Every year when January rolls around, our volunteer team looks for an inspirational author to keynote the Southwest Washington Writers Conference at Centralia College in September, and this year we didn’t need to look far.
Elizabeth Goddard, a USA Today bestselling and award-winning author of nearly 60 novels who has sold 1.5 million copies of her books, moved in 2021 from Michigan to Centralia, where her husband, Dan Goddard, serves as a pastor at Cooks Hill Community Church.
“We love the Pacific Northwest,” she said. “When I was traveling in my 20s for my corporate America job, Seattle was my favorite place. Being a Texas girl, I remember the first time I got in my rental car and I’m driving around looking at Christmas trees everywhere.”
Elizabeth, a winner of the Carol Award and Reader’s Choice Award and a finalist for the Daphne du Maurier Award, is living among fans of her romantic suspense novels, as I saw during our interview at Fiddlers Coffee in Centralia.
Sharon Blumenthal, of Centralia, stopped by to ask Elizabeth how to sign up for her readers’ group, describing the author’s novels as “awesome.”
“I love them,” she said. “They’re very clean. They’re nice, and there’s lots of tension. I don’t want to put them down. I wish they were thicker.”
Bumping into fans doesn’t happen often, Elizabeth said, primarily because she spends so much time writing at least three books a year. And teaching, which she’ll do Saturday, Sept. 9, at Centralia College during the ninth annual Southwest Washington Writers Conference. She’ll present a keynote, “Long Story Short: My Journey to Publishing Success” and two workshops, “The Well-Trained Author: Supercharge Your Brain to Generate Great Ideas” and “You Need Killer Instincts to Write Romantic Suspense.” The Saturday conference offers a selection of 24 workshops, plus Friday master classes on editing manuscripts and writing personal essays for magazines and newspapers. To register, visit www.southwestwashingtonwriters.com.
Growing up near Kilgore in oil-rich East Texas with a younger brother, seventh-generation Texans on both sides of their family, Elizabeth belonged to the Daughters of the Republic of Texas — at least while her grandmother was still alive — and enjoyed reading Gothic suspense and mysteries.
“I felt called to write at a very young age,” she said.
In fact, she penned 25 pages of a romance novel as a teenager and wanted to write historical fiction.
But after graduating from White Oak High School in 1981, she was interested in marine biology until scuba diving in college, when she decided to study computer science to support herself. She earned her bachelor’s degree in 1986 from North Texas State, now called the University of North Texas.
She worked seven years for Image Sciences, first as a computer programmer and then in sales and marketing.
“I ended up traveling all over the country and Canada, and it was really fun,” she said. “That’s kind of where I fell in love with Seattle and the Pacific Northwest.”
She met her husband, Dan, in a small church home group. He proposed five weeks after they started dating, and they married in 1989, only four or five months after meeting. Thirty-four years and four children later, they’re still in love.
As a romance writer, she’s fielded comments from people who say the couples in novels married too quickly. She simply looks at her life.
“You know, it totally can happen,” she said.
But not without a few disruptions, such as leaving her Texas homeland, which she described as “like just pulling these giant oak tree roots out of the ground.”
Dan, a Montana native, became a Free Methodist pastor and led a congregation in Oregon. The family moved around quite a bit — to Oregon, Indiana, Minnesota, Michigan and finally in 2019 to Clarkston, Washington, before settling in Centralia two years later. While she writes, her husband is bi-vocational, serving as a pastor and working for Noregon, which provides commercial vehicle diagnostic and repair software and data analytics solutions. They’re building a home on their view property near Oakville.
“Dan actually had lived in the Seattle area as a kid for a while so we kind of have been trying to get this way for decades,” Elizabeth said.
She was nervous about moving again, but they found a rental home across from the Free Methodist Church where Dan serves. “It just felt like that was totally God,” she said. “You just have to trust the plan.”
Altogether, she has four children — Rachel, Christopher, Jonathan and Andrew. Rachel, the mother of their two grandchildren, moved to Lynnwood north of Seattle in 2020.
It was when Rachel was 1 year old that Elizabeth, at 30, decided to pursue her lifelong dream of writing, but she wasn’t sure how to do it. She ordered Writers’ Digest correspondence courses and, in 2001, attended her first conference, American Christian Writers in Austin. She set up an appointment with DiAnn Mills, who encouraged her to attend the American Christian Romance Writers conference (which later became American Christian Fiction Writers). Elizabeth joined a weekly online critique group with four other writers. One was a harsh editor, so she’d stock up on double chocolate chunk ice cream before digging into her critiques.
“I really feel like that group was such a blessing from God because everyone in there wanted to be published and nobody was, and then fast forward now everybody in there is multi-published,” she said. “A couple of them I really stayed very close friends with, and I’ve talked to every single day. Nobody understands a writer like another writer.”
