About

Steve Aarons

Stephen D. “Steve” Aarons is an attorney, author, and publisher whose life and career have been shaped by the borderlands of law, literature, and justice.

Attorney • Author of Echoes of Torreón • Founder, La Pluma Press
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Background

For more than four decades, Steve has practiced criminal defense in New Mexico, standing beside clients in some of the state’s most complex and high-stakes cases. From Santa Fe to Albuquerque and beyond, he has become known for his unflinching courtroom presence, his command of appellate law, and his ability to navigate the razor’s edge between despair and hope. He has represented everyone from first-time defendants to clients facing life sentences, and his filings before the New Mexico Supreme Court have left a lasting imprint on the state’s jurisprudence.

But Steve is more than a lawyer.

He is also a writer. His memoir-infused true-crime project, Echoes of Torreón, explores a notorious 1990s quadruple homicide in the small mountain village of Torreón, New Mexico. Told in a restrained, noir-inspired style influenced by Hemingway, Capote, and Carver, the book fuses personal memory with investigative detail—reconstructed transcripts, interrogation rooms, and the haunted silence of a crime that shattered families and communities. Part legal history, part elegy, part Rashomon-style narrative puzzle, the work reflects Steve’s lifelong pursuit of truth in its most elusive forms.

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For essays, research notes, and project updates, visit the blog.

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Through his imprint La Pluma Press LLC, Steve is building a home for literary nonfiction

that speaks in sharp, enduring voices. The logo—a quill in an antique ink bottle set against a
shield—reflects his commitment to the written word as both weapon and witness.

Beyond courtrooms and manuscripts, Steve is a lifelong chess player, a family man, and a

believer in the stubborn resilience of stories. He is married to Doris Valdez; together they
raised a child, Ian. He is also the proud grandfather of Athena, to whom
he has dedicated much of his recent writing—often invoking the “doe of the dawn.”

At seventy, Steve continues to balance law practice, publishing, and writing with the restless

curiosity of someone who refuses to settle for easy answers. Whether cross-examining a
witness, revising a chapter, or launching a new venture, he remains guided by the principle
that truth—however contested, however painful—deserves its day in court, and its place on
the page.

Quoted note

“Readers will find in my work not easy answers, but the stubborn pursuit of truth in places where it's often hardest to look.”

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