Stephen Richards (author)

Stephen Richards is an author writing in the self-help genre. The first book he wrote in 1998 was in the true crime genre for Mirage Publishing. He has co-written a number of books with others, but now concentrates on writing in the mind, body, spirt subjects of Cosmic Ordering and mind power.

The best known works of Stephen Richards are probably The Cosmic Ordering Guide. and the co-authored book of Solitary Fitness. He has also worked on TV and radio, having produced and directed the video documentary Sincerely Yours about UK prisoner Charles Bronson.

In 2000 the then Home Secretary Jack Straw was granted an injunction banning the release of the three-hour documentary Sincerely Yours. Having refused to withdraw the video saw Richards given a prison sentence (suspended) and he had to incur court costs of £64,000. The video was later released in an edited version by Mirage Publishing, but was later totally withdrawn for what Richards claimed were personal reasons.

Writing true crime books as an investigative journalist for Blake Publishing from early 2000 to 2006 saw him change from writing about the perpetrator to the victim of crime. His crime writing came to an end when he moved away from this genre, citing the way crime was being glamorised and how the victim was neglected.

From 2006 he restarted Mirage Publishing and turned his back on true crime writing, vowing never again to write in this genre, totally concentrating on writing mind, body and spirit books and publishing new authors.

His professional background is in clinical hypnotherapy and stress counselling. He was previously a member of the British Association of Counsellors and was affiliated to their Family Sexual Division, Disaster Team and Stress Counselling for Students Division.

He currently applies his time to self-help publications, running his property development empire, and helping others.

In a bid to clean up the way Cosmic Ordering was heading he now heads the Association of Cosmic Ordering Practitioners as its president. He is also a member of the National Union of Journalists.

Richards' works have received much criticism. The crime books often contain what appears to be long incoherent rants, often lasting for one or two paragraphs. Indeed, with reference to Richards' proclivity for veering off into unconnected tangents every other sentence, the reading of one early crime book was likened to listening to a 'drunk vagrant'. His prose, punctuation and continuity are regularly of primary school standard, betraying Richards' minimal education. And factually, the crime books were questionable to say the least. Much was written about a Tyneside villain's assault on a fellow doorman. But it wasn't until Richards' third book on the subject, that he seemed to discover who was actually at the scene. Richards' publications have regularly been considered to be some of the worst books ever written. Richards announced that he was in the casting stage for a film based on one of the characters from his crime books, but not for the first time, this turned out to be mostly fantasy.

Richards has claimed within his writing to be from Manchester, where he claimed to have a property empire, but it is common knowledge that he is from the North East of England. Although this could be due to cosmic ordering, (his new pet subject, following accusations that he'd simply 'lived off the back' of deceased 'North East' hardmen for a decade.)

Amongst his hobbies is editing Wikipedia, being chiefly responsible for his own spurious inclusion on the website.