by Grace Topping
People often complain they don’t have time to read. Finding myself in that predicament recently, I turned to Crime Travel, an anthology of short stories that had been on my shelf for a while. Each story took me minutes to read, which was about all the time I had to devote to reading in a day. The stories in Crime Travel were fascinating because they all involved a mystery and time travel. I found them so intriguing that I contacted Barb Goffman, who edited the anthology, to learn more about the theme and how the anthology came about. Crime Travel is definitely an anthology to add to your to be read collection for those times you have only minutes to read.
Crime Travel
This short story collection features 15 stories from various authors that combine time travel and crime fiction. The stories are very creative, involving a variety of methods of time travel from people who build machines to those who stumble upon strange ways to get back in time. The periods range from people traveling to the present, to those traveling to Shakespeare’s England, a New Jersey beach town in the 1970’s, and a couple trips to the 1960’s to name a few. Meanwhile, we get a couple capers, a locked room mystery, and a hard-boiled PI among other great stories.
Mark Baker – Carstairs Considers
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Welcome to Writers Who Kill, Barb.
Crime Travel is unique in that each story features a mystery involving time travel. What inspired the time travel theme?
Time travel is fun. The idea has intrigued me since I was a kid, and I have long loved watching TV shows and movies about it and reading about it. So a time travel/crime anthology was right up my alley. The beauty of an anthology like this one is that you can have so many really different settings—we had one story travel to Elizabethan England and another to 1970s New York City, just for instance—and have stories involving real historical events, if you want, which makes it all even more interesting. As an author and editor, I couldn’t resist.
For those unfamiliar with anthologies, please tell us how this collection of stories came about?
The answer to this question also addresses, in part, the inspiration for the theme of this book. Six years before Crime Travel came out, I wrote a story involving time travel, but I hadn’t been able to find the right home for it. A friend suggested I put together a time travel anthology and include my story. It seemed a bit self-serving to do that, but since I love the topic, I pitched the idea of publishing a charity anthology of stories mixing crime and time travel to Wildside Press, and they signed on, agreeing to publish a book with fifteen stories. It helped that they knew me. At the time I approached them, Wildside had been the publisher of the Chesapeake Crimes series for about a decade—that was a series I edited with Donna Andrews and Marcia Talley. It also helped that Wildside is a publisher that focuses on mystery/crime and on science fiction and fantasy. Crime Travel was a great fit for them.
Is there a difference between an anthology and a collection of short stories?
An anthology is a book of short stories written by multiple authors. A collection is a book of short stories all written by the same author. People often use the terms interchangeably, but technically, that is the difference.
What was your role as the editor?
I created the call for stories and decided how to solicit them. I then read all the submissions, chose the stories, edited them, worked with the authors on revisions, chose the story order, worked with the publisher to have advance review copies sent to reviewers, worked with the authors and publisher on proofreading, arranged to have a cover reveal on Kristopher Zgorskiʼs BOLO Books blog, chose the publication date of December 8, which is Pretend To Be A Time Traveler Day, and danced a jig when contributor Eleanor Cawood Jones arranged for us to have a book launch at the Barnes and Noble store she worked at. When the book was released, the authors and I promoted the book, and I ensured the stories were submitted for award consideration, where applicable. I also chose the charity the book supports: 826DC, a Washington, DC, nonprofit designed to help children and teens improve their creative and expository writing skills, as well as help teachers inspire children to write. All royalties are donated to this organization.
What came first, the lineup of authors or the publisher?
The publisher. I wanted to ensure I had everything arranged before I put in the time of doing all the things mentioned above. I also didn’t want to ask people to write stories without knowing for sure that the anthology would come out, as well as without knowing who the publisher would be and how much they would be paid.
You have an outstanding list of authors who contributed to Crime Travel, many of them award-winning short story writers. Did you have an open submission or did you invite the authors whose stories were included?
Thanks for saying so, Grace. I employed a combination of those two methods. I set aside three slots for authors I invited. I hoped mentioning these authors’ names in the call for stories would encourage others to submit, and I hoped their names would help with sales upon publication. I also set aside one slot for my own story. Then, to fill the remaining eleven slots, I put out a call for stories to four different groups I am a member of: the Short Mystery Fiction Society, the Chesapeake Chapter of Sisters in Crime, the Guppies Chapter of Sisters in Crime, and the SleuthSayers blog. I limited submissions in this manner because I feared I otherwise would be overwhelmed with submissions. But I do like to work with newer authors, so I was glad to have eleven of the slots filled through quasi-open submission. Some of the stories I accepted through this process were from established writers, but others were from authors much earlier in their careers.
If open submission, did you receive many submissions, and did you select the stories that appear in the collection?
On top of the three solicited stories, I received 53 submissions. And yes, I chose the stories. It wasn’t easy.
What guidelines did you give them?
In the call for stories, I said that I was looking for short stories involving crime/mystery and time travel. All crime sub-genres were welcome, but I mentioned that I’m partial to soft-boiled, traditional, and cozy stories. And I set a word-count limit.
Your story in Crime Travel, "Alex's Choice," was very touching. What inspired this story.
