Cooking Up Laughs for Thanksgiving

Note: I'm thankful for the many wonderful friends I've made in this business, and Barb Goffman is one of them! Have a wonderful Thanksgiving. Joanna

By Barb Goffman

It seems appropriate to have my contribution to today’s Killer Hobbies blog be about my own hobby, writing. And, in case you work for the IRS, by hobby I mean an activity I spend a lot of time on, from which I’m trying to make a profit . I promise! Now back to our normal programming.

My hobb ... errrr ... non-day job is writing. But not just any kind of writing. I write mystery short stories. And just to get a little more specialized, I particularly enjoy writing funny mystery short stories.

Nothing like putting a little pressure on myself. Don’t just write a good story, with strong characters, a developed setting, and an interesting plot. No. I tell myself to try to make the darn story funny, too.

Thankfully, I’m easily inspired. Take a call for stories that came out this summer. The publisher Untreed Reads wanted to put out an anthology of humorous mysteries, each focusing on a traditional Thanksgiving food. Baby, I was off and running.

The first food that came to mind was gravy. Don’t ask me why. It’s not like I can cook it myself. As my friend Logan loves to remind me, I don’t actually cook anything. I warm things. From freezer to microwave to a plate on my kitchen table. She’s right. I admit it. But thankfully I don’t have to know how to actually cook food to write about it. Just like I don’t know how to commit murder to write about that. Really. I promise that, too.

So I decided to write a mystery involving gravy. Once I had that idea, my imagination went berserk. Before I knew it, I had created an entire family, headed by Dotty, a proud southern matriarch who likes things just so and whose annual Thanksgiving feast could give Martha Stewart a run for her money. Unfortunately for Dotty, her sister, Agnes, insists on making the turkey and gravy every year. And Agnes, like me, can’t cook, which drives Dotty to distraction.
That set up has humorous potential in itself. But writers are supposed to make life hard for their characters. It makes the story more interesting. So for this Thanksgiving, I decided Dotty shouldn’t simply have to put up with Agnes’s dreadful gravy. I threw in an airhead trying to marry into the family and get her paws on Dotty’s deceased mother’s engagement ring. Dotty certainly can’t let that happen, so she comes up with a plan to save the ring involving cunning, deception, and Agnes’s horrible, horrible gravy. Dotty sets her plan in motion and ... then the wheels come off the bus.

Because when is Thanksgiving ever a simple holiday where everything works smoothly?

You can read all about Dotty and Agnes and the world’s worst gravy in my newest short story “Biscuits, Carats, and Gravy,” which appears in Untreed Read’s anthology The Killer Wore Cranberry. The book has nine humorous short mysteries, each involving a Thanksgiving food.

It’s a perfect read, especially this week.

The anthology is available solely as an e-book, so you can download it right now from all the online stores onto any e-reader, or you can download it as a PDF onto your computer. And if you prefer your short stories a la carte, no problem: each story can be purchased individually, too.
So if your family becomes a little too much to bear this week, just download this book and in a couple minutes you can be laughing—and getting some ideas for making your own family’s feast more ... interesting. But keep in mind that this is all for fun and enjoyment. I’m not actually promoting any crimes. Really, I’m not. I promise!

Happy Thanksgiving!

***

Barb Goffman is a short-story mystery author whose work tends to focus on families. Twice nominated for the Agatha Award, Barb is a member of the national board of Sisters in Crime, is a co-coordinating editor of Chesapeake Crimes: They Had It Comin’ and the forthcoming Chesapeake Crimes: This Job is Murder, and is program chair of the Malice Domestic mystery convention. She lives in Virginia. You can learn more about her at http://www.barbgoffman.com.

Write What You Know

New writers are often told: Write what you know. By doing so, you’ll gets the details right. The feel right. And you won’t have to spend all your time on research. Sounds like good advice ... until you actually get published. And then, if you’ve done your job well, people think that everything you wrote must have actually happened to you. So let me take this opportunity, dear readers, to remind you:

IT’S FICTION!

I write short stories. My first published story, in Chesapeake Crimes II, involved a woman who compulsively washed her hands because her mother had ingrained that behavior in her. After the story came out, my dad, who had lived with my mom and me all my life until I left for college—so he clearly should have known better—actually called me and said with concern in his voice, “Did Mommy really make you wash your hands all the time?”

IT’S FICTION!

My second short story, in Chesapeake Crimes 3, was about a woman who finally took revenge on her husband after a thirty-year-long abusive marriage. Have I ever been married? Nooo. Did that stop people I know from asking me, “Did that really happen to you?”

Oh my Lord. Fiction!

I guess I should be happy for the questions. It means that not only have people been reading my stories but that the stories feel so real that folks think I must be writing from firsthand knowledge. But I have to say, it gets a little disconcerting when your own family members think you’ve based unflattering characters on them.

