Show notes
Nell Goddin’s mystery series set in a small French village reflects her dream life. If she can’t inhabit it in the real world, like her readers, she can live in it through her books.
Hi there I’m your host Jenny Wheeler and today Nell talks about what’s so special about French village life and why indie publishing is the only way to go as far as she’s concerned.
Six things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode:
What Nell loves about writing a series
How a childhood holiday sparked a life long affection
Her passion for mysteries
Why self publishing works for her
The writers she admires most
What she’d do differently second time around
Where to find Nell Goddin:
Website: http://www.nellgoddin.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nellgoddinauthor/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/nellgoddin
What follows is a “near as” transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions.
Jenny: But now here’s Nell. Hello there Nell and welcome to the show, it’s great to have you with us…
Nell: I’m thrilled to be here, thanks so much for inviting me!
Nell Goddin – author
Jenny: Beginning at the beginning – was there a “Once Upon A Time” moment when you decided you wanted to write fiction? And if there was a catalyst, what was it?
Nell: I’m one of those people who wanted to be a writer from the minute I even had any idea that grown ups had jobs. I just wanted to be a writer right from the beginning.
So I as a small child, would tuck a little notebook in my pocket and wander around the neighborhood, peering through people’s windows. And the neighbors would smile and wave at me, and invite me in for a lemonade or something!
This was not what I wanted, because I was spying on them and was trying to find out the behind the scenes story. I was a big reader from early on, and really it’s the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do. I’ve done other jobs, lots other jobs. I’ve taught for a long time, and I liked being a teacher, but writing is really for me.
Jenny: I love the picture of you as a little girl poking around the neighborhood! You’re either going to be a writer or a great investigative journalist!
Nell: That’s right!
Jenny: And why choose the mystery genre – and set in a small French village?
Nell: I chose the mystery genre, because I loved mysteries since I was very young as well. I started reading Trixie Belden and Nancy Drew, and I love them. Really, when you’re at a certain age, mysteries are what is most on offer. But when I got to Agatha Christie; those really blew me away. And I think one of the reasons I liked them so much was that I was an American kid, but I was getting to go to a different country while I was solving those mysteries.
I was getting to go to little English villages which I’d never seen before in my life – it was a fascinating world to me. And so when I went to write my own mystery, I thought well how can I do the same thing? I will open up a different world to people. Also as an aside, I love France so much. That I get to write and I get to imagine me living in this village, it gives me a lot of pleasure.
“I just love French village life.” – Nell Goddin.
Jenny: Tell us a bit more about your own affection for France – when did you first fall in love with all things French?
Nell: When I was eleven, my mum took the family to Europe for the summer. So we’d never been before- she had never been before. So my father had to stay behind and work for most of the trip, but he joined us at a certain point.
We stopped in Italy first, and I was gobsmacked at how fantastic Italy was. When we got to France, it was the same thing. I felt, (I don’t want to sound too mystical about it) at eleven years old, I had come to where I belonged.
I thought the food was unbelievable – I just had never eaten anything like that. I thought everything was really beautiful, I loved the cathedrals and I just loved everything about it. It seemed to me that my life back in Richmond, Virginia, was the most hum drum and boring thing. I just really wanted to be in France, so I tried to get back as much as I could.
Jenny: Fantastic. Just as a little aside – do you have any hint that there might be some French ancestry in your past?
Nell: Yes. It’s pretty far back. The Goddins were the Godeau from France, they left England quite a while ago and then went to America early on. I don’t really know much about that branch of the family.
Jenny: Is there a chance they might have been Huguenots?
Nell: Maybe, yes.
Jenny: A lot of the French that left France were driven out by religious persecution. I don’t think French people often voluntarily leave their homeland – they’ve got quite a passion for their homeland, haven’t they!
Nell: Indeed. And a lot of that was happening in that same region of France, where I lived for a year.
Murder on Vacation – Molly Sutton #6
Jenny: You’re now up to I think Number Nine in your Molly Sutton series – did you always have a series in mind when you started?
Nell: I definitely did start with a series in mind. I was planning to self publish these books all along, and so I was joining Facebook groups with other writers, and everybody was talking about the best way to do this.
