K. Stephens is a Maine freelance writer, an award-winning journalist, and a screenwriter whose debut lobstering novel, The Ghost Trap (Leapfrog Press, 2009) was optioned in 2018. Stephens was then hired to adapt the novel into a screenplay and served as an executive producer on the project. With her friends, Spruce Head lobstermen, assisting as location scouts and captaining boats for shots, The Ghost Trap made its world premiere at The RiverRun International Film Festival in North Carolina in 2024 after which, Freestyle Digital Media acquired the North American rights. A refresh of the cover will be issued in July, 2024.
Awards The Ghost Trap was a Finalist in the Literary Fiction category of the National Best Books 2009 Awards, sponsored by USA Book News.
Book Trailer
From Publishers Weekly
In her impressive debut novel, Stephens offers a rugged and tender tale. Jamie Eugley, a ninth-generation lobsterman in the port village of Owls Head has cared for his brain-injured girlfriend, Anja, for three long years. Jamie suffers deep guilt over her near drowning accident while aboard his lobster boat and her subsequent debilitating coma. Anja's medical improvement has been frustratingly slow, but Jamie continues to nurse his naïve, stubborn fantasy of marrying the recovered Anja. Meanwhile, he deals with a dangerous and violent trap war among the lobstermen and a romance with Happy Klein, a first mate on a tourist schooner up for the summer season who wants Jamie to come back with her to Key West. The bawdy humor, snappy dialogue, colorful local sea myths and rich lobstering details add to the immense appeal of this textured narrative about a superstitious but independent lobsterman's inward and outward struggles.