Elizabeth Goddard was an avid reader from a very young age and always longed to write, but it wasn’t until she had her first child at age 29 that she resigned from corporate America and finally answered the call of her heart. She started the long and arduous road to publication. Elizabeth chose the traditional route and attended writing conferences for years until she was finally published. With her latest Missing in Alaska series, Elizabeth has found her stride with action and adventure romantic suspense novels set in stunning locations.

Now, she’s the USA Today bestselling and award-winning author of more than sixty novels, including Christy Award winner Cold Light of Day and Shadows at Dusk, as well as the Rocky Mountain Courage and Uncommon Justice series. Her books have sold nearly 1.5 million copies. She is a Carol Award and Reader’s Choice Award winner and a Daphne du Maurier Award and HOLT Medallion finalist. When she’s not writing, she loves spending time with her family, traveling to find inspiration for her next book, and serving with her husband in ministry.

You can learn more about her books at www.ElizabethGoddard.com where you can subscribe to her newsletter, and you can follow her on her Amazon page.

Get your copy of HIDDEN IN THE NIGHT, the last installment of Missing in Alaska, today!

A little about today's host-

Shawna Rodrigues left her award-winning career in the public sector in 2019 to consult and publish her first novel Beyond the Pear Blossoms. Her desire to connect and help others led to the launch of her podcast The Grit Show shortly thereafter. When she learned women host only 27% of podcasts, her skills and passion led to the founding of the Authentic Connections Network. She now helps mission-driven entrepreneurs better connect with their audiences by providing full-service podcast production and through a community for Entrepreneurs & Podcasters – EPAC. Podcasting is her primary focus, so she continues to support the writing community through this podcast, and her writing time is mostly focused on anthologies.

She offers a free 7 Steps to Perfect Your Podcast Title to anyone interested in launching a podcast. You can also follow her on Instagram-@ShawnaPodcasts, and learn more about the network and community at https://linktr.ee/37by27.

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Welcome to Author Express. Thanks for checking us out. This is the podcast where you give us 15 minutes of your time, and we give you a chance to hear the voice behind the pages and get to know your new favorite author in a new light. I'm Shawna Rodrigues, one of your hosts, a fellow author, host of The Grit Show and Authenticity Amplified Podcast, and the founder of Authentic Connections Podcast Network, which makes this podcast possible. Let me tell you a little about today's guest. Elizabeth Goddard is the USA Today best selling and award winning author of more than 60. I did say 60, 60 novels, including Christie Ward winner, Cold Light of Day and Shadows at Dusk. She has always loved both reading and writing romantic suspense novels set in stunning locations.

The perfect backdrop for unputdownable action adventure thrillers. Review site, Life of Story, put it this way, when I pick up a Goddard novel, I do not put it down if I do not have to. And, I can't wait to inhale what more Goddard's mixing in her imagination. So, definitely an imagination we're gonna enjoy getting to know. Thank you so much for being here with us today, Elizabeth.

Well, thank you for inviting me. I'm excited to be here.

Yes. So the first question we always start with with our authors is, tell us the most interesting thing about where you are from.

Well, I am a 7th generation Texan on both sides of my family. And, Texas is such a great state. I grew up in the small town of Kilgore, Texas, where they had what was called the world's richest acre at one point in history. It's where all the most of the oil was drilled from, this one little acre. And I have since moved to and lived to many states, and I actually currently live in Washington. And so I very much miss Texas. And we recently I haven't been back in 10 years, except for this, the month of February. We went back for 2 weeks, and I missed it so much.

It's such a great state. And it was funny because the Texas flag was flying everywhere. And I told my husband, I said, what is the Washington state flag? I don't even know what that is. And he just laughed. He says, you know, Texas just has a lot of pride. There's there's state flag everywhere. Anyway, it was 6 different country flags and then a country of its own. So it's just a really to me, it's a great state and a great place to be.

I do live in Washington now, which I very much love. It's very beautiful, so I don't mean to make it sound like I'm partial to Texas, but I kinda am.

Yes. And that is so exciting that you've had 7 generations on both sides of your family. That's a long history. It's been through a lot of those shifts and changes with all the different places trying to take ownership of Texas. So and to further our conversation, let's go back to your growing up in Texas. Can you tell us about your best friend growing up?

I remember 1st grade. This is gonna sound so funny, but in 1st grade, 1st day of school, this girl with these, you know, little curls turned around to say hi, and I said, hi. You wanna be friends? What's that? Her name was Kaye. And so, yes, we were best friends growing up. I moved away, I think, in 10th grade, and I met another best friend named Kaye. And what was so interesting about that is both the mothers had the same name, and their sisters had the same name, and they all drove the same cars. I that's I know that's just kinda it's so weird. It doesn't make sense.

I don't know. I don't think I intentionally, you know, picked my best friend, MK, but it was just really weird. That's always just I just thought that's the strangest thing always. I still keep in touch with both k's. I have over the many years and many decades.

What a strange thing with the commonalities with their siblings and moms.

You know, the 2ks each had the same kind of car and their sisters, Kim, both of their sisters were named Kim and had the same kind of cars. I don't know. I mean, who knows what is going on in the universe for these things to line up this way? So it's just a weird anomaly.

So have the k's ever met each other?

No. They haven't. So well, you know, we just all live far away. Everybody's cross country, different places, and and life gets busy and you kinda get busy and move on.

So I'm excited to learn more about your book that is coming out, Hidden in the Night. Can you describe it for us in as short amount as possible, preferably close to a sentence or 2?

