About Jeff Mach

About Jeff Mach

Jeff Mach – – Event Creator, Bestselling Scifi / Fantasy Author, Dark Lord, and Satirist

Hi, I’m Jeff Mach, a New Jersey-based writer, event promoter, and lifelong builder of wonderfully weird worlds. For over 30 years, I’ve created immersive experiences and satirical stories centered on dark fantasy, Steampunk, villains, Dark Lords, monsters, dwarves, and eccentric alternative culture.

But there’s rather a lot more. I founded and ran major East Coast events like The Steampunk World’s Fair (once the world’s largest steampunk gathering, peaking at thousands of attendees), the event that’s now called Dark Force Festival (largest Goth festival in North America), the Wicked Winter Renaissance Faire, Evil Expo (the original villainpunk convention), International Steampunk City, Midsummer Magick Faire, The Watch City Festival, and more. These events blended costumes, music, panels, performances, and a healthy dose of absurdity—drawing media coverage from CBS News Sunday Morning, Wired, and beyond. Today, I produce the Catskills Halloween Festival (one of the largest free Halloween events in the U.S.), the Odditorium Carnival, and ongoing villain-themed gatherings that celebrate creativity, harmless trouble, and questioning the hero-villain divide.

Jeff Mach as Author: Microfiction Novels, Plays, Musicals, Songs, mostly satirical fantasy and science fiction.

As an author, my writing lovingly(ish) attacks fantasy tropes with dark humor and sharp satire. My debut novel, There and NEVER, EVER BACK AGAIN: A Dark Lord’s Diary (2018), became an Amazon bestseller—a sarcastic memoir/manifesto narrated by a self-aware Dark Lord mentoring a hapless hero through dubious quests and questionable prophecies. Other titles include I HATE Your Prophecy, Villains, Villainy & Villainpunk, and A Big Bad Wolf’s VILLAINLY Alphabet (a cheeky primer for cynics young and old).

Influences?

Neil Gaiman, Ursula K. Le Guin, Terry Pratchett, and Douglas Adams—writers who taught me to question everything with a grin. I also penned Absinthe Heroes, the first steampunk rock opera, and I’ve spent decades playing music, writing plays, and collecting way too many books. Whether through events that let people unleash their inner oddity or stories that make you laugh at destiny (and root for the villain), my goal is simple: create spaces and tales where the eccentric thrive, the sarcastic win, and the world gets a little more delightfully strange.You’ll find me lurking on Twitter/X as @darklordjournal, sharing free stories on my mostly-free Patreon, dropping audiobooks on Amazon, or plotting the next spectacle. Come say hi—I’m always up for a good story, a costume, or a bit of harmless chaos.

Jeff Mach
Hackensack, New Jersey
Creator of Dark Fantasy Events, Villainpunk, and Satirical Fantasy Worlds