My story “Days of Ash and Smoke” about a family of arsonists in 1980’s Kentucky, as they burn and flee from town to town, launches in the new issue of Cagibi today along with of ton of other great stories, essays, and interviews. Best of all, it’s free yo. Enjoy!!! Happy reading.
Category: Writing
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The Millions Essay: MY TREE AND I
My essay My Tree and I: Writing in Nature in New York has been published at The Millions. The essay focuses on my tree in Cedar Hill where I write all of my books at along with the history of Central Park and the importance of nature in urban sprawls.
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Interview with bestselling author Vincent Zandri up on Fiction Writer’s Review
I talk with bestselling author Vincent Zandri about influences, genres and THE MENTOR on Fiction Writer’s Review site.
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Q&A with author Margot Berwin at Kinokuniya Books
The Mentor reading and Q&A with author Margot Berwin at Kinokuniya Books is up on youtube. Q&A starts at 13 minutes in after a reading from chapter 4. Watch as we talk about the publishing industry, influences, and who I’d cast in the character’s roles.
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GUEST POST IN BROOK COTTAGE BOOKS BLOG
Q&A with Brook Cottage Books about The Mentor, writing schedules, and advice for up-and-coming authors.
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Interview on Chin Wag at the Slaughterhouse
Interview on Chin Wag at the Slaughterhouse is live. Speed in the modern society, slowing down, and the age of surveillance.
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Radio Interview on Poets of the Tabloid Murder
SLOW DOWN discussion with Steven Nester on Poets of the Tabloid Murder
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Interview up on Chatterific
Interview up on Chatterific where I cast SLOW DOWN if it ever became a film.
chatterrific.blogspot.com/2015/01/lee-matthew-goldberg-talks-slow-down.html
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SHORT, SHARP INTERVIEW
Short, sharp interview with Paul D. Brazill on his blog about Slow Down. Influences, my writing tree, and what I’m working on now.
http://pauldbrazill.com/2015/01/23/short-sharp-interview-lee-matthew-goldberg/
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Middle of Nowhere in the Current Issue of Essays & Fictions
My story MIDDLE OF NOWHERE is in the current issue of Essays & Fictions. In it, Cooper travels to Middle of Nowhere, TX for a high-stakes chile pepper competition that will pit him against the best of the best and give him a glimpse into the wild and cutthroat world of the “Chile Heads”. A prequel to the novel Eating the Sun.
http://www.essaysandfictions.com/vol_12/Goldberg%20XII%20final.pdf
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DETACHED AVAILABLE ON AMAZON!
“Detached” is available now on Amazon as a .99 cents ebook – In “Detached,” an obsessive filmmaker has his life upended when he begins to receive videos in the mail of someone who’s been filming him.
Cover design by Onay-Henry design – https://www.facebook.com/OnayHenryDesign.
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SHORT STORY – HOLDING IN THE DARK ROOM
The ninth short from my collection Middle of Nowhere is up. In “Holding in the Dark Room,” a collegiate baseball jock experiences an unrequited love affair with a suicidal photographer that proves disastrous.
HOLDING IN THE DARK ROOM
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I HAD RESERVATIONS ABOUT SPENDING EVEN TWO DAYS IN THE COLD. Five years in Gainesville only taught me how to get a kick-ass tan and hit three kegs before two in the morning. Julianne was different; she never took in the sun or parties and maintained her New England personality until the very end. She’d go down to Daytona Beach in her Red Sox cap to watch the waves, but never cared to jump in. I met her freshman year on April Fool’s Day. She was greasing a banister in the English Department office with Vaseline. I, of course, slipped and fell hard.
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MIDDLE OF NOWHERE – STORIES
I’m changing the title of my short story collection to Middle of Nowhere. Below is a new description of collection. Titular story to follow soon.
MIDDLE OF NOWHERE: STORIES
An Elvis-obsessed father tries to bond with his son in Graceland after losing custody. Two young siblings are brought to live with their father’s mistress after their mother is institutionalized. A paranoid movie director films his wife’s every move until he begins receiving videos of someone filming him. A Girl Scout troop leader becomes involved in a bitter cookie selling scandal that rocks her suburban community. A guy with a talent for eating the hottest chili peppers in existence leaves behind everything to head to a spice competition down South.
From big cities to small towns, from stories grounded in reality to those that border on the surreal, the people in this collection are all lost in various ways. They feel like they are going nowhere and they’re ready for a dramatic change. For some it will be life-altering while others will remain in limbo. Packed with electric prose and bold in its narrative sweep, Middle of Nowhere is a series of tragicomic rides through 21st century America with the abandoned, the dysfunctional, the hopeful, and the restless.
