I grew up in—and still live in—Knoxville, a small city in the eastern half of Tennessee near the Smoky Mountains. Whenever I travel I am always happy to “come home” to Knoxville again—the place I love, rich with beauty, and filled with good memories. Like the Wizard of Oz line, for me “There’s no place like home.”
Coming back from our vacation to the beach in late April, I felt a lift in my spirits as soon as we saw the mountains and hills of Tennessee on the horizon, and I smiled to see the sign: Welcome to Tennessee as we drove over the mountain toward home. Someone at the beach in South Carolina asked me, “What do you like so much about Knoxville and East Tennessee?” I offered several ready answers, but I’ve thought about that question often since.
What do I like about Knoxville? First, I love the diversity of the seasons. In East Tennessee, we experience four distinct seasons—a crisp fall rich with gorgeous color, a winter not too cold but offering a few snow days, blanketing the world in pretty white, but melting away quickly. Spring in Knoxville comes far earlier here than in cities up north, bringing with it a burst of color after the gray of winter, along with the return of green grass and leaves and an array of beautiful flowering trees and shrubs. The flowers I love so much return, too—crocus, daffodils, tulips, azaleas, and more. The fields and mountains awaken with wildflowers everywhere, including many varieties of mountain trillium like in the photo. 
The green then deepens and thickens as summer begins to arrive, the days growing balmy and lazy. With the air and water warmer, shorts and flip flops are the perfect daily wear, the days usually hot enough to run barefoot through the sprinkler, lie in the hammock and read, swim at the pool or lake, or wade in the cool mountain streams of the Smokies. Each month of the year holds its own beauty.
J.L. and I cherish our links into East Tennessee’s history and past, too. I grew up here in Knoxville, J.L. not far away in Athens, and both of us went to college at the University of Tennessee. 
Those years hold good memories for both of us as we met at UT, and after our marriage lived in an apartment near campus so I could walk to classes and finish my degree.
Both J.L’s and my families were early settlers to East Tennessee, too, tucking this region into our bloodlines. They came to this Appalachian wilderness in those early years to farm the land and help to build new towns and communities. J.L. and I were both told many fascinating stories about our early Tennessee ancestors. My mother’s stories were especially rich ones, as she grew up one of twelve children in a big two storied farmhouse. Childhood visits for both of us often took us out into the country to visit grandparents, aunts and uncles—giving us a chance to roam the fields, hike, and explore the out of doors, which we still love to do today.
Growing up in rural South Knoxville, I carry happy memories of my early childhood years. A treat when I was a girl was to take the bus into downtown Knoxville on Saturday or a warm summer’s day. In those years shopping was centered in downtown Knoxville before outlying malls and big shopping centers developed. Downtown with girlfriends I went to the movies, poked through the department stores, dime stores, and bookstores, went to the library, and ate lunch at Woolworths, the Blue Circle, or, when shopping with mother, at the S & S Cafeteria. When my first book published in 2009, J.L. and I held my Book Launch on the Star of Knoxville Riverboat downtown, and over 250 friends joined us to ride down the Tennessee River to celebrate my first published novel The Foster Girls. Whenever I see that old riverboat downtown, it brings a smile of remembrance of that good day.
Knoxville hosts many joyous and fun festivals year round, many centered around the old Market Square downtown. I remember shopping with my mother here as a girl, buying fresh vegetables or flowers from the farmers set up on the square. At festivals like the Dogwood Arts Festival, the vendors and crafters turn out to share their work, just like in the past. Often during the Dogwood Arts Festival Market Days, J.L. and I did a street signing in front of Union Avenue Bookstore for Flossie McNabb, talking to people as they walked to the Market Square. 
We attend many festivals around the area as visiting authors, helping to support events both in Knoxville and nearby. There is nothing more fun than a festival, and in Knoxville and East Tennessee people are warm and friendly, too—making these events even better. We’re already looking forward to the festivals on our schedule for this year. And maybe we’ll see you there!