Thank you. I’m so glad you liked it. It was inspired by two things. First, I had read a newspaper article about an entire family that had died in a riptide, as they all tried to save the family dog, who had been swept out into the ocean. Sadly, the only one who crawled out of the surf that day was the dog. I cried when I read that article, and I wished I could go back and change things for that family. My second inspiration was my first dog, Scout. I was heartbroken when he died, and a month later, I found myself thinking about him and thinking about that poor family, so I wrote a time travel story involving a dog that winds up in the ocean and the family that tries to save him. A member of my writing group told me after reading the story that I didn’t need a bereavement group; I had worked it all out on the page. That story went on to be named a finalist for the Agatha and Macavity awards, for which I am grateful.
Your short stories appear in multiple publications and have won prestigious awards. Is there one that thrills you the most?
That is like asking a mom to choose her favorite child. They all are special to me for different reasons. I will say that I was extremely honored last year to receive the Edward D. Hoch Memorial Golden Derringer Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Short Mystery Fiction Society. Since I have devoted my writing career to mystery/crime short stories, it was wonderful to be recognized by the organization made up of authors and readers of mystery/crime short stories.
A number of anthologies have come out in recent years featuring stories inspired by the music of certain artists. What music or song would inspire you to write a story?
My most recent story was inspired by a song, actually. “Keep It Dark” was published in March in the anthology In Too Deep: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Genesis. I loved listening to Genesis in high school and college, so I was delighted when Adam Meyer invited me to contribute a story to this anthology. He sent me a list of songs to choose from. I had never heard “Keep It Dark” before. So I listened to it, and I was inspired. It’s about a man who has a secret, something he has to keep hidden because people aren’t ready for his truth. I can’t really say more without giving things away, but I think readers of this interview will enjoy the story.
Have you written longer? If so, which do you find harder to write?
My short stories have gone as long as nearly 15,000 words, which technically is a novelette. And I have one finished novel that has been in a drawer for fourteen years, so yes, I have written longer. I can’t say I find it harder to write novels versus novelettes versus short stories of other lengths. They require different skill sets, different approaches. In the end, I have decided to focus my career on short stories because I enjoy writing them more. They give me flexibility, and I can write a lot of them in the time it would take to complete a novel.
What advice would you give to someone who would like to write short stories?
Read them. Read a lot of them. In 2012, I participated in a project in which I tried to read a short story every day. I didn’t meet that goal, but I came close. Reading so many stories in a concentrated period helped me improve my craft because I could see what worked and what didn’t.
How does a writer find an anthology to submit to?
Join the Short Mystery Fiction Society. It is an online group and is free to join. There is a lot of discussion about craft, and you will see calls for stories listed there too. Go to https://groups.io. Then search for the society.
What is the most valuable thing you have learned since you started writing?
You can’t guarantee anything you write will be published (unless you self-publish), and if something you wrote is published, you can’t guarantee anyone will read it or that you will get any feedback on it. And you certainly can’t count on making a living from writing. So make sure you enjoy the journey. Do it for the love of writing. Then everything else that comes, if and when it comes, is a wonderful bonus.
What are you working on at the moment? Do you plan to do another anthology?
I am not in the middle of writing anything right now. But about three weeks ago an editor requested a flash story (1,000 words or fewer) that I wrote a couple of weeks ago. It’s called “Half-Topless” and has already been accepted, and it is scheduled to come out in December. I will share more about that publicly when I can.
Anthology-wise, I am working on edits to stories that will appear next spring in Hooked on Urban Legends—and Murder, which I am editing with Donna Andrews and Marcia Talley. Donna, Marcia, and I will be doing at least one more anthology after this one, and we plan to put out our call for stories either later this summer or in the fall, with submissions limited (as usual for the ones we do together) to members of the Sisters in Crime Chesapeake Chapter. While these books are not chapter-run anthologies, we limit our submissions in this manner because we like to give back to the chapter that has helped us so much. We also donate all royalties to the chapter.
Grace, thank you so much for inviting me to do this interview. I am thrilled to know that people are still reading Crime Travel five years after it was published, and I hope people continue to pick it up. I received an Anthony Award nomination for this book, and stories in the anthology were nominated for the Agatha, Anthony, Derringer, Macavity, and Shamus awards, so I feel confident telling mystery/crime readers that if you like time travel, this anthology will be well worth your time.
Thank you, Barb.
Bio: Barb Goffman (www.barbgoffman.com) has been a finalist for major crime-fiction short story awards forty-eight times, and sheʼs won the Agatha four times, the Macavity twice, and the Anthony, Derringer, and Ellery Queen Readers Award once each. She is a current Macavity Award finalist for her story “The Postman Always Flirts Twice,” which won the Agatha Award in April. And she is a current Anthony Award finalist for her story “A Matter of Trust,” as well as an Anthony Award finalist for the anthology Murder, Neat (along with co-editor Michael Bracken). That anthology won the Derringer Award in May. Barb was the 2024 recipient of the Short Mystery Fiction Society’s lifetime achievement award. Sheʼs a freelance editor, often working on traditional and cozy mysteries, and sheʼs an editor of Black Cat Weekly magazine. Her newest story, "Keep It Dark," is published in In Too Deep: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Genesis.
