Lee Matthew Goldberg
Lee Matthew Goldberg is the author of eight novels including THE ANCESTOR and THE MENTOR, currently in development as a film off his original script, and the YA series RUNAWAY TRAIN. He has been published in multiple languages and nominated for the Prix du Polar. STALKER STALKED will be out in Fall ’21. After graduating with an MFA from the New School, his writing has also appeared as a contributor in Pipeline Artists, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Millions, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, LitReactor, Monkeybicycle, Fiction Writers Review, Cagibi, Necessary Fiction, Hypertext, If My Book, Past Ten, the anthology Dirty Boulevard, The Montreal Review, The Adirondack Review, The New Plains Review, Underwood Press and others. 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.
Twitter: @LeeMatthewG
Instagram: @LeeMatthewGoldberg
Are there particular films that have influenced your writing?
I’ve always been heavily influenced by films and like to think of my writing as very filmic. For STALKER STALKED, I was influenced by American Psycho, We Summon the Darkness, Nightcrawler, Drive, Single White Female, and the TV show YOU to get in the mindset of my stalker main character.
What period of history do you wish you knew more about?
I’m very interested in the 1920s. With the world coming off of the first World War and the Spanish Flu of 1918 that led to a renaissance of the Roaring Twenties and the Jazz Age, the birth of film and fashion entering the modern era, Prohibition, and the Stock Market Crash. At some point, I will set a book during this era.
Favorite Non-Reading Activity
Definitely travel. It’s something I’ve missed doing the most during the Pandemic. I’ve traveled to a lot of Europe; I’ve been to North Africa and the Amazon. I would really like to get to Asia and explore there. I find travel very refreshing, especially creatively. There are a ton of places on my upcoming list when it’s safe again.
How long do you read a book until you bail?
I used to have to finish every book I started with the chance that it might get better, even though I wasn’t digging it at first. Now I bail after 50 pages if it doesn’t grab me. Life is too short to read a book you’re not that into.
Do you listen to music when you write?
Depends on the book. For my YA series RUNAWAY TRAIN and the sequel GRENADE BOUQUETS set in the 1990s during the grunge scene, each chapter is a different grunge song so there was a carefully chosen playlist for those books, and I listened to a lot of music from that era while writing.
