Story Behind The Book
Turnpost came into existence in 2009, when my husband and I road-tripped from Iowa to Montana and back for a wedding. We passed through the town of Spearfish, SD. Neither of us had ever been to that region before. We spent a night camping in the forest and part of a morning wandering the small streets. I was utterly charmed by the landscape, and came home wanting to write a book with that backdrop. I set to writing East of Turnpost, a story about two sisters, May and Taylor, who have been geographically separated for a long time but end up living together on Taylor’s remote ranch outside the fictional town of Turnpost. In writing the story I made up details about the town, dropped in a few secondary characters, and didn’t think a whole lot more about it. I finished writing the book in 2011. (It’s still awaiting some rewriting before it is published.) Then, in 2012, I had space to fill. I had just finished writing The Questionable Company of Sprites and I wanted to work on something rather different. I felt I needed to work on developing unique voices and points of view for different characters, so decided to create a blog in which I posted fictional accounts written by five different characters. I built the website on a lightweight blogging platform called Chyrp, and went to town. It was an unbelievably fun project. I got to spend time with a host of different characters and the town of Turnpost fleshed itself out. Although only tangentially connected to the characters from East of Turnpost, I enjoyed writing about a place I’d already “been.” The project turned into Another Year or Two. . . my first published novel. After that, I returned to Finn’s world for a time, but after rewriting The Teardrop Game I found myself looking for another break. I’d enjoyed my first blogging exercise so much, I started another one. The Diary of Roger Jones concerns a character who eventually ends up in Turnpost but starts during his childhood on a ranch in rural northern Nevada. I didn’t really set out to create a fictional town in South Dakota and populate it with dozens of characters, but now that it’s happened I have no regrets. I plan to return to Turnpost regularly for the rest of my writing career.
Media Links
Reviews
<p>“…a fantastically true to life story that readers both young and old will enjoy.”</p> <p>“The author masters a range of voices and tones (complete with orthographic tics)... Another Year or Two is a quiet pleasure to read, one all too quickly devoured.”</p> <p>“Robin Stephen has successfully developed a novel where both teenage and adult characters share stories that overlap with each other.”</p> <p>“There aren't monsters or magic; it's just very, very human, and beautifully so... Stephen's writing is beautiful, and each character's voice is different from the others.”</p>