People said keen mystery readers love a series. I thought- that seems like a good thing for a writer too, because you get to get so much deeper into the world. If you do a stand alone book, you’re in and out. You don’t really get the same kind of depth I don’t think, you don’t get to know the characters as well because you’re just not spending as much time with them.
So I first thought it would be a nine book series, but then when I got into I realized it was going to be longer than that. Now, I don’t really know how long it’s going to be. I have plans for what happens in future books, but those plans are pretty vague. A couple of big things, but I don’t really know how long it will go.
Jenny: Sure. Have you got plans for any other series or any other books?
Nell: Well I am thinking of doing another series. It’s helpful to take breaks from doing Molly. I did a bunch of them fully on in the beginning, but it helps if I do other things and then come back to it. I’m trying to figure out; I would like to make this other world some place that I’m really interested in, and some place I can get my readers interested in. I haven’t really quite decided.
One thing I’m considering is doing something set in the Middle Ages. I’m a little nervous about all the research. You have to really feel like you’re living in that time. It’s not good enough to just pick up a couple of details and throw them in. You have to be able to imagine yourself there. I think that would be really fun to do, but I’m not altogether positive I can pull it off. But I’ll try.
Jenny: Your lead character Molly Sutton is recently divorced, living in a small French village operating a gite (a French equivalent of bed and breakfast or ‘Air Bnb.’ Ed note) – how much of Nell do we see in Molly . . .?
Nell: Probably a lot! But I’d also have to say that I’m in all of the characters, even the really terrible ones. She’s living a life that I think would be really dreamy. I think having a gite business like that would be so much fun. To have new people coming in all the time, and interesting stories; you can sit and share a glass of wine with them. I think that would be fun. And it would probably be fun to be solving murders too, especially if you had a nice, hot partner to do it with!
Bergerac, Dordogne. “Time to talk” is one of the nice things about French village life
Jenny: Can you pin down what it is that makes French village life so appealing?
Nell: One of the things that really struck me in the year that we were living in this little village, was how accepting people were. The United States can sometimes feel like the most competitive, rushed place. Everybody is trying to get where they need to be, and proving themselves, and they need to be winning at something. You know, there’s a lot of that kind of pressure. I don’t live in a big city, but it’s still like that.
In that little French Village, it was not like that at all. People wanted to spend time with each other, they wanted to spend a lot of time talking, they were very accepting. So if somebody was a little bit quirky, or a little bit odd, that was just part of their charm. It wasn’t something to be whispering about them.
I thought it was a very welcoming and very interesting, that. Just as an example, as I had children then: in the United States, if somebody was bringing their children over to play with my children, they would pretty much just pull up, throw out the kid and go. But in France, you would never do that! You would come in, have coffee together, you would talk about all kinds of things. Everything was slow, in the best sort of way. I hope I can get that across a little bit in my books.
Murder For Love Molly Sutton #4
Jenny: I saw mention that you were also writing a standalone crime/suspense novel. Is that still a work in progress?
Nell: I’ve published it, but it’s not under my name. It’s under Cornelia Goddin instead of Nell Goddin, and the reason for that is it’s quite a lot different from Molly Sutton. It’s dark, the people in it are awful. Molly is on the lighter side, and the warmer side. This other book is not like that. A lot of my readers like those qualities of Molly, some of them like both but not everybody. I wanted them to be clear.
Jenny: Would you consider Molly a cozy mystery series?
Nell: I guess. The genre is a little bit complicated now, because there’s so many different kinds. There are cozy mysteries that are quite a bit lighter than mine, the ones that have cartoons on the cover. Those aren’t really so much like Molly, but Molly is not really like crime books either. It’s just somewhere on the spectrum in there.
Jenny: I think it does have that aspect that a lot of cozies do; having a defined world, often a small town, but very much a defined world that people like to inhabit in every book, don’t they.
Nell: Yes, I think they definitely do.
Turning from specific books to wider look at your career-
Jenny: Your author biog sounds delightfully varied You’ve been a radio reporter, SAT tutor, short-order omelet chef, and baker. I especially like “tried waitressing but was fired twice.” I guess its just as well you discovered writing – but seriously – have those previous experiences helped your writing?
