LMG. Talent, obviously, but dedication is really important too. And always striving to get better and build your craft. Be your harshest critic and learn from your rejections. There will be a ton of rejection, but it’s all there to make you better.
Q. and the all-important: What does the process of going from “no book” to “finished book” look like for you?
LMG. It’s all over the place, depending on the book. Some books have taken me a decade to finish, some two months. Orange City, for example, took many years of putting it down and picking it back up. It was originally a short s
Las Vegas with friends
tory I wrote in college, then a screenplay, then a different short story, and finally a novel. Science fiction is the hardest to write, at least for me, because you are creating an entirely new world. It took that many years to build up that world.
Q. How has your life experiences influenced your writing?
A. Always. You bring reality into your work, but I tend to write really out there things, so a lot is fiction. I try not to put people I know into my work, but sometimes it happens. I’m influenced a lot from other books and films, art and music, so the amount of influences that go into each novel are hard to pinpoint.
Morocco
Q. What’s your down time look like?
LMG. Like I said, I travel, go out to eat, movies, concerts, museums, sports.
Q. Have you or do you want to write in another genre`?
LMG. Yup. I’m a thriller writer first, but have a Sci-Fi and a YA series out this year so I’m always pushing myself to try something different. But all of my books have some type of thriller elements to them because thrillers are all about moving the plot forward and that’s important in all genres.
Q. Note to Self: (a life lesson you’ve learned.)
A. Rejection is necessary and only makes you a better writer. Learn to take in, shrug it off, and not let it get you down. Every great writer has been rejected plenty, it’s par for the course.
Did you miss the first part of this exciting interview?
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My weekly BLOG features INTERVIEWS with best-selling AUTHORS! November: Ella Quinn, December: Lauren Willig,
January: Madeline Hunter, February: Mike Lupica, March: Lee Matthew Goldberg To receive my weekly posts sign up for my
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Yankee Stadium with friends….the good old days…packed seats
Q. When did you begin to write seriously?
LMG. When I went for my MFA at the New School. It was the first time I really starting thinking of it as a career. I had written a few books before that still needed a lot of work, and even sent one out to a few agents, but I didn’t really know what I was doing. My MFA program really helped shape me as a writer, and then afterwards when I got an agent, he was a great mentor in honing my craft. About a dozen years later, he’s still my agent.
Q. Do you think we will see, in our lifetime, the total demise of paper books?
LMG. Nope, never. People will always want physical copies, but there will definitely be less. Personally, I’ll read on Kindle but I prefer a book a lot more. I can read e-books on like a plane, that’s about it. Physical books have a smell to them, you carry them with you, you make notes in the margins. I know you can do that with e-books but it’s not the same. I still have my high school copy of The Great Gatsby with all my notes from when I was teenager. It’s a treasure. That wouldn’t be possible with an e-book.
Q. Where/when do you first discover your characters?
LMG. Depends. Sometimes the character comes first, sometimes the idea. Sometimes I’ll hear a song and that inspires the book like with my last novel The Ancestor. I heard a song called “The Ancestor,” and the first line was “Go on bury me.” It was wintertime and I just pictured a man buried in ice who wakes up from it after a hundred years. The rest of the book began to unravel from that image.
Q. What first inspired you to write?
LMG. I’ve always been a writer since I was a little kid. I used to make up stories about my dog getting into crazy situations, so this was always the career I was meant to have. I think that there are people who are just born writers. When I’m not working on a project, I get a little depressed, so I have to write. It’s a part of me. And it’s always been liked that.
Two Lees at book signing with Charlaine HarrisLee and……Lee
TS: What are the chances that two gentlemen are named Lee Goldberg, both authors, and I interviewed the first one six years ago. And they, one from L.A. and one from NYC met and became acquainted at a couple of book signings? Too weird and wonderful.
Q. What comes first to you? The Characters or the Situation?
LMG. Depends. Usually they start to emerge in tandem.
Q. Do you ‘get lost’ in your writing?
LMG. That’s when I know I’m really writing something great. I’ll leave my body for a few hours and forget what I’ve written. Then I’ll spiral back down. I’ve heard Stephen King describe a similar thing. I don’t know where I go, but I go somewhere. It’s the same when I’m reading a book I’m really into, I’ll lose time in the best way.
Q. Are you working on something now? If so tell us about it.
LMG. I’m always working on something. I have a YA series coming out, so I’m working on the idea for the third book. The first two have been written. And I have a screenplay project as well based off of my books that I’m working on with a production company. I’m very excited about that, since it’s been about three years in the making. I also have a few ideas for books I want to write. One takes place in the 1950s and would be a Jewish Mad Men. The perspective of a Jewish man breaking into the ad world then and the different kinds of anti-Semitism he faced. I was inspired after watching the HBO show The Plot Against America.
Q. I understand that you are about to release ORANGE CITY, an exciting sci-fi novel. Tell us about it.
LMG. 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.