They gathered together in person at the conferences, where she enjoyed networking, meeting agents and editors, and making new friends.
Her husband worked full time as a pastor for 18 years and supported his wife in her writing endeavors.
She wrote historical fiction until her daughter convinced her to write a story about a dragon, which she submitted to contests with positive results. But nobody wanted to publish it. A couple of her published friends invited her to join in a collection of romance novellas set in Massachusetts. In 2005 she sold her first contemporary romance, Seasons of Love, for Heartsong Presents, which was later acquired by Harlequin. The book was published in December 2006.
“I remember thinking, ‘I don’t know how to write this,’ but I took six weeks to write the manuscript, and Dan would watch the kids and then he would open the door a crack to throw me food,” she said with a grin.
Elizabeth spent years attending conferences to lay the groundwork and network with writers, editors, and agents.
“I think it’s really important to learn to write,” she said. “Everybody just puts their books up, and I don’t think they’re ready. There’s just so much to learn. I don’t know how to kind of convey that gently.”
Some people write to her complaining that her books don’t have enough faith in them. Others say she incorporates too much.
“I am a Christian writer, and I hold the Christian worldview, and I let the Holy Spirit lead me,” she said. “I just let the themes grow organically. Some books are overt; some are subtle. The message is going to be redemptive and have forgiveness in it, no matter what. We need to be reaching out to the world.”
Reading reviews can drive you crazy, she said, after putting your blood, sweat and tears into producing a book.
“We are still insecure, no matter what,” she said. “All of my writing groups, I don’t care what awards they’ve won, you know, it just takes one review or harsh word to knock you out. You’re putting everything out there and a huge chunk of yourself and people are stepping over it. It can be hard.”
When someone noted mystery and suspense in her early novels, Elizabeth moved in that direction, producing romantic suspense series for Heartsong Presents, a Christian imprint. For several years at conferences, she met with literary agent Steve Laube, a former Bethany House editor, and finally he signed with him in 2010.
“He’s very godly, just a s very spiritual man,” she said. “He has taken me places that I wanted to go, but I feel like that was just God opening the door.”
In 2011, she applied to write for Harlequin’s Love Inspired Suspense, which she continues to do.
“I have really found what I feel like is my voice,” she said. “I think it takes many books sometimes for you to figure out what you are as a writer, what your niche is, and what your voice is.”
Elizabeth wrote four Love Inspired books a year, but she still wanted to write full-length novels for commercial or trade publishers. She dreamed of seeing her name in stores on the bookshelves.
And in 2017, she signed a contract with Revell for a novel about a forensic genealogist, Never Let Go.
“It’s really God’s timing,” she said. “I wouldn’t have been ready if I tried sooner. I remember when I did sign with them, I just felt really sick. Now I’m really going to have to do this.”
She writes two Love Inspired Suspense novels, part romance and part suspense, and one full-length book for Revell every year.
Whatever you write, keep in mind that romance is king, her agent Steve Laube told her. It earns money for writers. She enjoys writing suspense, but not dark and gritty serial killer, cartel, or stalker stories, which she described as “just too creepy.”
“I finally decided I write what I write, and I will find my readers,” she said.
With more than 50 novels and novellas published, and 1.5 million copies sold, she’s found an audience.
“I don’t really consider myself a speaker,” she said. “But I like to encourage people. I like to share information and encourage and inspire you.”
Although she maintains friendships with former critique partners, she’s too busy writing to critique others’ work. “The first person to see my manuscript is my editor,” she said.
On her rare perfect writing days, Elizabeth starts with coffee, sorting through emails and social media to wake up her brain, and then dives into writing, often in her comfortable recliner. She’ll write a scene of 1,500 words, do the dishes, write another scene, walk on the treadmill, and, by the end of the day, end up with 5,000 words on her novel and her chores done. But, panic writing of 10,000 words a day under deadline is more the norm, she said. She also juggles preparation for teaching workshops.
“I love my job,” she said. “I couldn’t ask for a better job, and I have flexibility to go and do whatever I need to do so I mean, it’s just wonderful. The challenges are coming up with the stories writing them. And the deadlines are so stressful. I haven’t missed a deadline yet.
“I’m not doing this for the money. It’s just God’s blessing. That’s just gravy.”
Elizabeth also juggles her writing career with other obligations, such as serving as caregiver to her youngest son who developed special needs at 12.
She doesn’t plan to retire either.
“I hope to continue writing until I can’t do it anymore,” she said. “As long as God calls me and the doors are open, I will keep writing the stories.”
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Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo and president of the Southwest Washington Writers Conference, may be reached at chaptersoflife1999@gmail.com. All proceeds from the conference benefit scholarships awarded through the Centralia College Foundation.
