Author and Writer Steve Gordy of BLS Aiken Recently Featured on CloseUp Radio

AIKEN, SC, UNITED STATES, November 3, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Most writers will tell you about a muse. Steve Gordy got his first published story from a safety engineer’s photograph of a boa constrictor that lost an argument with a car’s serpentine belt.

The image, sent around at the Savannah River Site, where Gordy spent his career as an industrial trainer and technical writer, planted a question that became “Public Serpent.” In the story, a man wakes up dead and discovers he has turned into a snake. It was the first piece Gordy ever had published. Politicians also appear in the tale. “I have a low opinion of politicians in general,” Gordy explains with a straight face. He added that he hopes the afterlife is nothing as dramatic as “Public Serpent,” and that a few politicians have earned his genuine liking.

Gordy is the author of the short story anthology, “Tangled Woods and Dark Waters,” and the novel “Faith, Hope, and Dr. Evangelist.” He is also the founder of BLS Aiken, which stands for Bird Flight Learning (BLD) Services. “We are bird lovers,” he shares.

A Career Path Full of Holes

Gordy planned on becoming a history professor. His love of the subject began in 1960, when his uncle, a construction engineer, moved the family to Italy to help build that country’s first nuclear power plant. Weekly letters from his aunt described Rome and a sighting of Pope John XXIII. “They were living the dream,” Gordy remembers thinking.

He earned a place in graduate school at Yale. After three years of work there, it became brutally apparent that the job market for history professors was challenging. “That shot my career path full of holes,” he admits. And so, he built a career in industry, and after retiring he spent six and a half years as an adjunct instructor at Piedmont Technical College.

From Seat of the Pants to Story Concept

Gordy’s first attempt at a novel ended about 110 pages in. Writers fall into two camps, he explains: plotters, who plan everything, and pantsers, who fly by the seat of their pants. He is a pantser, and his first manuscript showed it.

Technical writing supplied the fix. The work demands meticulous formatting and constant peer review, habits he says serves all authors well. Today, a short story begins with a one-paragraph description, and a longer piece begins with a brief outline. “I learned a lot about being more organized during my career as a technical writer,” he says.

Ordinary People, Impossible Spots

The common thread in “Tangled Woods and Dark Waters” is ordinary people facing adversity and getting through it. Gordy did not originally plan to include the novella “A Dirge for Maxwell,” which draws on a real event near Aiken. On Jan. 6, 2005, a freight train ran onto a siding, smashed into a textile mill and released a gas that killed nine people, by Gordy’s recollection. The town was already reeling from overseas competition that had gutted the American textile industry.

“When your whole community has been built around a way of life and it suddenly gets shaken by a shock like that, it will make you think,” he said.

His favorite story in the collection is more tender. “Bird in the Dark” follows a cockatiel who becomes a very unlikely hero. The lesson he hopes readers take away: “That love can be stronger than fear.”

His definition of courage comes from home. His mother-in-law, a librarian, was widowed at 48 with a 13-year-old daughter, who is now Gordy’s wife. “She didn’t whine, she didn’t say why me,” he said. “She stayed good at her teaching and kept going.”

A Town Where Horses Have the Right of Way

Gordy has lived in Aiken since 1988, and he credits the town’s equestrian culture with an entire body of work he never would have imagined. He organized the Aiken Scribblers, an improvised group of local writers, to produce the anthology “Nights of Horseplay,” in which each author built an original world around shared guidelines and a common theme.

He also enjoys the spring and fall race meets, where “you get to hang out with a lot of people you don’t normally associate with.” Visitors should know that Aiken has streets where horses have the right of way, and that dog walkers and riders have long since reached peaceful coexistence.

The Business Lesson

Gordy has self-published three books, and two have now been picked up by Little, Brown and Co. A new edition of “Tangled Woods and Dark Waters” is due shortly and will be sold through Barnes & Noble. “I consider myself a legitimately published author,” he said.

His advice on selling books comes with a confession. “Think about your marketing and get it going well before you even come close to publishing,” he said. “I didn’t do that. I learned the hard way.” He now works his contact lists, social media friends and groups such as the South Carolina Writers Association and the Augusta Writers Club.

A layoff at 56 stung, he said, but his first South Carolina Writers Association conference changed his outlook. The attendees “were not superstars,” he recalled. “They were people who developed a talent for writing, liked it, and kept on going.”

His counsel to newcomers, offered “not entirely sarcastically,” is brief: “Always have a day job.” He learned it from the late Pat Conroy, who wanted to teach, and before that to write poetry, and discovered that neither paid the bills.

Another successful author gave Gordy a second rule: Write for your readers. He applies it daily by asking whether a piece would appeal to him as a reader. It is a close cousin of the first principle of technical writing. “It’s all about knowing what the audience already knows,” he says.

Nights of Horseplay

“Nights of Horseplay” is a fantasy anthology by Stephen L. Gordy and the Aiken Scribblers group. A FestivalNet listing describes it as fanciful tales about the horse statues of Aiken, SC.

Tangled Woods and Dark Waters

A collection of short stories, including “Public Serpent,” “Bird in the Dark” and “A Dirge for Maxwell,” FestivalNet calls it a collection of stories about the odd twists and turns that life sometimes takes.

Faith, Hope, and Dr. Vangelis

“Faith, Hope, and Dr. Vangelis” is a novel published in 2019 which grew from actual events that Gordy experienced when he had two special family members in hospice care.

About Steve Gordy

Steve Gordy is a retired industrial trainer, training manager and technical writer who now works as a college instructor and creative writer in Aiken, South Carolina. He is the founder of BLS Aiken (Bird Flight Learning Services), a member of the South Carolina Writers Association and a member of writers' organizations in other Southeastern states.

Close Up Radio recently featured Steve Gordy, author and founder of BLS Aiken, in an interview with Jim Masters on Friday October 30th at 1pm Eastern

Listen to the Podcast
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/close-up-radio-spotlights-author-and-writer-steve/id1785721253?i=1000799523574
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-close-up-radio-242020413/episode/close-up-radio-spotlights-author-and-writer-steve-gordy-of-bls-aiken-349069511/
https://open.spotify.com/episode/48KqYou1NFRCtgJ3nh7PUE

For more information about Steve Gordy, author, please visit https://www.stevethewriter.com/

Lou Ceparano
Close Up Television & Radio
+1 631-850-3314
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