Okay. Yeah. Well, let me just, say that it is the 3rd book in my Missing in Alaska series. But the book is about Ivy Elliott, who is a former FBI agent, and she's on a mission to find a lost Jack London manuscript. But her task shifts to the search for a missing young woman who had previously been trafficked. And in finding her, Ivy hopes to forgive herself for the role she played in the loss of her sister. She joins up with Alaska state tripper Nolan Long in pursuit of answers that will cause them to face their demons of the past while unearthing the truth behind the decades old mystery found beneath the ice.

Oh. So ice is definitely important. Can you tell us more about how, in this whole series, how setting plays a role that's the backdrop for this?

Most of all of my books are are completely and totally inspired by setting. I just think that it needs to play be a character. It needs to be the setting needs to be so strong and interesting and provide so many different avenues for adventure that it can become a character of its own. And Alaska, the land of the lost, the last frontier, to me, is just such a wonderful place to set a story because the police can't just arrive instantly, anytime. And, you know, there's wilderness, and there's sometimes there's no way to contact people. And it's just so many different aspects to the environment that allows me, a romantic suspense adventure writer, to create a story. And I've had so many readers say that the that the setting is a character itself in my stories. But not only do I have villains and suspense plot, and romance plot, plot, I have the setting to add the tension.

You know, all the different things that can happen in Alaska will happen to my characters. And I really loved, in this story, using Glacier Bay National Park and Reserve. It was a different place than I've used. I've I've set most of the series in southeast Alaska, which is not mainland Alaska. It's different. And I especially liked bringing in a lot of glacier caves, and ice, and blizzards, and everything I could in this last story in this series. So the setting, I don't know. I just love God's creation.

It just inspires me so much. And I especially made a point of bringing in the Aurora borealis, the northern lights, and the story, and it just has such a a perfect moment in the book. So

That's that's amazing. That's definitely why we brought that up. So with 60 books, do you often change your setting in your books? Obviously, you have series, but do you bring that element? It changes a lot then in your books.

It's funny that being from Texas, I haven't said any books in Texas. And the truth is, I was living in Louisiana. Remember, I said I had moved quite a bit. And it was so hot. And I was actually working on a proposal set in Texas, and I'm just like, oh, it's just so hot. I can't take it. So I think I'm gonna try to set a story in Alaska. Now this is another series I wrote set in Alaska many years ago, and it's because of that series that I came up with the idea for this series, Missing Alaska, all these years later.

But I just started writing stories set in the Pacific Northwest. I had lived in Oregon briefly. I went to the Rocky Mountains with, a couple of my series with 10 in Wyoming, but it's really mostly gonna be mountains, and snow, and rocky coast, and just beautiful settings like that. But I could see myself setting, a story on a Caribbean island or in the desert, you know, anything to change it up, because I think every place has its beauty to offer. But for the last several series, I have been really set in the mountains or, again, in the Pacific Northwest because it's so beautiful and inspires me.

Yeah. That is incredible, especially when it is that additional character. And I do. After this last trip to Texas, though, I don't know. Texas might just work its way back in. Right? Yeah. Exactly. Exactly.

There's many more books to write. Exactly. And you've had such a writing journey. It's incredible that you've written 60 books. Can you tell us more about what part of the writing journey has brought you the most joy over that time?

It's interesting because you you say writing journey. When I look back, the thing that I actually kind of miss the most, really, is going to the conferences. And I used to go to a conference every year, and there was all this anticipation. Will I be published or will I not be published? You know, and meeting with the agents, and meeting with the editors, and and just getting together with my friends and brainstorming. And that is the best part of the journey to me. You know? It's kinda like when you're expecting a baby and you're decorating the nursery. The fun part is decorating the nursery. I don't know how I just put those 2 together, but, really, that is a huge part of the joy for me.

It's just the people I met along the way and the friendships and all of that. I have my best friends are writers that that I met 20 plus years ago. You know? And we talk every day. I think that that's probably the most important of anybody's journey in life.

Oh, that's beautiful. I love that. That's a beautiful thing to share. So as we're getting ready to kind of wind things up, what is the best place for people to be able to connect with you and follow you?

Well, I have a website, elizabethgoddard dotcom, but I am very active on Facebook. I have an author fan page, and that is facebook.comelizabethgoddardauthor.com, and then Instagram, same thing. So readers can find me there.

Oh, good. Well, that stuff should all be in the show notes so people can definitely make sure there's an easy way to connect with you. And then what is, for you, the most inspiration or one of the more inspirational books or stories that you've found along the way?

It's so hard to to name one story because I read voraciously, and most of the things that I find inspiration are the things that I'm reading today, or last week. But I think, overall, with the genre that I write in, romantic suspense, that I think gothic romance that I read growing up, Victoria Holt, I remember Whitney Phillisait Whitney, Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca. All of those kind of stories really inspired me to write what I write today. Now, I don't I don't tend to write gothic stories, but I say that. But I the story I'm writing right now has got an old mansion on top of a cliff with waves crashing against rocks. So, you know, I carry that with me wherever I go. So I just kinda find those authors to be the most inspiring to me in the books that they've written. And they're with me, and they stay with me no matter how many books I've read in all these decades.

That's great that that's stuck with you in a way that's been impactful in your writing, and you found your home in it at an early point in life. You know? Well, thank you so much for being with us today, Elizabeth. It's wonderful to get a chance to hear some of your stories, learn about your k's, and the importance of studying in your writing. I appreciate you sharing with us today. Thank you for joining us. I hope you take a second to give a stars or a review on your favorite podcasting platform. It really makes a difference in folks being able to find us. We'll be here again next Wednesday.

Follow us on Instagram @authorexpresspodcast to see who's coming up next. And don't forget, keep it express, but keep it interesting.