Door Builder Extraordinaire
by Chris Pepple
Dr. Lin Stepp tells writers, “Don’t wait for a door to open—build your own door.” That’s exactly what she has done in her own career. As a young girl she loved reading and took pleasure in putting her own words and thoughts down on paper. Through the years she filled journals with her musings, penned poetry, and illustrated picture books for her own children. Along her journey, Stepp took jobs writing copy, ads, newsletters and short articles. She and her husband eventually opened a small business which published a monthly fishing and hunting guide.
But Stepp wanted more from her writing career. “In early efforts to pursue serious writing, I received mostly ‘that’s nice, dear’ comments—with the subject then politely changed,” says Stepp. “If I had waited for the approval, encouragement or help of others to write, I’d still be waiting.”
To reach her goal of being a published author, Stepp built her own doors to success by doing more than just dreaming of what could be. “When I started to write seriously at mid-life, I knew I had to think of writing as a real job. Most part-time jobs require a maximum of 20 hours a week of work, so I set that as my minimum weekly goal. I tried various methods of structuring those hours—and found, for me, that blocking five-hour time blocks into four days a week worked best. I penciled this into my daybook. Since 2006, I researched and wrote two books a year this way.”
When Stepp set her goal for being published, she began a series of contemporary Southern fictional novels set in the Smoky Mountains. She chose a setting she was already writing about for her nonfiction hiking guide, The Afternoon Hiker, due out later in 2012.
“As my husband and I explored the Smokies for our hiking guide, I stopped in gift stores and book shops looking for light, contemporary novels set in the area … you know, good Southern stories, with a little romance, a little suspense, rich characters and a happy ending. I asked a bookseller one day where the contemporary novels set in the mountains were. When he shook his head and said there weren’t any but that people asked for them all the time, I guess that seeded the idea for me.”
The first of these novels, The Foster Girls, was published in 2009. Three more have been published since—Tell Me about Orchard Hollow (2010), For Six Good Reasons (2011), and Delia’s Place, recently released in 2012. The next in the series of twelve novels set in the Smokies, Second Hand Rose, will be out in April 2013.
“My latest release, Delia’s Place, takes readers to the familiar town of Gatlinburg, a charming resort town I’ve visited multitudes of times. I love Gatlinburg and knew I wanted to take readers to ‘the Burg’ in one of my Smokies set novels. I wondered—as I played with and expanded the book’s plot—what it would be like to be ready to marry, invitations sent, china picked, plans made, family celebrations organized, and then to have everything blow up? What if your fiancé suddenly married someone else? Even worse, what if he FedExed the news to you?
“I let Delia run to Gatlinburg to the little stone cottage in Mynatt Park that belonged to her Aunt Dee, angering her family and flipping her right into the face of a whole new set of problems and relationships to navigate. I enjoyed ‘watching’ Delia heal and discover her strengths,” Stepp said.
To others hoping to build doors that lead to publishing success, Stepp tells everyone what she told herself: don’t wait for someone else to open a door. “Work and write because it is in your heart to do it, even if no one encourages or supports you in the process,” she adds.
Stepp has also built doors that led to a following of readers awaiting her next book. To accomplish that, she now builds marketing into her schedule. “I’ve added in publicity, marketing time and speaking engagements. Where I used to spend Saturdays hiking with my husband, we’re now traveling somewhere for a book signing. I call and talk to booksellers in places too far to visit.
The lengthy list of upcoming book signings found on her website (www.linstepp.com) testifies that she prefers one-on-one marketing. “I love to meet fans in person. I’m on the road, once a new book comes out, from April to early December doing an event somewhere around the southeast every weekend. And my ‘bucket list wish’ is that I could do more of it.”
