New Series
No Repeats is the first in a New Zealand series of crime thrillers with bold content. It features Rebecca Cashmore, a TV celebrity and lawyer with secret kinky habits. Rebecca’s life implodes when a spurned playmate refuses to obey the rule that protects her privacy.
"Stephen Johnson has brought to life a unique protagonist in the sharp, elegant, supremely confident Rebecca Cashmore – lawyer, journalist and consensual practitioner of sexual kinks – in this lively, intriguing thriller that demonstrates how a choice to willingly surrender your power doesn't make you weak - or even necessarily powerless." ~ Narrelle M. Harris (author of The Opposite of Life, Kitty and Cadaver, & The She-Wolf of Baker Street)
Book 2 in 2025: Don’t Kiss the Gecko
2020 Ngaio Marsh Finalist - Best First Novel
About Stephen:
Stephen Johnson is an Australian-born television producer who swapped the studio for a writer’s garret overlooking the Tamaki River in Auckland. His debut novel Tugga’s Mob was inspired by three seasons working on double-decker bus tours around Europe in the ‘80s. What happens on tour doesn’t always stay on tour!
The journalism career started with a cadetship at the Geelong News in 1978. It progressed to the ABC as a reporter, producer, director before the first midlife crisis – a need to travel the world. He joined Top Deck Travel, guiding and – occasionally – driving tourists from London to Istanbul and back to the White Cliffs of Dover. Little did he know how fruitful those adventures would be during the next mid-life crisis!
Stephen returned to the media at Channel 7 in Melbourne while raising a family of three daughters. The nomadic spirit remained strong: he was lured across the Tasman to work for TVNZ, TV 3, Touchdown Productions, Sky Sport, the New Zealand Racing Board. His inductee videos for the New Zealand Racing Hall of Fame featured at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.
Rashly, Stephen convinced his wife Catherine to sell their empty nest in 2016 to buy Kwozzimoto – a seven-meter motorhome in London. Tugga’s Mob was her annoying companion for 33,000 kilometers through a dozen countries and almost 150 campsites.
The freedom of fiction was a revelation after 40 years in journalism. The power to deal with evil and injustice – in a literary sense – was intoxicating. The manuscript ideas flowed. A new nest was purchased. The body count on Stephen’s battered laptop in the attic is climbing.
Stephen’s Books
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Contact Stephen
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