Born in Vienna, Austria, Anton Von Stefan’s family immigrated to Canada when he was just fourteen months old. Growing up in Vancouver, British Columbia (B.C.) along both Commercial Drive, in the East End, and later along Dunbar, in Vancouver’s West Side. His family eventually moved out to Richmond, B.C., when it was still a rural farming community.
In 1975, he bought land with an almost new house in Delta, just south of Richmond and the mighty Fraser River. He still resides in Delta, B.C.
A graduate of Vancouver College, the author spent forty-two years working at the Pacific Grain Terminal at La Point Pier in Vancouver before becoming a full-time writer.
It was through the steady work offered on Vancouver’s ever-expanding waterfront that he was afforded the luxury of writing in his spare time. Having met Steven Brown, the editor of the Herald and Times, in the early 1970s, he briefly wrote and took photographs for this newspaper. Later, he had a bi-monthly article in the City Drive News, an East End newspaper, for which he wrote until it ceased publication in late 2002.
Writing his first ghostly, short story, The Passing of Mr Needles, in 1982, he soon began running murder mystery weekends through his association with Vancouver’s Pacific Ski Club. These were held at the Spring Water Lodge (est. 1891) on Mayne Island, British Columbia and took place annually in late November. At precisely midnight on the eve the thirty-two guests arrived, the author would read one of his newly competed ghost stories where the hotel’s open, stone fireplace crackled in the background. In later years, Bruce Hood, one of the author’s good ski club friends, read these tales to the spell-bound audience. On the Saturday afternoon and evening, the author hosted all but one of the Murder Mystery Parties through its ten year run. In the last year, Trevor Vallely, another close friend and partner in his Whistler cabin, asked to be host; Anton Von Stefan was merely a participant that final year.
The author has held many public readings since then. On his cross country tour to St John’s, Newfoundland and back, a most memorable reading was held at the Little Bras d’Or campground on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia.
Retiring early in 2012, Anton Von Stefan began working on polishing many of his thirty-seven completed ghostly tales as he drove across Canada that summer. This work spanned the next four years of his life. On the 20th of August, 2016 the work was complete, and he opened the Yellow Pages (a business phone book now on line and no longer published) to look for a publishing firm. Amazingly, the first publisher he contacted, Jo Blackmore of Granville Island Publishing, accepted his completed manuscript and he signed a few weeks later. The Curse of The Red Crystal contains only eleven of more than thirty-seven completed short stories. Another, The Curse of Count Louie Vincenti is in the works.
In December of 2018, his brother, Olaf, and Sister-in-law, Helga took him to see A Christmas Carol on stage in Vienna, Austria. At the end of that play, Anton Von Stefan met the screen writer, Tom Middler. During their conversation, Tom let our author know that he had already re-written the Dickens’s work over fifty times and was looking for a new play to put on stage at Christmas. At this point, our author told Tom Middler that he had actually completed a enchanting Christmas story set in the Great Depression, one he completed in 2009 but had lost the entire manuscript.
One year later, on almost the same day in August, he woke up at 3 o’clock in the morning and wrote the entire story, by hand, once more. When he told Tom that after he finished the second manuscript, he found the first copy and other than a few words, the two manuscripts were almost identical. Tom Middler was impressed with the story and convinced our author to set aside the book of ghost stories and have the Christmas tale published as his second book. That he did.
On January 21st of 2020, a publisher’s copy of A Very Strange Christmas! was printed and in Anton’s hands. It is standard procedure that before an author signs off to have 500 to 1,000 or more copies printed, they are asked to read it from cover to cover. Anton Von Stefan found a number of errors, and the book had to be corrected before another such copy was printed. Unfortunately, in March of 2020 the world was shut down due to the pandemic, and the book was never released. Finally, at the Christmas Market in 2022 which was held at the Jack Poole Plaza next to Canada Place in downtown Vancouver, B.C. his second book was sold. It was only available at a good friend’s booth, The Licorice Parlour, until that market closed on Christmas Eve. A Very Strange Christmas! has never had an official North American release.
The following year, on the 5th of December to be exact, Anton Von Stefan officially released A Very Strange Christmas! in Europe. This event took place at Shakespeare and Company in Vienna’s 1st District where he also read from parts of that book. The book sold out well before Christmas.
In 2023 and also in 2024, these books were sold in both Vienna, Austria and Baden, a quaint spa town 38km west, southwest of Vienna.
Anton Von Stefan is currently working on completing his third book, The Curse of Count Louie Vincenti, and on the 2nd of January, 2026, he began writing the screen play for A Very Strange Christmas!. It will most likely carry the original tile, the word ‘Indeed’ with a coma before it inserted between ‘Christmas’ and the exclamation mark.
Much more is in store: audio books, e-books, live plays–the cover story to the third book is a Vampyre tale set just a few years after the Jesuit Order was brought to the forefront by Pope Paul III in 1540. Will this become a motion picture?