I have a new book coming out April first, titled THE RED MILL BOOKSTORE. It’s my sixth book in the Mountain Home series… a new group of stand-alone novels set around the mountain areas near my home in Tennessee. These follow my earlier Smoky Mountain series of twelve books. Past Mountain Home books have taken readers to the small community of Happy Valley near the Foothills Parkway, to the Glades near Gatlinburg, to historic Dandridge, to Cherokee, and to the charm of Waynesville. THE RED MILL BOOKSTORE takes readers to Townsend, Tennessee, where I set two earlier books before, but this time with new characters and new places, as well as old familiar ones, and adding scenes around Walland, Rocky Branch, Maryville, and even a trip to Gatlinburg.

The idea for this book began when J.L. and I were driving through the Townsend area after a hike in the nearby Smoky Mountains. We stopped at a local drive-in on the highway that we love, called the Burger Master, to get a dip cone as a treat. As we left and drove up the main highway afterward, I noticed for the first time a mill dam spreading all the way across the Little River. I was already familiar with the Peery’s Mill dam closer to Maryville, but for some reason I’d never noticed this smaller one. Where there’s a mill dam, there was usually a mill at one time as mill dams were created to divert a swift stream of water into the mill to power it. My curiosity was up now, and J.L. and I stopped to walk closer to look at the spill of water cascading over the dam in a long waterfall. It didn’t take my active imagination long to imagine that a scenic old mill might have sat right across the river at one time long ago.

I’d already been wanting to set another book in the Townsend-Walland area, and J.L. and I had driven around both areas a few times exploring and looking for places to set a new book. After learning that few people seemed to even know the history of the mill dam in Townsend, I decided it would be fun to create a story around this site with a fictitious historic mill I decided to name the Red Mill. Over the weeks to come, around my other work, a new story linked to this mill began to develop in my imagination. My main characters I named Ella Quinn and Jesse Helton after finding photos that “felt” to me how they looked in my heart and mind. I like the characters in my books to look more like real and regular people rather than movie-star types. I decided Jesse would be a local boy with family in the area, but that Ella would come here for a stay at her Quinn grandparents, who owned and operated the Red Mill and lived on the land beside it. Early questions were: What had brought Ella to Townsend at this time? Where had she been? What had been going on in her life? And for Jesse: What might have brought him back home if he’d left earlier? To put a touch of fun in the story, I decided Ella and Jesse had known each other as kids, playing together when she came for visits at her grandparents. And now, of course, they’d both grown up and changed, with problems that needed to be worked out.

Ella, I decided, would have come from Boston, Massachusetts, where she worked at a lovely downtown bookstore called the Chestnut Street Bookstore, owned by a gracious woman named Adelynn Lake, who had become like a mother to her. Adelynn’s death, the closing of the store, and Ella’s grandmother falling and breaking her arm would bring Ella back to Townsend for a time to help out and to try to figure out what to do next with her life. Family problems would have brought Jesse home after college, not revealed at once in the book but unfolding as the story progresses, adding to the unsolved mystery going on in my story.

Around edits and publication of other books and ongoing signing events, J.L. and I took many fun trips over the months to the Townsend and Walland areas near the Smoky Mountains, visiting shops, restaurants, walking and exploring the biking and hiking trails, and driving down backroads to become familiar with the overall area that would be in my book. As my ideas grew, I scribbled notes on local maps, picked up brochures, and began to further develop the plots and adventures that would be in this new story. As my storyline and plot progressed, I decided to call this new novel THE RED MILL BOOKSTORE, and to create a local bookstore in the vacant historic store that stood right across from the old mill. The fact that Townsend doesn’t have a bookstore, that the local library closed in past and that my favorite Hastings Bookstore nearby in Maryville had closed, too, made me want to create a local place, if only in story, for book lovers and book signings.

