A kid who spent many days exploring abandoned hotels and stores in then ghost town, Jerome, Arizona, Steve Zell always loved to tell stories, draw scary pictures, and sing. Later, he became an animator and digital animation tools instructor for the LA area animation and FX studios and, as a singer, became the "Voice of Doom" for Baywatch. Steve was the first interdisciplinary studies graduate from the University of Arizona in Tucson, where he studied studio art, vocal production, drama, journalism, and chemistry. He was an early member of the Tucson Invisible Theatre Company, and the cartoonist for The Tombstone Epitaph, a town he later combined with Jerome, Arizona, and with Bodi, California, to create the setting, Pinon Rim, for his first novel, WiZrD. His family's frequent summer trips to his grandmother's home in Del Mar, California in the 60s, provided the setting for Running Cold.

A UA "Wildcat for life" and former desert rat, he now lives with his wife and daughter in the slightly more liquid climate of Portland, Oregon, where he began the partnership between Intel and Dreamworks|SKG, as well as the Intel Audio Alliance whose members included Billy Bob Thornton, Graham Nash, George Massenburg, Michael Boddicker, Nathaniel Kunkel, Allen Sides, Rory Kaplan and other audio pros. He participates in community theater, spends way too much time on the computer - and...is always on the lookout for a cool ghost town...