Golden Valley mystery writer is living his childhood dream

You could say novelist Josh Moehling is hot right now.

William Kent Krueger pretty much does say that in a blurb on the cover of Moehling’s new “A Long Time Gone,” his third book featuring small-town Minnesota cop Ben Packard (”One of the best new voices in the mystery genre”). The Golden Valley resident also is betting on himself, having quit his day job at Medtronic right before Christmas. His publisher, Poisoned Pen Press, is sending the writer, 53, on a multi-state book tour to promote his latest (husband Chris Herzig will join him for part of it). They’ve also signed him for four more books.

We spoke with Moehling about idolizing Stephen King, going to jail and whether he’s anything like his dashing hero.

Q: How did you make the decision to become a full-time writer?

A: I had two two-book contracts with Poisoned Pen and I’m writing the fourth book of the second two-book contract now. And they said, “We want to sign you for more books.” We had some negotiations and I signed another three-book contract for books five, six and seven for enough money that I said, “Let’s do this full time.”

Q: In “And There He Kept Her” and “Where the Dead Sleep,” we’ve followed Packard as he solves crimes but also investigates the childhood disappearance of his brother. In fact, “Dead Sleep” ended on a cliffhanger, right?

A: People were not happy with me. They were like, “How long until the next book comes out?” So I knew in the third book I couldn’t stretch it out anymore and I had to deal with what happened to Packard’s brother, but I also knew that story wasn’t enough to carry the whole entire book. So in this book he has time to start looking into his brother and then he stumbles into this case of a neighbor who dies when she supposedly falls down the stairs and then that’s really what drives this book.

Q: TV shows such as “Matlock” that attempt to balance weekly mysteries with an overarching story seem to demonstrate that it’s a tricky balance?

A: My first experience of that was “X Files,” which I watched when it came out. There was always the monster of the week but the overarching thing of the super-soldiers, and the sister who went missing, and they had to sustain that over [many] seasons. They never resolved it satisfactorily. But when I started writing my first book, I had no idea what happened: There was a brother. He disappeared. I’ll figure it out eventually.

Q: … which you did?

A: One editor I messaged with said, “I want Ben Packard to have a personal connection to this small town.” In the early drafts, he just moved [to fictional Sandy Lake] to become a sheriff’s deputy. But when I revised it, it was that he spent summers there and had cousins there and I thought, “Well, why has it been so long since he came back?” The idea was his grandparents had a cabin there but when his brother disappeared, it took all the joy out of that place.

Q: That separates Packard from other mystery protagonists, as does the fact that he’s gay. How did you arrive at that?

A: I sent [the unpublished book written before “And There He Kept Her”] to a bunch of agents and half a dozen requested the full manuscript and half a dozen said it just didn’t work. I don’t know why I had made the sheriff’s deputy in that book gay. He didn’t even have a name. But I kept thinking about it. I couldn’t let it go. So I took that same small town setting, plucked the sheriff’s deputy out of that book and gave him a case to solve in “And There He Kept Her.”

Q: Is Packard at all like you, who’s also gay?

A: I always say that he’s 10 years younger, about 6 inches taller and way better looking. I’m nothing like Ben Packard. Chris just read the third book and he said, “Ben Packard eats all the same food we eat,” and I said, “I don’t have time to meal plan for two families. He can eat what we eat.”

Q: How do you know so much about how Packard and his colleagues work?

A: I attended the Scott County — I think a lot of counties have this — citizens' academy, where you can come in to find out how the department works. I stumbled across this online and I knew I needed to see how a small- or medium-sized department worked. It was like three hours a night, Monday nights, and I did it on Zoom the first time. It was during COVID. Last year, I did it in person and it was 1,000 times better. You get to meet the K-9 handler. You get to go in the ambulance. You get to go in the jail and talk to the deputies in person. It was amazing.

Q: You’ve said becoming a full-time writer was a long time coming?

A: It’s all I ever wanted to be. Most kids have basketball star posters and supermodel posters. I had Stephen King posters from B. Dalton.

Q: And, although you were in your 50s when you published your first book, you wrote all along?

A: I was an English major in college [at University of South Dakota], went to grad school in Mankato. I got half an MFA and dropped out, then I didn’t really write for a long time until I finally said, “Hey, you said this was always your dream. What are you going to do about it?” So I wrote a bad middle-grade novel, I wrote that other novel, and then “And There He Kept Her.” I was writing for about 15 years with nothing to show for it but bad books. But I just kept going.

Q: How did you know all those years ago that you wanted to be a writer?

A: My mom was in the Army, so we moved pretty much every three years. My parents got divorced when we were young — I have a younger brother and a younger sister — so we moved all the time. But everywhere we went, there was a library and it was the first place we went to. I was very much an indoors, bookish kid who lived and breathed books. So it was like, “I want to be a person who tells stories.” I read my first Stephen King book when I was about 11 and he was the first person where I thought, “Writing books is a job people do. Books don’t just show up at the library.”

Q: Has it sunk in that you’re writing full time?

A: Today was my husband’s first day back at work and I was kind of looking around and thinking, “I don’t have a day job anymore. This is my job now.”

Q: Is it as fun as you had hoped?

A: I’m having the time of my life. It’s easy to get lost in the grind of it but every once in a while I stop and think, “You accomplished this dream you had your entire life.” A few years ago, I was an aspiring author and now I’m about to have three books out in the world.

A Long Time Gone

By: Joshua Moehling.

Publisher: Poisoned Pen, 309 pages, $27.99.

Events: 7 p.m. Feb. 5, Wooden Hill Brewing, 7421 Bush Lake Road, Edina. Free. 7 p.m. Feb. 17, Minnesota Mystery Night (in conversation with Mindy Mejia), Lucky’s 13 Pub, 1352 Sibley Memorial Hwy., Mendota Heights. $13 cover charge, reservations required.