Knoxville has won a lot of awards over the years and it’s easy to see why. In recent years it’s won awards as the “Nicest Place in America”, awards for “Best Places to Live” and “Best Places to Retire, a “Most Fun City” award, a “Best College Town” award, a “Summer Travel Destination Award,” and many more accolades. I know I’m prejudiced, but I can see how special Knoxville is. I can see why people want to buy homes in our part of the world, too. In traveling, I’m often shocked to see how homes are crammed so close together in many towns and cities that you could shake hands with your neighbor out the window! I’m grateful that here in Knoxville, most all the homes have spacious yards, lovely trees, shrubs, and flowers. 
Our home, where we’ve lived for over forty years, has a large yard and sits on a cul-de-sac in a quiet neighborhood. I love living in a place where I can happily and safely take a long walk every day, stopping to talk to neighbors or to look at the flowers blooming along the way. Good neighbors and a happy home are blessings so many do not enjoy… but in Knoxville they are more common than in many other places. Or at least, it seems so to me. A sweet quote about home says: “Home is where love resides, memories are created, friends always belong, and laughter never ends.” Our home here in Knoxville is that for me.
Happy May … See you next month!
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. Several photos in this blog are free photos from dreamstime.
I am a Southern author and I bring my readers with every book to “My Little Corner of the World”—and to the places I know and love. In this photo, you’ll see a listing of all my published books, twenty-one titles now. You’ll also see that most bring readers to the Smoky Mountains and to the Tennessee area where I live. There are twelve stand-alone novels in The Smoky Mountain Series that take you visiting in each book to a new place around the mountains. You’ll see the book covers for those titles below.
In these Mountain Home titles I’ve been taking readers to New Places … like in my book HAPPY VALLEY to the lovely valley below the Chilhowee Parkway near Abrams Creek Campground, and In my new title DOWNSIZING to the charming Glades Arts and Crafts Community in Gatlinburg. I have the added joy of joining many of the wonderful artisans and crafters from the Glades at their Great Smoky Arts & Crafts Community Spring Easter Show April 1st, 2nd, and 3rd for the Book Launch of my new spring titles. I’d love to see you there if you can come … but if you’re not visiting in the Smokies then, be sure on your next trip to the mountains to drive around the eight mile Arts and Crafts Loop Road off Hwy 321 in Gatlinburg to explore all the interesting and colorful shops there and to eat at one of the charming restaurants.
Due to the warm reception to this book and encouraged by bookstores and fans while visiting in South Carolina, we began work on a second state park guidebook set in the Palmetto State. Completing our visits to all the parks last year, this new guide book, EXPLORING SOUTH CAROLINA STATE PARKS, has just published along with my latest fiction titles. The book has directions to each park, descriptions of each, and over 700 color photos throughout. I would encourage you to buy this book in print versus eBook, too, as the print books keep the beautiful original book format, making them so much more appealing.
J.L. and I are delighted, that in addition to my two new novels publishing in April, we also will see the debut of our third jointly written guidebook EXPLORING SOUTH CAROLINA STATE PARKS. … Our journey into creating regional guidebooks began with the publication of our hiking guide THE AFTERNOON HIKER, celebrating 110 of our favorite hiking trails in the Smoky Mountains. When the national parks closed for a long stint one year, we started looking for a Tennessee parks book for ideas for new places to hike and explore near our home in Knoxville, Tennessee. Finding nothing, we began our next adventure of visiting all of the 56 state parks in Tennessee over the next two years. It was more fun than we ever could have imagined and DISCOVERING TENNESSEE STATE PARKS published in 2018.
