By WILL PERKINS
Glasgow News 1
Peggy Goodman signed copies of her new novel “Secrets of the Hugging Tree” last Friday at the South Central Kentucky Cultural Center.
Many in the area may know Goodman from her time as an educator, but she has been writing books since 2017, authoring 10 children’s titles and now two full-length novels.
Goodman said she never planned to become an author after teaching.
“When you retire, you kind of look around for things to do,” she said in a recent interview with WCLU Radio. “You get interested in things, and you start delving in and seeing what this is about and what that’s about.
“Then pretty soon you’re into something that you really didn’t plan on doing.”
The author said writing is a great way for her to be creative. She described her latest novel as “part fictional romance,” and “part cold case murder mystery” set in Fountain Run, Kentucky.
“They tell writers to write about what you know,” Goodman said. “And I know about what it’s like to grow up in a small town and live on a farm and do all the things that our main character in the book did.”
While the places are real and the story includes some historical facts, she said “the people are fiction.”
During Friday’s event, Goodman also signed her two new children’s books: “The Gym Rats” and “Max and George’s Big Adventure.” The first follows a family of mice living under high school bleachers. The second is about two dogs on a nighttime jeep adventure with barnyard friends.
Listen to Peggy Goodman’s full interview with WCLU’s Todd Steenbergen below:
