About
Stephen John Ross is a business professional, songwriter, and musician. Married with three children and four grandchildren, Stephen enjoys spending time outdoors with his wife Debbie and chihuahua CeCe. The Sundial Inn is his first novel, with plans for a sequel.
Why the book?
The Sundial Inn is an adult horror fantasy story comprised of 64,600 words. After seeing an abandoned hotel, condemned, and scheduled for demolition, I dreamed of a story that would draw unsuspecting guests to the building. The innocence of the guests would blind them from the truth and place them directly in the hands of evil. Yet, the story cuts much deeper than that and takes the reader back to the early 1900s to when it all began and to a plane or spiritual realm where only certain people with special abilities can journey, to seek out answers and see the absolute truth.
This story cuts to the core of the human condition to expose our desires and weaknesses as humans. From a purely optic view, a Sundial Inn could be in operation today and nobody would be the wiser which makes the story believable and compelling.
Why the music?
Music has always been a place to escape and remains one of the purest forms of expressing one’s emotions. They say that art is the practice of building something from our natural surroundings that did not previously exist. The same holds true to music, which is just another artform. I enjoy all forms of music and believe that all great songs have certain standards that have unfortunately been lost as technology has changed and the industry evolved. My songs are an attempt to rekindle these standards. For me, words and music when properly built together, will always trump over a video geared for one purpose.