In preparing to create this new guidebook and after researching the state of South Carolina and its 47 state parks, we decided to break the guidebook into four main regions—Upstate, Midlands, Lowcountry, and Pee Dee. Each area tends to have its own unique flavor—and dividing the parks into regions gave us an organizational method for grouping the parks by proximity.… As we studied about SC’s parks, we found the state also had seven national parks, one we broke into two parks, to make eight. Since many of these were smaller parks spotlighting historic or natural sites near many of the state parks, we decided to also add these national parks into our guidebook, bringing our overall total to 55 parks.
J.L. and I started our journey of exploring South Carolina’s parks in the Upstate area. Thinking of SC as a flatter and less mountainous state than Tennessee, we were surprised to find many of the Upstate parks reminded us of areas around the Smoky Mountains, rich with hiking trails, waterfalls, rugged heights, and sweeping mountain views. About seven of the Upstate parks lie in a string near the SC and NC border along Highway #11, the Cherokee Foothills Scenic Parkway. Parks along this route included lovely state parks like Jones Gap State Park, Caesars Head, Table Rock, Devil’s Fork, and Oconee State Park.
J.L. and I found our trips all over South Carolina to be a pleasure—and now we find ourselves already plotting and planning the next Southern state we hope to explore for another guidebook! Traveling around to state parks is a beautiful way to sample the scenic wonder of a state and to just enjoy time out of doors.
Some years ago when I was talking with my editor, at the time, Audrey LaFehr at Kensington Publishing, I asked her, “Do you think my readers, who have loved all my Smoky Mountain titles, would follow me if I also wrote a few books set at the beach?” She asked what I had in mind and I told her about my idea for a trilogy of books set at Edisto Beach, South Carolina, my family’s favorite vacation spot. She reacted positively, “I think your readers will love going on vacation to the beach with you. The books will still be the kind and style of books they like—and, besides, most everyone loves to take a little vacation to the beach.”
As the book begins, she is dragging with illness and wisely listens to the counsel of her neighbor to head to the concert hall to talk to her agent Jonah about taking time off after this performance to heal. However, some new shocks send her life spiraling in a new direction.
I won’t tell you more now about this new story, but a special pleasure I can tell you is that you will re-meet many of the characters from the first two books again—Claire and Parker Avery, Mary Helen and J.T., all the gang at Edisto, Kizzy Helton, and other island friends. You’ll also get to visit at Andrew’s beach house, The Sandpiper, at Edisto … and get to know his mother Nora Cavanaugh better.
You’ll also learn more about the Westcott Antiques store and get drawn into the lives of many new Beaufort characters as well as being swept into an exciting new mystery that threads its way through the story. Beaufort is a delight –as is Edisto—and you’ll be wanting to visit both places after finishing this book filled with love, warmth, friendship, suspense, and an array of fun, unexpected events. I hope you’ll all enjoy this “finale” book in the Edisto Trilogy.
In my new novel DOWNSIZING, publishing in April 2021, my main character is Mary Pat Latham. At midlife, Mary Pat’s life is settled and comfortable. She’s been married for thirty-four years to her husband Russell, a successful heart surgeon. They are comfortable, own a beautiful home, and have four children who have recently finished college and started settling into new careers and homes. Mary Pat’s life is rich with interests, social clubs, and philanthropic activities. She looks forward to a future with married children, grandchildren, and more times for trips and travel when Russell’s medical practice slows down. The last thing she expects is for Russell to come home in the middle of the day and to announce, out of the clear blue, that he wants a divorce.
All of this discussion only gets worse as Mary Pat catches a change in tone as Russell talks about the realtor he’s been working with. His quick defense when Mary Pat quizzes him about the relationship tells her all too much. In some heated words to follow, when Mary Pat pushes to ask if he’s given any thought to where she should move or what she should do now … Russell throws out that she can move up to her parents’ old cottage in Gatlinburg for a time if she wants. He never wanted to buy their old place when her parents moved anyway. So after an afternoon of weeping and shock, Mary throws some things into a bag to head to the small mountain house of her childhood, too upset and humiliated to even think about seeing or talking to any of her friends or family right now
Readers will soon run into a rich, colorful cast of characters in the Glades Arts and Crafts Community of Gatlinburg, Tennessee, where Mary Pat’s small family home sits on a quiet mountain road. I’ll leave all these new characters’ stories of love and loss for you to learn about as you enjoy this new book, and be assured that a host of unexpected events, shocks, and surprises await you as you turn the pages and follow the plot through its ups and downs.