Don’t Miss Part 3 of this Interview ~~ June 19th
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My weekly BLOG features INTERVIEWS with best-selling AUTHORS! November: Ella Quinn, December: Lauren Willig,
January: Madeline Hunter, February: Mike Lupica, March: Lee Matthew Goldberg To receive my weekly posts sign up for my
On the home page, enter your email address. Thanks!
With Tom Christian, great-great-great grandson of Fletcher Christian – Pitcairn Is.
Q. What first inspired you to write?
AF. In Carl Barks Uncle Scrooge comics, Scrooge has to travel to unusual, exotic places either to check on his vast array of businesses or to hunt for treasure. Very early on, these comics inculcated in a desire to emulate Scrooge. Before I could do so in reality, I did so in my imagination. That desire has continued to afflict me to the present. My parents also had an old book by Richard Halliburton. I remember very clearly a picture of Halliburton standing in front of the Taj Mahal. I thought it impossibly romantic (and yes, I got to the Taj eventually).
Q. What comes first to you? The Characters or the Situation?
AF. Could be either one. If an interesting character occurs to me, or if I meet one in my travels, I might build a book or story around them. If a plot idea comes first, I’ll populate it with suitable characters. I never know which will come first.
Q. Do you ‘get lost’ in your writing?
AF. Completely. I’m told my writing is very visual. This is because I “see” everything I’m writing about. I literally describe what I’m seeing. It’s as if I’m operating a video camera in my mind. I go to all the places I’m describing.
For example, this was taken of me in Tuareg headdress where the borders of Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso meet. Not a safe place nowadays due to the depradations of Isis and Boko Haram. In life, you have to pick your spots.
Q. Are you working on something now? If so tell us about it.
AF. I do a monthly column on art and science for a local monthly paper (5enses; you can read the column on-line. Book-wise, I’m in pause mode.
Q. When did you begin to write seriously?
AF. My senior year at UCLA I discovered the film department. I’d always been a facile writer in high school. Film and TV writing courses offered an opportunity to acquire credits toward graduation that was very easy for me. I didn’t realize it was difficult for everyone else. To take a break from writing scripts, I started to write short fiction, and submit it. My first sale was to Arkham House. A long Lovecraftian letter that I thought might amuse the editor, August Dereleth. Imagine my surprise when he offered to buy it and publish it as a “story”. Payment was fifty bucks. I intended to frame the check…a resolution that lasted about ten minutes. The story, which is included in my first collection, was “Some Notes Concerning a Green Box”. It was set in the bowels of the UCLA library, an on-campus sanctuary for me.
Q. How long after that were you published?
Dog’s name is Zipper. Cat is Caesar.
AF. Although “Some Notes…” was my first sale, my first published fiction was the short story “With Friends Like These”, which appeared in Analog magazine in June, 1971.
Q. Do you think we will see, in our lifetime, the total demise of paper books?
AF. Not in our lifetime. But eventually, mass market paper books will disappear as a consequence of cost and ecological concerns. I believe there will always be a market for those who love to collect “real” books.
Q. What makes a writer great?
AF. Find a new way to describe the human condition and how it interacts with is surroundings.
Q. and the all-important: What does the process of going from “no book” to “finished book” look like for you?
AF. George Orwell once said that anyone who wants to be a writer is certifiable. It’s slow, agonizing, brain-wrenching work. And it never gets easier. As I tell students, page one is easy, page 400 is easy. It’s the 398 pages in between that’s hard. Ideas, characters, plots are easy enough. Turning them into stories that people want to read…that’s hard.
Q. How has your life experiences influenced your writing?
A. My travels percolate all through my writing. Locations, characters, new ideas…they all show up sooner or later. Sometimes, like the aforementioned oriental gentleman, an acquaintance will become a character. Other times I’ll get an entire book out of a trip, such as SAGRAMANDA (India) or INTO THE OUT OF (Tanzania/Kenya). Or parts of a book, like CATALYST (Peru, Australia). I don’t know how writers can imagine or create other cultures without having explored those right here on Earth.
Q. What’s your down time look like?
Alan with Ronnie Dio
AF. I lift weights, now only twice a week. I spend too much time on the web surfing the planet. I read as often as my strained eyesight permits. I am not averse to television, everything from The Simpsons to American Experience (PBS). I enjoy spending time with our pets (currently six cats and one tolerant dog). I listen to a lot of classical music interspersed with heavy metal and interesting newcomers (Angelina Jordan, Courtney Hadwin, The Hu). Me and the late Ronnie Dio, of DIO…a big fan of Spellsinger. After a concert. I was perspiring more heavily than Ronnie was.
Q. Have you or do you want to write in another genre`?
AF. I’ve written science-fiction, fantasy, contemporary, historical, western, detective, and non-fiction. I’m very comfortable sliding between genres.
Note to Self: (a life lesson you’ve learned.)
AF. No matter how bad you think your situation is, it is undoubtedly a thousand times better than that of the person next to you.
Check out Part 1 of this Interview
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MY BLOG features INTERVIEWS with best-selling AUTHORS! July — Catherine Ryan Hyde. August: My interview with Susan Wiggs September: Alan Foster (sci-fi) and October: Kristina McMorris
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Q. What makes a writer great?