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SHORT STORY – DETACHED
The ninth story from my short story collection Middle of Nowhere is up on my site. In “Detached,” an intense filmmaker keeps tabs on his wife by filming her every move until he begins receiving videos in the mail from someone filming him. Available now as an ebook on Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/Detached-ebook/dp/B00CP6GWR2/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1368454514&sr=1-1
THE CAMERA WATCHED THEM EAT DINNER LIKE IT DID EVERY NIGHT. Sadiora made a steak au poivre for Nick and a salad for herself. Another camera in the kitchen had filmed every detail of her leaving the steak on the grill for too long instead of cooking it rare like Nick preferred. They sat facing each other, each at the end of a long table in their large dining room that echoed every sound. She was blindly stabbing at the lettuce on her plate when she lost grip on the fork and it clanged against the floor. Only then did Nick look up.
“I’m going to get a new one,” she said, picking up the spinning fork while watching her reflection in the camera’s lens. She could see her frizzy hair that always seemed out-of-sorts, an untamed animal atop her head. Her long painter’s fingers covered up the strawberry birthmark above her collarbone that looked as if she’d been beaten there. But it was her mouth that saddened her the most: tiny lips that made her smile barely there and not worth the attempt.
The camera’s red light continued to beam a bull’s-eye on her forehead. She swept by its scrutiny and escaped to the kitchen. (more…)
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SHORT STORY – GROTESQUE
The eighth story from my short story collection Middle of Nowhere is up on my site. In “Grotesque,” an alcoholic businessman begins to wonder what is real anymore when he spends a wasted night with a girl who mysteriously has the same deformity as his former wife.
GROTESQUE
I MISSED THE CONNECTION TO SOME NOWHERE CITY ON MY ROUTE AND WOUND UP STRANDED IN ONE EVEN LESS APPEALING. Christmas season brought booked flights and little sympathy. So I decided to get sloppy at the airport bar and try to see how I’d do without a wedding ring on my finger, (we’re separating soon due to her wishes, so there’s no need to judge). Turns out, I was pretty invisible anyway.
At the next table over, a gaggle of stewardesses traded war stories over wine spritzers and curly fries. My hands clung to a glass of scotch as I took in their white stockings and over-zealous smiles. The least attractive one of the bunch had a gap in her teeth, and I kept glancing her way. It had been years since I had kissed another woman’s lips; hers would do just fine. She even had a similar teardrop-like mole under her eye like my wife did.
Soon they finished their spritzers and curly fries and wobbled to their feet laughing. My gap-toothed one was the drunkest of the three and her laughter was the loudest. I sucked at the ice in my drink to get at those last few drops. What led me to this airport bar? What led me to all the airport bars of the world with their peppery curly fries and watered-down drinks? In the window to my right was the same reflection I’d seen throughout the last decade – my slouched self on a bar stool with a tie flipped over my shoulder, scribbling notes for another conference and grinding my teeth. There was a time when the thought of my wife was all I needed to keep on scribbling.
I had made a ton of money, and the company I worked for made even more. We sought out troubled corporations, swooping in and buying them out once they had no other option. Then we restructured them from the ground up. The vampire I’d become fired all former employees and new blood was brought in. The boss man encouraged this vampire, actually demanded this creature, so how could I be blamed when I started to bring him home?
Through the window, I had a clean view of the runway and watched the planes sail into thick winter clouds. Right then I knew I didn’t have it in me to catch one. So when the alarm on my watch beeped, I ignored it and waited until I could see my flight disappear into the white sky.
I needed a nap.
I needed to take a break, and I’d always been able to daydream well. (more…)
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SHORT STORY – COOKIES
The seventh story from my collection Middle of Nowhere is up. In “Cookies,” a Girl Scout troop leader becomes involved in a bitter cookie selling scandal that rocks her suburban community and makes her an outcast.
COOKIES
THE CHOSEN MOVIE TO BEGIN JANINE ACORN’S ANNUAL SLUMBER PARTY FOR HER SENIOR FLOWER PATCH SCOUT TROOP WAS GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS, A PICK FROM JANINE HERSELF, THOUGHT TO BE MOTIVATIONAL REQUIRED VIEWING FOR ANY YOUNG FLOWER PATCHIAN. The girl who sold the most cookies this year was being rewarded (through a major pulling of strings) to be an extra on the tweentastic show JHS McKinley, a huge jump from last year’s Space Camp fiasco, a prize met with yawns, and worse than that, the lowest Flower Patch earnings since the foundation of the troop in 1972. Janine was determined not to let another cookie-selling train-wreck resurface this year.