Secondary characters soon began to develop in my planning to enrich the story. I became especially fond of Jesse’s grandparents Naomi and Hershel Quinn, of Ella’s father Palmer Quinn in the Air Force, of her mother who’d died, her friends in Boston, and of the new friends she made in Townsend while visiting. It was a joy creating the historic property of the Red Mill, it story and land along the river, the Quinns’ home, and all the relatives and friends of their family.

I did a lot of research to create a grist mill accurately for this book, visiting several old mills around the East Tennessee area and learning the history of grist mills and how they operate. Mills were linked into the entire fabric of the East Tennessee area, and I enjoyed talking to a lot of “old timers” and those who had grown up in the area to learn more about Townsend and Walland’s past. I took the tour of the Old Mill in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, and was blessed that Emmett Denney gave my tour that day. He’d grown up in the Pigeon Forge area and had started working at the Old Mill at only sixteen, walking to work from his home nearby. He was a wealth of information and helped me to develop my Red Mill to be historically accurate.

For Jesse’s family I created a local repair store, one of those wonderful small-town shops that can fix most anything electrical, old and new. It was his family’s long-time business, and Jesse had grown up between working at the business in Townsend and on the family farm in Walland. I think you’ll love Jesse’s warm-hearted family, Ima Jean and Vernon Helton and his grandfather Leonard Helton, and visiting their business and big farm in Walland in the Rocky Grove area. A lot of businesses, restaurants, places and local attractions find their way into this new story that you can really see and visit yourself when in the Walland and Townsend area someday.

Jesse and Ella both loved the outdoors, hiking, biking, and tubing on the Little River, walking the trails and side roads around Townsend and around the Helton farm in Walland. J.L. and I hiked a lot of trails around the nearby Smokies that might find a place into the story … enjoying the Schoolhouse Gap Trail off Laurel Creek Road and re-hiking the Middle Prong Trail, another favorite not far from Townsend. We also walked long sections of the Townsend bike trail that runs from one end of town to the other, and we enjoyed discovering several new places we hadn’t known about before. I had the additional pleasure of bringing back old businesses and characters from my past Townsend books, TELL ME ABOUT ORCHARD HOLLOW and DOWN BY THE RIVER, into this new story. I seldom put “real” people I know into my books, but in this book I made an exception, also bringing in lots of crafter friends to be vendors at Mill Day, and letting “real” locals I know make cameo appearances in their shops and businesses.

When all the research and planning was done and the book was outlined in plot and action, I created and put up my Collage Board, showing an array of pictures of the characters and places in my book. I love glancing up at all the pictures on my board, which I prop behind my computer, while I work. They make me feel I’m right among them all, can hear and see them. I especially liked Dr. Merrill Cunningham I created for this story and his wife, Gail, and the idea of the small-town doctor who still knows his patients well, and it was fun to create Ronnie and Rachel Green, and their bluegrass singing group Green River. Pets found a place in the story, too with Quinn’s corgi Pepper Jack, his name inspired from one of my fan’s daughter’s little dog, and with the Mill Cats.

I hope you’ll enjoy all the characters and the story in THE RED MILL BOOKSTORE. The book is already available for pre-order and you can order it through your favorite local bookstore or online retailer.  If you would like personally signed copies, you can order the book through our online bookstore after the publication date of April 1^st … or even better, if you live near our East Tennessee or North Carolina area of the world, plan to come to one of our book signing events. You will find these listed on my Author’s Website on the Appearances page at: www.linstepp.com/appearances/.  Our spring events can also be found in my new March Newsletter, just posted at: https://linstepp.com/media-2/ … My monthly Blog and Newsletter are put on my Website at about the first of every month, always free for my readers, fans, and friends with no need to subscribe to an email list. … I hope you’ll love my latest Mountain Home book THE RED MILL BOOKSTORE

….See you here next month….LIN

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Note: All photos my own, from royalty free sites, or used only as a part of my author repurposed storyboards shown only for educational and illustrative purposes, acc to the Fair Use Copyright law, Section 107 of the Copyright Act.