The Interview - Joy Lynn Goddard

My husband, Dan, and I were sitting in a noisy coffee shop discussing how to kill off a character in Buyers, Liars, Sellers, and Yellers when the room fell silent. All eyes were turned on us, some horror-struck. With a helpful server, we explained we were working on fiction, and we all had a good laugh.

To make my characters walk off the pages, I want to experience their feelings. Once I took this approach too far. My character in Hello, my name is Emily, was about to be carried off by the villain in the trunk of his car. So, I climbed into the trunk of Dan’s small Toyota and asked him to shut the lid on me. A neighbour came running and was about to call the police until we explained what was happening. He still looks at me funny sometimes, though!

I grew up in a small village on a lake about sixty kilometres from Toronto, Ontario. In my early years, I’d never met anyone who wasn’t white among my friends, family, neighbours, and community. One blustery winter day, my mother, a nurse, took the bus to work at the hospital thirty minutes away from our home, as the driving conditions were bad. When she returned that night, a stranger was with her—an African American woman. Apparently, the bus driver didn’t like the colour of her skin and refused to let her get off at her stop. When he’d finally stopped the bus, she’d faced a walk of several kilometres in a blizzard to get home. Outraged, my mother had blasted the driver—she wasn’t one to hold back—and had brought her to our house to have dinner. Later, my father drove her home. I didn’t understand the driver’s perspective. It sickened me. As a result, I’ve written about bigotry in almost all my books.

I was a journalist and freelance writer before becoming a teacher. It was no surprise I liked teaching language skills the best. I used my classroom experience to write junior and young adult novels for reluctant readers. I found it a struggle to get teen boys to read. I’d watch them counting the pages in a book—making sure it was short—before choosing one from the library. They gravitated to books with sports, adventure, or danger in them. With this in mind, I wrote a series of books that had characters who were composites of kids I taught—the “brain,” the “jock,” and the “weirdo” and more. An educational publisher picked them up and distributed them throughout Canada.

Later, my husband Dan and I teamed up to write contemporary adult fiction. Each novel crisscrosses mystery, suspense, and romance genres. Dan does most of the research and comes up with the main plotlines, while I do the writing. It’s fun.

I also enjoy running adult workshops for would-be and developing writers. I learned tips and tricks from a wealth of writers to create Write Right: Novel Writing for Beginners, my non-fiction title.

My first young adult title—Daredevils—(along with the Teacher’s Manual by Ruthanne Finnigan) won the Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association (OECTA) Provincial Practice Award, and together with YA titles Hello, my name is Emily and Charlie’s Song, it won the OECTA AWARD of Merit for literary contribution.

Adult titles Moonshadow and The Keepers won Canada Book Awards and Moonshadow also received a Reader Ready Award: Recommended Read and a Book Excellence Award.

My favourite heroine is Scout Finch, the young narrator in To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. She tells the stories of the inhumanity of man through the eyes of a child in the Great Depression without injecting adult commentary.

My favourite authors are Jodi Picoult, Linwood Barclay, Gillian Flynn, Emma Donoghue, Joy Fielding, Liane Moriarty, Stephen King, Lisa Jewell, Harper Lee, Lisa Jackson, Nicholas Sparks, Judy Blume, Ann Patchett, Louise Penny, Alice Munro . . . and so many more. They’ve all shown me the importance of telling a good story over everything else in the book.

I’m moved most in a work of literature by a character who's so well-developed that I laugh and cry along with him or her throughout the book.

I’m just finishing A Good Mother, which is crime fiction with all the elements of the other novels. Eventually, Dan and I will adapt this novel to a screenplay.

A Good Mother

As the sun rises, eight-year-old Grace is gone! Her tent is cut, while strange footsteps lead from deep in the forest to her family’s campsite and back. Days turn into weeks with no sign of Grace, although her mother, Jackie, refuses to give up hope.

Detective Duncan Jewell stumbles upon Grace’s kidnapping investigation while searching for a missing teen. The two cases seem connected, but how? As he focuses on finding answers, he tries to ignore his growing feelings for Jackie, which have been just under the surface since they were kids. She is married—he has lost his chance.

When his investigation reaches a dead end, he seeks help from his beloved Aunt Anna. She can see things that nobody else can see. Yet even he, an experienced police officer, is dumbfounded by what his aunt discovers.