Why do you write the genre that you write?
In 1966, when I was fourteen, my ninth-grade English teacher handed me a copy of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and said she thought I might enjoy it. I’d never read any crime fiction before that (except probably a couple of Sherlock Holmes stories) and I don’t know why she singled me out for the gift, but she was right: I read the magazine, and I was hooked. A year later, I read a story called “Open File” by Richard Deming, in which the police failed to solve a crime, but I thought there were enough clues in the story that they ought to have been able to figure out whodunnit. So I sat down and wrote a new ending and sent it to the magazine, and a couple of weeks later I got a two-page handwritten letter from Frederic Dannay—one of the two cousins who collaborated as “Ellery Queen” and the editor of the magazine—that ended like this: “Have you ever considered writing a detective story yourself? Seems to me, Josh, if I may, you should!” So of course I did, and he bought it and published it in the December 1968 issue, and I’ve never looked back!

What’s the quirkiest quirk one of your characters has?
I’ve written ten short stories about a sixty-year-old Texas PI named Helmut Erhard, whose father was a German prisoner of war in one of the POW camps the US Army set up in the Lone Star State during WWII. In the first story, we find out that Helmut still carries a torch for Bonnie Barnes, who was two years ahead of him in school and wound up marrying their town’s sheriff. Over the course of the series, Bonnie gets divorced and Helmut finally screws up the courage to ask her out. I’d say hanging onto a teenage crush for fifty years is a pretty quirky quirk.

How did you come up with your pseudonym?
I’ve only used a pseudonym once. In the mid-1980s, I was selling a lot of stories to the short-lived Espionage magazine. At one point, editor Jackie Lewis wanted to put two in the same issue, and she asked me to create a pseudonym for one of them. I anagrammed “Josh Pachter” into “Chas. J. Thorpe,” and she published one of the stories under that name. (Espionage ran a letters-to-the-editor column, and I subsequently wrote in praising that issue’s Pachter and Thorpe stories, signing my letter “Joseph Chart.” Jackie, who knew that I was Charlie Thorpe, had no idea that I was Joe Chart, too, and published the letter!)

Tell us how you got into writing?
See above. I’ll add that, when I debuted in its “Department of First Stories” in 1968 at the age of sixteen, I became—and remain—the second-youngest writer to ever appear in EQMM’s pages. (James Yaffe was only fifteen when Fred Dannay bought his first story in the 1940s.) And here are two quirky side notes: (1) In 2019, EQMM published a story I wrote collaboratively with my daughter, Rebecca K. Jones, and put it in the “Department of First Stories,” which made me the only person who’s ever appeared in that part of the magazine twice. (2) In 2020, I became the first person to publish new fiction in EQMM in seven consecutive decades. Not even EQ themselves did that! Jon L. Breen soon joined me, and I hope Jon and the magazine and I are all still around in 2030 to celebrate eight decades together.

What jobs have you held before, during and/or after you became a writer?
Well, before I became a published writer my “job” was junior-high-school student. After I graduated from the University of Michigan, I started teaching—first for three years at the high-school level and then at colleges and universities. I taught on American military bases in Europe and the Middle East for the University of Maryland from 1980 to 1991, then returned to the US. From ’91 to 2006, I taught at Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland and in several Ohio penitentiaries—including the one in Mansfield where the exterior scenes for The Shawshank Redemption were filmed. I moved around some between ’06 and ’10, teaching in Maryland and then Iowa and then back in Maryland and getting married along the way. From 2010 until last year, I was at Northern Virginia Community College, and last year—after fifty years in the education biz—I retired … and celebrated my retirement by spending the Fall 2022 semester teaching about crime fiction at the University of Ghent in Belgium!

Where do you write?
I am fortunate to have a home office, and most of my writing happens there.

What is your favorite deadline snack?
Deadlines? I don’t really do deadlines. As a short-story writer, I don’t usually have to wrestle with them. Actually, I was just this week offered a three-book contract for a chapter-book mystery novel I wrote for younger readers and two sequels, and I turned it down and signed a contract only for the first one, which is already written—specifically because I didn’t want to have to write two more books to a deadline. I’ll probably write them, but on my schedule, not a publisher’s. That said, I eat my share of popcorn, and I will never say no to a Klondike bar.

