An Interview with Barb Goffman

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Few writers are nominated for an Agatha Award for their first published story. Barb Goffman’s fame precedes her collection Don’t Get Mad, Get Even, recently released from Wildside Press. The collection contains fifteen short stories including those nominated for awards, which are numerous. Barb’s nominations include the Agatha Award (five times), the Anthony Award (two times) and the Macavity Award and Pushcart Prize (once each). My favorite story, “Evil Little Girl,” I hope will garner a nomination in next year’s awards, proving that you will relish reading every story in Don’t Get Mad, Get Even because they are all winners. Welcome to WWK, Barb.    E. B. Davis

In 2005, Quiet Storm Publishing published Chesapeake Crimes II containing “Murder at Sleuthfest,” your first published short story, which was nominated for an Agatha Award. How long before this nomination did you start writing fiction?

I began writing crime fiction in 2001. I wrote a dozen chapters of a mystery novel before getting stuck on a research problem. While waiting for an answer, I got an idea for another novel, which I began writing. The first draft poured out of me over sixteen months. That novel, Call Girl, remains a work in progress, having sat in a drawer for several years, but I hope to get it out there circulating soon, newly revised.

As for short stories, in 2004, the Chesapeake Chapter of Sisters in Crime put out a call for stories for Chesapeake Crimes II. I’d never written a mystery short story before, but I thought this might be a way to get my foot in the door. So I read a bunch of short stories written by Jan Burke and I read the first Chesapeake Crimes anthology to get a feeling for how mystery short stories worked. And then I sat on my balcony for about two hours, trying to come up with a plot that would work. I knew who I wanted to kill: the person who stole my ring at the 2004 Sleuthfest conference. What I needed was a plot that would work both as personal catharsis and as a story. Once I came up with the plot, I wrote the story, submitted it, and was pleased to have it accepted. It was all very fast.

You’re an active member of your local MWA and SinC chapters. How do you do it all?

Yes, I’m secretary of our MWA chapter and a past president of our SinC chapter. For the last few years, I’ve co-edited the Chesapeake Crimes anthologies with Donna Andrews and Marcia Talley. I’m also program chair of the Malice Domestic mystery convention. Malice, especially, is a labor of love, but it’s a big time suck. So I make a lot of lists, which enable me to keep juggling the ever-changing number of things I need to do.

Frankly, when push comes to shove, it’s often my writing that takes a back seat. I know it shouldn’t, and I’m making an effort to say no to more things so that I can concentrate on writing. (Of course, having said that, I just accepted a request to teach a class about writing short stories to the Northern Virginia Writers Club. My just-say-no campaign is still a work in progress.)

Your settings are varied; West Virginia, Illinois, New Jersey, North Carolina. Do you travel? Where

did you grow up?

I grew up on Long Island, went to college in Michigan, grad school in Illinois, and law school in North Carolina. I worked as a newspaper reporter for a few years, moving at one point six times in fourteen months, which helped me to learn about different people and communities (good for writing) and helped me realize I don’t like moving. Instead, I like being settled and being home. So I don’t travel much, except in my head. Several of my stories are set in the South. I love southern settings, and I often will hear characters talking to me in a southern accent. Remnants of a past life perhaps?

Do you think conflicted writers have an advantage?

Perhaps. The more stress or bad times you’ve been through, the more you have to draw upon when coming up with interesting and real characters and plots. I have a friend who says he never gets angry. It’s not an emotion he understands. He says it seems a waste of time. That’s probably good for his blood pressure, but it impedes his ability to write angry characters. Anger is an important factor in mystery writing, particularly in my stories, which so often involve revenge, so I guess it’s good that I can call up anger pretty easily.

Only a few of your stories have a male protagonist and only one of your stories has a police officer protagonist. Do you prefer writing main characters that possess more of your own attributes?

I didn’t write any male protagonists for a long time, fearing I wouldn’t get the voice right. But once I dived in, I found it wasn’t that difficult. I loved writing “The Lord Is My Shamus,” whose main character is the biblical Job. I hear his voice as a little old Jewish man and write him accordingly. My friend Laura says I also write blue-collar men well. I’m not sure what that reveals about me, but I’ll take any compliment.

Regarding police officers, I had a similar fear of not getting the details right. It still concerns me, but I’m trying to stretch in my writing, so when I chose to write about a female sheriff in “Suffer the Little Children,” I just made sure I did enough research.

Mostly, though, I write characters that suddenly appear in my head. They’re often women. Lately, they’re often teenagers. And they’re all often funny. My characters probably all have my own voice, to a certain extent. I’ve had people tell me that when they read my stories, no matter how varied the characters are, they can hear me talking. It’s hard to shed your own skin.

You are a lawyer, but none of your stories touches on your profession. Why?

Most legal stories/novels involve lawsuits. It makes sense. You can have conflict and a big courtroom scene. But I’m a regulatory attorney. I specialize in telling people if they can do what they want to do legally, and if the answer is no, I help them figure out how to change their plans so they can reach the same goal under the law. I haven’t had an idea of how to make that exciting for my fiction. But never say never.

Often editors prescribe the topic wanted for short stories. Do you like writing to topic or would you prefer to let the story roll off your imagination regardless of topic and place them later?