My most recent story, “The Worst Noel,” appears in an anthology called The Gift of Murder. It’s about a woman, Gwen, who is the less-favored child in her family. Her older sister was always prettier, thinner, more popular. And no matter what she does, Gwen can’t seem to get anything right in her mother’s eyes. Then the holidays come, there’s a little too much family togetherness, and Gwen decides she’s had way more than enough. She takes matters into her own hands, and the ensuing Christmas Eve dinner will be one her family never forgets. It’s a fun story that plays upon the idea that the holidays are supposed to be magical, but for many people, they’re just one long nightmare to slog through.

So The Gift of Murder was published in October, and the questions and comments began. “Boy, you must really hate your sister.” And “Was your mother really like that?” My real sister is certain I based the horrible older sister on her. (I swear I didn’t.) My dad said he “recognized” the father in the tale.

Sigh. Oh well. At least I call fall back on that old saw: It’s fiction! (Even if I did base the story a little bit on personal experience.)

I hope your holidays are better than Gwen’s. And if you like short stories, or know others who do, I recommend you pick up a copy of The Gift of Murder for yourself, and several more for your friends and family as holiday gifts. Edited by John Floyd, it has 19 stories from some great authors. All involve crime at the holidays (so festive!). You can order it from your favorite indie bookstore, the major chains, and directly from the publisher via The Gift of Murder. You can also get it on Kindle or via other digital means through The Digital Bookshop.

Still on the fence? Here’s the best part: The publisher, Wolfmont Press, is donating all the profits from the book to Toys for Tots. This is the fourth year Wolfmont is engaging in this charitable event. So picking up this book is like two gifts in one: You get to enjoy the book, and you get to help needy kids at the same time. And that, my friends, is not fiction.

As my gift to you, I’m going to raffle off one signed copy of The Gift of Murder. But it’s not quite that simple. To enter, you have to tell us an interesting or funny holiday story from your past. Everyone who comments with a story before midnight tonight (November 30th) will have their names thrown in a hat, and the winner will get the book. So here’s your chance: Write what you know!
* * *

Barb Goffman is an Agatha Award-nominated author who toils as a lawyer by day to pay the vet bills at night for her miracle dog, Scout. (He had cancer three times, but now he’s cured!) She grew up on Long Island but figures she must have been Southern in another life because half the voices she hears in her head—oops, sorry, half the characters she creates—are Southern. In addition to the short stories mentioned above, Barb will have a new story coming out this spring in the anthology Chesapeake Crimes: They Had It Comin’, a wonderful book with twenty tales of murder and revenge. Barb’s website is http://www.barbgoffman.com/.

How Do You Grow Your Series?

On Saturday, I attended my first meeting of the Chesapeake Chapter of Sisters in Crime. Donna Andrews was kind enough to drive, and she brought along her neighbor, the superb Barb Goffman, Program Chair for Malice. We picked up Sandra Parshall en route.

I’m thrilled to belong to a chapter with so many multi-published authors. There’s so much to learn from them. For example, chapter member Marcia Talley (the national president of Sisters in Crime) spoke at the meeting about her most recent novel Without a Grave. She decided on the setting in the Bahamas and her protagonist’s temporary job (communicating with the other islanders by radio) as a way to avoid the dreaded “Cabot Cove Syndrome.” That’s author-speak for the unfortunate fact that anyone who lived within spitting distance of Jessica Fletcher always wound up dead!

That made me think about Kiki Lowenstein, and the deaths/crimes in my novels. I’ve spent a good part of today, Sunday, thinking how I can artfully manage to have people die—and to have Kiki care about these deaths—without knocking off everyone in her immediate zip code. In part, we authors have a contract with our readers. You KNOW we’re going to bump people off. It’s our job. But that doesn’t mean we can’t be thoughtful about who, what, when, where and why.

After the meeting, we were getting on the elevator, and Donna said something about a scene and how it occurred to her. That scene set the direction for the book she just turned in. “So that’s how you work?” I asked. “You get flashes of insight?”

“Sometimes.”

I turned to Sandra Parshall and asked her how she works. Sandra says she sits down to write and sees what she gets. Her process is more organic.

All this was wonderful, powerful stuff to consider. After all, Sandra and Donna have both won Agatha Awards. Marcia has been an Agatha Award nominee and received the Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award for Best Contemporary Mystery.

My editor told me last week that Midnight Ink is interested in more Kiki Lowenstein books, and I’m the type of writer who likes to work ahead. (I’m 47,000 words into Book #4 and it isn’t due until March 2010.) So, while I have a character arc (a trajectory of personal growth) for Kiki, today was a day for thinking ahead to future books.

But this morning, I just couldn’t get my brain to function. Finally, seeing what a lovely fall day it was, I took the dogs for a long walk to the local dog park. After being jumped on by a pit bull, my head cleared. (Maybe a Chihauhau would have had the same effect. Who knows? I guess I owe that pit bull a debt of gratitude.)

How do I plan my books?

I start with what I know. I know where I think each important character is heading in his/her life. I know what special events/places/activities in St. Louis I want to feature. I have a file of interesting “stuff.” I have ideas about why people would kill each other.

And I also consider the timing issue. I want each book to move Kiki and her daughter Anya’s lives along…slowly. I put that all in my mental hopper.

By the time I turned the key in the lock of the front door, I was ready to write.