Who is an author you admire?
I have a lot of friends in the crime-fiction community, and I don’t want to offend anyone by leaving them out, so I’ll limit myself to dead writers. Ray Bradbury. John D. MacDonald. Josephine Tey. Ed McBain. Patricia Highsmith. I could go on for days…

What’s your favorite genre to read?
I don’t really have a favorite. I read a little of everything—except horror. I don’t like horror. (I edited a collection of horror stories in the 1980s, and that was not a fun experience.)

What are you reading now?
Anne van Doorn, one of the Dutch writers I’ve translated for EQMM’s “Passport to Crime” department, has written a novel in English, and because I helped him to get his first publication in the US, he dedicated it to me and sent me a pre-publication copy. So I’m reading that. I’m also reading a short story by Arend Smits, which just last week won The Netherlands’ Goeken Prize for best short crime story of 2022, and translating it for EQMM. My TBR pile is taller than I am. Now that I’m retired, maybe I’ll finally be able to start making a dent in it.

What is your favorite beverage to end the day?
I had a knee replacement two months ago—so I have felt the pain you’re going to feel, Dru, but I can promise you light at the end of the tunnel!—and because of the pain meds I had to take I wasn’t allowed to drink alcohol. I’m now off the meds and allowed to drink again, but, I don’t know, beer just doesn’t taste good anymore. Maybe that’ll change in time. Hope springs eternal…

What is next for you?
I’ve got eight or ten short stories coming out in various places—EQMM, Black Cat Mystery Magazine, Mystery Magazine, a couple of anthologies—but also a number of book projects. This October, Down and Out will publish my sixth “inspired by” anthology, Happiness Is a Warm Gun: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of the Beatles—with Dru Ann’s first-ever published fiction in it, a story she wrote collaboratively with Kristopher Zgorski! In November, after fifty-five years of short stories, I’ve at last got a novel coming out; it’s called Dutch T(h)reat, and Genius Books is publishing. Next February, Level Best will release First Week Free at the Roomy Toilet, my chapter book for kids. And sometime next spring Crippen & Landru will publish The Man Who Wrote Mysteries: The Rest of Brittain, my third (and final) collection of the short stories of the wonderful William Brittain.

Where can we find you?
Online at joshpachter.com and Facebook. IRL, you can find me once every three months hosting the “Noir at the ‘Voir” reading series at the Boathouse in Sunday Park outside Richmond, VA. (Like the “Noir at the ‘Voir” FB page to be kept informed of dates and readers.)

Now to have some fun . . .

Chocolate or vanilla:
I’m from New York, so it’s CHAW-klit.

Cake or ice cream:
Gelato.

Fruits or vegetables:
Watermelon.

Breakfast, lunch, or dinner:
Food.

Dining in or dining out:
Dining.

City life or country living:
I like city life but country living.

Beach or mountain:
Beach. Especially if there’s walk-in snorkeling.

Summer or winter:
Summer, definitely. I kayak but don’t ski.

Short story or full-length novel:
I’m a short-story guy. Sorry, not sorry.

Extrovert or introvert:
This will surprise people who know me, but I’m an introvert who can do a good job of acting like an extrovert when the situation calls for it.

Early bird or night owl:
Used to be a night owl, but now more of an early bird. Definitely no spring chicken!

And even more fun . . .

What’s your favorite movie?
For fifty years, Dru, I taught film history and appreciation—and even though I’ve retired from teaching for pay, I continue to teach film courses as a volunteer for two educational programs for retirees. I can’t possibly pick one favorite movie. Citizen Kane, Singin’ in the Rain, Alegria, The Dinner Game, The Tall Blond Man With One Black Shoe, Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon, Blade Runner, Sherlock Junior, somebody stop me!

You are stranded on a deserted island. What are your three must-haves?
My wife Laurie, my daughter Becca, and enough food to keep the three of us alive until we get rescued.

My bio:
Josh Pachter is the author of more than a hundred short crime stories, which have appeared in EQMM, AHMM, and many other periodicals and anthologies. In 2015, The Tree of Life (a collection of all ten of his Mahboob Chaudri stories) was published by Wildside Press and Styx (a zombie cop novel on which he collaborated with Belgian author Bavo Dhooge) was published by Simon & Schuster. In 2022, Crippen & Landru published The Adventures of the Puzzle Club and Other Stories, containing five stories by Ellery Queen and nine by Pachter. He also edits anthologies and translates fiction from Dutch and other languages. In 2020, he received the Short Mystery Fiction Society’s Golden Derringer Award.