Nell: Well anytime you get experience doing anything, it helps with writing. And so I know what it’s like to work in a restaurant, even though I was terrible at it. I know what it’s like to work in an office, and to be a reporter. I mean I didn’t get into any of these things very deeply, but I did enough so that I have an idea of how it works.
Writers- they have sort of a congenital wish to just stay inside and read books and work on their things. But really, the more they get out in the world, the better. Then you have more things you can write about. So all of that work experience happened when I was pretty young. I settled into teaching and did that for a really long time. But it’s too bad in a way, because I’m sure if I had a lot of jobs that would give more depth to my writing as well.
Jenny: It sounds like you had a very sharp and business-like grasp to the publishing industry when you went into writing, that you had quite a strong platform to move from and that’s probably an advantage from doing those wide range of jobs. Particularly perhaps being a reporter.
Nell: Yes, and I also went to graduate school for fiction writing. So I had a lot of writing experience. I had written a lot of stories, a couple of novels that never saw the light of day blessedly. I had done a lot of practice.
Périgueux cheese shop: A food lover’s heaven.
Jenny: If your readers wanted to go on a French holiday and discover “Molly Sutton Country” where would you suggest they go?
Nell: I would say Bergerac. I mention it in my books every once in a while. I also mention Périgueux which is straight north of Bergerac. It’s a small city- it’s quite lovely if you like wine, there’s plenty of wine around there. There’s the best food. All the food that I write about constantly is so good – the duck, the truffles. And the thing that I really love is you can do something like go into a truck stop on the highway and get a four course meal that is delicious. I can tell you in America, that is not the case! You try to buy a meal in a truck stop and it will not generally be very good.
Jenny: Has this passion actually influenced your own kitchen activities? Are you a keen cook as well?
Nell: I do do a lot of cooking. Sometimes I get busy and I don’t do as much as I really want to. I do that thing where if my children are out, it’s hard to get motivated to make something if I’m by myself. I’ll be at the counter eating cheese or something! I do quite like to cook.
Jenny: Do you cook French a lot?
Nell: I do! I’ve sort of learned how to make sauces, and definitely I make a lot of omelettes because that’s so easy. There’s a particular salad dressing that anybody who has been to France knows what that flavor is. If you order a salad in a restaurant, it’s a sort of vinegary, mustardy dressing so I’ve figured that out. I eat that all the time too – I’m pretending to be in France!
Jenny: It’s sometimes said writers tend to write the same story in different guises. Do you agree with that idea and have you discovered what that story is for you?
Nell: I think that’s all often true of writers. Often there’s something in them- some thought, event, or something that they’re working over in their minds and it keeps coming up in their stories. I think for me, it’s this idea that behind the surface of people, there’s something else. People will have a secret life and sometimes that secret life is a perfectly harmless “nothing”. They’re obsessed about something, and they keep that private and don’t talk about it.
But sometimes it’s something darker and violent. So I think what I write and think about a lot is what’s behind the surface. I think that’s when I was a little kid running around my neighborhood peeking in people’s windows – I wanted to see what people were really doing. Not when they invite company over and everybody’s being polite, but what are they doing when they’re by themselves? I didn’t ever see anything in the least bit interesting! I was so hoping I would find something!
Jenny: That sounds amazing- it links back very well with the little girl who peeked in windows doesn’t it?
Nell: It does!
Jenny: The series is called “The Joys of Binge Reading” because I see it as providing inspiration for people who like to read series . . . .So – turning to your taste in fiction, who do you “binge read”?
Nell: Right now, I’m just starting to re read some Alan Furst books. I love that World War II time period so much. I wish that I had those research skills to be able to write about that time, because I think people were living dramatically back then.
They were living in some little village, living this everyday sort of life, and then all of a sudden the Nazis are in there. They’ve got to decide- are they going to hide the little child or not? They had big, big moments they had to deal within make decisions about. I think all of us who weren’t there wonder; we don’t really know what we might have done. I think it would be a really fascinating time period to write about. I don’t think I could really do it justice.
Another writer that I really, really love who I think has written one of the best series in the world, is Patrick O’Brian. He wrote a series- and this is not going to sound that great- of Napoleonic sea tales. My older brother told me about him, and when he said Napoleonic sea tales I said “well that doesn’t really sound that great”. But it is really great!