I’m often inspired by story calls. I like the challenge. For example, last year I was invited to submit a story for the anthology Nightfalls. The story could be in any genre, the editor said, but it had to show how people would spend their last night on earth, knowing that the world would end tomorrow. That was a real challenge, because if the world were about to end, a lot of crimes would be ruled out. Robbery for instance wouldn’t happen because money would be irrelevant. I spent a while thinking about that conundrum, and I realized that, in the end, all a person really has is love, self-respect, and ... perhaps ... revenge. And the story “Bon Appetit” flowed from there. That said, I also like writing stories that simply come to me, promptless, but it’s usually easier writing with a specific market in mind.

Do you like a story that ends with a twist?

I love it. I especially love the double twist, which isn’t easy to do. I pulled it off in “The Worst Noel.” I can’t say more about that without giving things away. That said, I also like stories that end on a satisfying note, where there’s perhaps less of a twist than an epiphany. Both story-telling approaches can work if done well.

One of the themes in your short stories is distinguishing reality from fantasy sometimes through a child character’s growth or an adult character’s confirmation or degradation of beliefs. Does the truth set you free?

Yes and no. When a character grows enough to see things as they really are, it may be good for the character, especially in the long run, but boy, the short run could be difficult. For instance, in my story “Volunteer of the Year,” my main character had lived many years with her eyes closed to something horrible going on practically right in front of her. Once she realized what was happening (again, I’m not giving details so not to ruin things for folks who haven’t read the story), she took steps to fix the problem. Yes, doing so was probably best for her, but boy, ignorance sure had been bliss. Similarly, in “Truth and Consequences,” a fourteen-year-old girl learns a family secret, and suddenly finds her world isn’t so cookie-cutter after all. Was it good for her to learn this truth? Probably yes in the long run; no in the short run.

That said, sometimes the truth really can set you free. In my story “The Lord Is My Shamus,” God sends Job back to earth because a man has died and everyone thinks it was an accidental death. Everyone but the murderer ... and God. So Job is sent to right some wrongs. And in the end, the murderer is unburdened from carrying around the shame and the secret. So in that story, the truth did set someone free.

Along with the realizations that your characters undergo, there are bits of horror that double back to bite them. How did you learn to write horror?

Do I write horror? I’ve had a cannibalism story half-written for a few years now. That’s horror, and I think I’ve been hesitant to finish it because I don’t really want to put those words on the page. But I guess I do write some dark psychological stories that might be called horror, broadly defined. In “Evil Little Girl,” for instance, a bullied twelve-year-old is subject to some horrendous things—violence, ostracism, and adults who don’t believe her or take her complaints seriously. The story may not be technically horror, but it depicts a girl going through something horrible. I’m not sure how I learned to write these types of stories, or any stories, other than reading good writing and letting it inform my own work. I think of myself as a method writer. When I’m writing a character, I am that character, and I try to feel what that character would feel, so that I can get the voice and the reactions correct on the page.

Is reality then, part horror?

For some people, it unfortunately is. There are a lot of people who live perfectly safe, ordinary lives, where things go wrong, but nothing terrible, nothing horrendous. That’s wonderful for them, but they don’t make good story models because a good story needs a good plot, and conflict drives plot.

Do you think holidays are hell?

No, I love holidays. Granted I used to despise Valentine’s Day because it shoved in my face that I was single.  But in the last few years, I’ve come back to the fun approach to holidays I had as a kid. On Valentine’s Day, I wear red or pink (no longer black). On St. Patrick’s Day, I wear green, even though I’m not Irish. And I’m not Christian, but on Christmas, my dog wears an elf hat. Basically, I like the extra zip holidays can bring to an otherwise ordinary day. Of course, holidays are also a good time for crime, as readers will see firsthand next year when Chesapeake Crimes: Homicidal Holidays is published. We’ll have fourteen stories set on seven different holidays, ranging from Halloween to Christmas to Presidents Day (your story, E.B.) to Talk Like A Pirate Day. My own story “The Shadow Knows” is set on Groundhog Day. It’s one of my lighter, funnier tales, and I’m looking forward to sharing it with readers.

Have you ever looked up the sexual offenders list for your zip code?

 I have. When I lived in Maryland, I checked the list and found that a couple of sex offenders lived

right near a park with a playground. I was surprised that was allowed. There’s probably a story in there somewhere. A dark story.

Which is your preference, beach or mountains?

Beach. I love the smell of salt water, the sound of the ocean rolling in and out, the breeze on my face, the squawk of seagulls, and the feel of sand between my toes. I grew up near the beach. It’s calming and inspiring.

Chihuahua or Great Dane?

Great Dane because I love big dogs. My dog, Scout, is probably a lab/shepherd/malamute mix. He’s not quite as big as a Great Dane, but at eighty pounds, there’s more than enough to love.

Thanks, E.B., for inviting me to talk about writing short stories and about my new collection, Don’t Get Mad, Get Even. I’ve been fortunate to have so much success with my fiction, including an Anthony Award nomination just last week for “The Lord Is My Shamus.” I’d be happy to chat today about writing short stories with Writers Who Kill readers. I also can be contacted any time through my website: www.BarbGoffman.com.

Barb’s collection can be bought at Amazon or at Wildside Press paper or  eprint.