from her ex-boyfriend with instructions to “keep it secret, keep it safe.” When she learns he was later murdered because of it, and the police consider her a suspect, she enlists the help of her brilliantly nerdy friends to clear her name and learn the contents of the disc before she becomes the next victim.
The Last Key
Price: $3.99 USD. Words: 141,850. Language: English. Published: April 9, 2010 . Categories: Fiction » Fantasy » Epic, Fiction » Christian » Fantasy
(3.83 from 12 reviews)
Raven Byrne is a novice dahkshari warrior-priest about to complete his training when he discovers that a popular war hero named Thallan Brael wants to use an ancient magic called the Reaping Key to avenge the deaths of his family. It falls to Raven and an outlawed band of heretics to stop Brael from committing genocide against an innocent nation.

Smashwords book reviews by Rob Steiner

  • In A Season Of Dead Weather on March 13, 2013

    Grab a comfy chair by the fire, a hot drink, and a book of good horror stories. Those rattling shutters outside? Just the blowing snow. Those shadows dancing in the corner? Fire light, nothing more. And the whispers behind your chair are your imagination. Maybe. That’s the feeling Mark Fuller Dillon conveys throughout his short story collection In a Season of Dead Weather. In most of the stories, it was never quite clear whether the “horror” was in the narrator’s mind or if it was real. The reader was left to interpret at the end. And that worked for me. Each Lovecraftian tale was expertly crafted, with poetic and visceral language describing characters enduring the loneliness and isolation of a long winter in the country or the city. Dillon is a Quebec native, so he’s no stranger to maddeningly endless winters (I’m a west Michigan native, so I can sympathize). Most of the stories were quite literary and a little confusing to me, a genre reader. But their narrative styles, descriptions, and situations were so unique that I found myself eager to read on just to hear the language rather than find out what happens to the characters. In the first story, “Lamia Dance,” a medical student takes a break from his studies – and braves the snow – to attend a film festival where see a film that brings back haunting memories from his childhood. The film’s images of violence and anatomy seemed quite erotic to the narrator. “Lamia Dance” was either a story about being pushed into a profession that the narrator did not choose for himself...or about a budding serial killer. In “Never Noticed, Never There,” Tom Lighden sees ghastly apparitions in terrible pain on the streets of Ottawa. He is the only one who sees them, as every one else simply walks past them without a second glance. Dillon implies that society has become good at ignoring the pain of others, as we are too busy with our own lives to notice. If you’ve ever been stuck alone in the woods during winter, you’ll understand the characters’ bleak situations in “Shadows in the Sunrise,” “The Vast Importance of the Night,” and “Who Would Remain?” Blizzards keep the narrators from civilization, they loose time, and sees clawing shadows. Is it madness, ghosts, alien abductions? The reader is left to wonder if it’s all real or if winter has claimed the characters' sanity. While the three stories had similar themes, their unique characters and situations sufficiently differentiated them. “The Weight of Its Awareness” had a middle-aged man revisiting a seemingly deserted, walled-off home that he originally tried to explore when he was eighteen. Grotesque sculptures now decorate the gardens, and a dark presence spies him from the home’s blackened windows and infects his mind. The story seemed like an extreme version of “curiosity killed the cat.” It was the weakest of the seven stories for me; although “weak” is a relative term since even this story kept me enthralled. The strongest story for me was “When the Echo Hates the Voice.” Paul Bertrand is a brilliant, handsome young man who’s always the life of any social gathering and constantly seeks any excuse to be around people. The reason is that he cannot stand to be alone, for that is when the voices and faces visit him. Told by a narrator observing Paul, the story suggests a struggle between two personalities: one that seeks companionship and social reward, and one that seeks to keep us isolated from each other. As I said at the beginning, I’m a genre reader and rarely read stories just for their styles and language. Dillon’s In a Season of Dead Weather is one of those rare works that can make even a genre reader like me want to take a second look at the literary. Highly recommended.