Angry at all that happens, one thing Mary Pat does after her shocks settle down is to decide to start some improvements and changes in her own life. One of these is to work on “downsizing” herself. Russell’s hurtful words bring home to her that she, in truth, has let her appearance go. These efforts become an interesting part of the book as Mary Pat’s earlier life goals and education were actually geared to nutritional behavioral counseling, the irony not escaping her now. So Mary Pat reaches back to reexamine those old goals and dreams.
When I was working on planning this book originally, I had to create a fictitious weight loss business and a diet for Mary Pat to follow for the story, so I created a center called Diet Options for the book and pulled out all my old diet notes from successful dieting I’d done in past to design the Diet Options weight loss program and the diet Mary Pat becomes involved in. Fans around this area, knowing what I was working on then—and watching me lose twenty pounds trying out my own diet plan again—began to push me to put the diet at the end of the book. So at the end of the book will be a link taking readers, who are interested, to pieces of Mary Pat’s Diet Options Notebook, with a little inspirational teaching and the complete diet laid out, including food lists, recipes, and more, in case you want to try a little “downsizing” of your own. 
It’s a great almost 50-page resource you can print out, if you want … and it’s Free to all my readers.
With this 2020 year such a difficult one, all of us are seeing changes in our Christmas celebrations. Those changes cause us to look back and remember with nostalgic fondness our Christmases of the past—and perhaps to cherish those memories more than we might have before. I see it as a form of “thankfulness” to look back on the holidays of the past, being grateful for the warmth, love, and good we remember about each.
Among my memories as I write this today, I recall the excitement of decorating the tree every year—adding the old treasured and new ornaments—and then watching the lights with pleasure every night. We took driving trips around the neighborhood to see the holiday lights and went to the mall and Christmas shops to see Santa and to enjoy the lavish decorations. We also attended annual events in our area celebrating the season, in the city, at the children’s schools, and at church. Going downtown to the Christmas Parade and to see the lights was an annual trip and later we began to always attend the Fantasy of Trees in Knoxville and to take a trip to Dollywood to see the holiday lights and shows.
I remember fondly how the children poured through the toy catalogs as they arrived in the mail, making lists of “ideas” for gifts they might like to receive from us and from Santa. I recall, too, how they shook and rattled the gifts under the tree later, trying to guess what was inside every package. Christmas morning was always a fun time of discovery, of enjoying new toys and games, trying out new bikes or skates outdoors, and running back and forth to the neighbors to see what everyone else received. I remember the year I saved up long and hard so we could buy both the children bikes and how excited they were to ride them up and down our cul-de-sac street. Katie loved dolls, Barbies, art toys and coloring books, jewelry, and pretty things. Max loved GI Joe, Star Wars, action toys, games and toy guns. And our downstairs held a big playroom that the children and all their friends enjoyed.
As I looked through old photo books to find a few memory pictures to add to this blog today I found Christmas pictures of the children, like this one, we took at the holidays. We gave photo copies to the grandparents, to family, and friends or tucked them into the Christmas cards I always sent. J.L. and I both laughed at the photos of Christmas past we found, the floor around the tree piled with gift wrap and boxes, family members all grinning and holding up gifts received or modeling new clothes and hats, and the cats getting into the fray by climbing into all the Christmas boxes. Before my eyes I watched the children grow from those baby years to childhood in those photo books and then on to the teenage years. It seems incredible that the years have flown past so swiftly and that now they are both grown and gone—and living so far away.
Lin Stepp 