It’s these sailors in the British Navy and they go all over the world, they go on these adventures and I think there’s 21 books in the series, so you get to know everybody very well. I’ve read that series I think two or three times, and I’m sure I will keep going back to it.
Jenny: Gosh that’s amazing! I have heard of him – when you mentioned his name, I immediately thought of naval stories. I have the same reaction that you did – probably not my cup of tea.
Nell: You do have to get to the second book, because the first book is sort of an adventure tale, and it has an exciting chase in the sea with big ships. You’re sort of like – ok, that was fine. But when you get into the second book, that’s when he starts to develop relationships. Really, that’s when the women come in. It gets so good, and he’s amazing at writing the most loveable characters. You’ll just fall for them.
Patrick O’Brian a favorite author.
Jenny: So they’re both really well established authors; is there anyone in the newer published that’s taken your notice?
Nell: Not off the top of my head. I think there are, but I’m just not thinking of them.
Jenny: Do you have much to do with writer organisations? Have you been a member of the mystery groups and those sorts of things?
Nell: I’ a member of NINC, which is Novelists Inc.. We have a big conference in Florida at the end of this month actually. It’s very exciting- I go down on Wednesday, and stay all the way till Sunday. It’s really fun. You do a lot of carousing and a lot of hard work, going to various lectures on things.
Jenny: And that’s a wide genre group?
Nell: It’s all genres. There’s a lot of romance there, probably because romance is so big. But there are plenty of mystery writers there as well. The really successful writers are always ready to help with the ones who are coming along, which is really lovely.
Jenny: And did you embark on self publishing- is that what you’ve done?
Nell: Yes, and it was a great decision I think. Traditional publishing is too slow, and honestly I can make a living now because I’m self publishing. If I were traditionally published, I would never be able to make a living. I would have to have a second job, and then I’d be so slow getting the books out if I was having to work a different job at the same time. It is a lot of work figuring out how to market things, and format them but it’s sort of fun- and I can do it in my pyjamas!
Circling around from beginning to end
Jenny: At this stage in your career, If you were setting up all over again, what if anything would you change?
Nell: I think I would, with the very first book, not hurry so much. I was a little bit smitten with the idea that I get to pull the trigger whenever I want, I’m in control of everything and that I wrote the book and gave it to people to read. I got an editor to look it over, and I just rushed it out and started writing the next book.
In retrospect, I think most people will agree that my mystery writing improves as I go along. The first book, the mystery part of it is not as strong as I think it gets later. I think if I had just been a little more patient, like let it sit for two weeks and then come back, I could have made that a better book.
Jenny: What is next for Nell the writer – projects under development
Nell: Well I just had a terrible failure. I wrote a long book that I was trying to use this particular structure and plan it out in advance. It turns out that is not a good fit for me, because when I got to the end of the book, it just really didn’t work. I couldn’t really tell as I was doing it, so I put it aside and then I reread it and thought no, this isn’t working.
It may be that I can take it apart and throw the bad parts out and make it into something else. I really subscribe to the idea that your failures are helpful, so I think I learnt things. One thing – don’t get too excited about outlines. I just need to let things flow a bit more easily than that, and outlines just deaden everything for me.
I’m in the middle of Molly “nine” right now, and that’s going really well; I’m excited about that. And I think I’m going to be writing Molly ten right after Molly nine, so that book shouldn’t be long either. Then after that, I might give the Medieval mystery a try and see how that goes.
Jenny: Oh, fantastic! Do you get back to France every year?
Nell: No, unfortunately. Last year I went twice, it just sort of worked out that way. This year I haven’t been at all, and I don’t really know when I’m going next. But I’m starting to think about it.
Jenny: And the Medieval mystery- will that be set in France?
Nell: I think it will be. I sort of thought maybe I should try going some place else. I’ve been to England, but I don’t know it the same way. It would probably just make sense for me to do it in France. Plus, you get the excuse of getting to go and do research in person.
Jenny: We’re coming to an end of our time together. Where can readers find you online…
Nell: I do like to engage with my readers. Probably the best place is on Facebook, I have a Nell Goddin Author Facebook page. That’s probably the best place to get me.
Jenny: That’s fantastic. We’ll look forward to more Molly’s and maybe a Medieval mystery coming up. It’s been wonderful to talk to you.
Nell: Thank you so much Jenny.
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