Swift Six Author Interview – Lee Matthew Goldberg
Name: Lee Matthew Goldberg
What attracts you to the genre in which you write? I typically write thrillers, but I also have a Sci-Fi and a Young Adult series coming out this year so I like to think I write whatever moves me at the moment. That being said, all my books have some thriller elements to them because the stakes are always raised and for me they are the most engaging to read.
What piece of writing advice do you wish you’d known when you started your writing adventures?
Not to get too bogged down by rejection. Rejection is necessary, all writers experience it, and it only makes you a better writer. I got too caught up in it early on when it was really the best thing that could’ve happened to me.
If you could have dinner with any famous person or character who would you choose?
Probably F. Scott Fitzgerald. He’s always been my favorite writer and even though a dinner with him would be impossible now, if I could raise him from the dead for the meal, I choose him and we could just talk about The Great Gatsby the whole time and how it’s a perfect book.
Who has been the greatest influence on your own work?
Probably David Lynch. I remember watching Twin Peaks as kid and it defied what I knew stories could do. There’s an ominous foreboding to his work where anything can happen, and I try to use that for all of my books too.
Do you think the e-book revolution will do away with print?
No. They can exist side by side. There might be less print books but people will always want to own physical copies. An e-book just isn’t the same. That being said, I probably sell more e-books than print, so I’m glad it exists.
Which 3 books would you take to a desert island and why?
Great Gatsby for the reasons I said before.
The Beach because it’s a fantastic thriller kind of about a desert island.
Catcher in The Rye – It may be cliché, but it’s one of my favorite novels and I’ve reread it ever few years since I was twelve. Each time I discover new things about it.
Author bio and book synopsis
Please introduce yourself (250 words or so):
Lee Matthew Goldberg is the author of the novels THE ANCESTOR, THE MENTOR, THE DESIRE CARD and SLOW DOWN. He has been published in multiple languages and nominated for the Prix du Polar. His first YA series RUNAWAY TRAIN is forthcoming in 2021 along with a sci-fi novel ORANGE CITY. After graduating with an MFA from the New School, his writing has also appeared in The Millions, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, LitReactor, Monkeybicycle, Fiction Writers Review, Cagibi, Necessary Fiction, the anthology Dirty Boulevard, The Montreal Review, The Adirondack Review, The New Plains Review, Underwood Press and others. He is the editor-in-chief and co-founder of Fringe, dedicated to publishing fiction that’s outside-of-the-box. His pilots and screenplays have been finalists in Script Pipeline, Book Pipeline, Stage 32, We Screenplay, the New York Screenplay, Screencraft, and the Hollywood Screenplay contests. He is the co-curator of The Guerrilla Lit Reading Series and lives in New York City. Follow him at LeeMatthewGoldberg.com
Tell us about your book(s) – title, genre etc (short)
Upcoming:
Orange City – Sci-Fi/Dystopian
Imagine a secret, hidden City that gives a second chance at life for those selected to come: felons, deformed outcasts, those on the fringe of the Outside World. Everyone gets a job, a place to live; but you are bound to the City forever. You can never leave.
Its citizens are ruled by a monstrous figure called the “Man” who resembles a giant demented spider from the lifelike robotic limbs attached to his body. Everyone follows the Man blindly, working hard to make their Promised Land stronger, too scared to defy him and be discarded to the Empty Zones.
After ten years as an advertising executive, Graham Weatherend receives an order to test a new client, Pow! Sodas. After one sip of the orange flavor, he becomes addicted, the sodas causing wild mood swings that finally wake him up to the prison he calls reality.
A dynamic mash-up of 1984 meets LOST, Orange City is a lurid, dystopian first book in a series that will continue with the explosive sequel Lemonworld.
Runaway Train – Young Adult
They told me I was an out-of-control train about to crash…
Everything changed when the police officer knocked on the door to tell me – a 16-year-old – that my older sister Kristen had died of a brain aneurysm. Cue the start of my parents neglecting me and my whole life spiraling out of control.
I decided now was the perfect time to skip town. It’s the early 90’s, Kurt Cobain runs the grunge music scene and I just experienced some serious trauma. What’s a girl supposed to do? I didn’t want to end up like Kristen, so I grabbed my bucket list, turned up my mixtape of the greatest 90’s hits and fled L.A.. The goal was to end up at Kurt Cobain’s house in Seattle, but I never could have guessed what would happen along the way.
At turns heartbreaking, inspiring, and laugh out loud funny, Runaway Train is a wild journey of a bygone era and a portrait of a one-of-a-kind teenage girl trying to find herself again the only way she knows how.
Social media
http://www.leematthewgoldberg.com
https://twitter.com/LeeMatthewG
https://www.instagram.com/leematthewgoldberg/
https://www.facebook.com/leemgol/
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8001634.Lee_Matthew_Goldberg