Mackenzie Phelps, the little snot, was the first to make a face at Janine’s film choice. She had recently lost all her baby fat and gained a holier-than-thou-attitude. Evidently, she had gone to sloppy second with an older boy under the bleachers and astounded the other girls with repeated stories of the way his pierced tongue felt against her nipple. It angered Janine to hear it told in whispers during supposed arts and craft sessions, but if Janine was honest, at twelve years old Mackenzie Phelps already had bigger breasts than she did. Janine couldn’t remember any man in her life who’d been all too excited to go to sloppy second with her, especially her ex-husband Ron, who treated her breasts like doorbells, because in all honesty, there wasn’t much else he could do with them.
The other girls, high on root beer floats, whined along with Mackenzie who stood there with a told you so kind of look. She had pretty, blond hair, styled at some high-priced salon that her mother frequented and wore a tank top, which allowed her bra straps to peek through. Janine didn’t even bother wearing a bra that night.
“Is anyone cute in Glenn Larry?” Jamie Lynn asked, a dim girl who looked all of eight.
“It’s Glengarry. Alec Baldwin is in it.”
“Who?”
That remark made one of Janine’s eyes twitch. She longed for a smooth cigarette, or any oral fixation, but satiated herself for the time being by nibbling on her bottom lip. The girls began complaining as a chorus, but Janine raised one slender finger and prayed it would silence them.
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SHORT STORY – WHAT I’VE LEARNED FROM WHAT I’VE LEARNED
Here’s the sixth story from my collection Middle of Nowhere. In “What I’ve Learned from What I’ve Learned,” Tex is a misanthrope who falls in love with a wacky girl named Ginny who is his complete opposite.
WHAT I’VE LEARNED FROM WHAT I’VE LEARNED
I’LL TELL YOU FROM THE START THAT I DIDN’T WANT TO GET MARRIED. Didn’t want none of it. At least not the way it happened. Never pictured myself in a cowboy hat and fringes getting married by the oldest lesbian ministers in the West. Meet a girl, fall in love, and spend the rest of our lives together, except somehow it all happened backwards. Well, sort of. I mean, I met her, and she was nice, and pretty, too. I wouldn’t have done her at my cousin’s wedding in the coat closet if she didn’t have a good face. But to be honest, I had also sucked down about a half dozen Cape Codders that night.
Her name was Virginia, which bothered me already. I once dated this girl Alabama, who was a loon, and had sworn off other girls named after states. Alabama stole utensils. All the time. I caught her slipping forks into her pocketbook when I came back from the bathroom at the fancy restaurant I took her to for our two-month anniversary. She wasn’t even embarrassed.
I convinced myself, though, that I could live with a name like Virginia because it was a state I’d been to and had a very good time. Alabama was a state that I had never been, nor planned on going. When I told Virginia that, she said I was funny, and after mentioning that her hair smelled like peaches and summer, I was on top on her with a fur coat on top of me. (more…)
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SHORT STORY – LAZY INSANITY
The fifth story for my collection Middle of Nowhere is up! In “Lazy Insanity,” a young man with lifelong dreams of becoming an Air Force pilot accidentally cuts off his pinky finger and learns that now he can never fly. With no other aspirations, he begins to go crazy as he searches for meaning in his life.
LAZY INSANITY
ZEKE HAD ALWAYS BEEN AN ODD GUY. He was an odd boy who grew into an odd teenager and was destined to become an even odder adult. He used to blame it on his pinky finger, or really, his missing one. When he was ten, his mother Diana asked him to cut up the celery for his father’s salad. She gave him a knife big enough to see his reflection. As he studied himself and the abundance of freckles on his nose, his pinky rolled off the counter while the celery stalk remained intact.
Since that unfortunate day, he blamed any problems on that missing member. “It put me off balance,” he’d say, pointing to his squash-shaped head. It only proved worthwhile for grossing out younger kids in the recess yard, but that got old soon. It did, however, destroy his lifelong dream of becoming an Air Force pilot.
“Air Force pilots have all their digits,” his father said, shooting him in the heart one day over a dinner of beef stew.
“They don’t have to,” Zeke said, quiet enough so his parents had to read his lips to understand.
“Nine won’t cut it. Never will. The training is rigorous and you have to be able to grasp things with both hands. Not just left, not just right. Both!”
This immediately turned Zeke’s life upside down. He stared at the stub that remained from his one glorious pinky and realized that if he never made that salad for his father, a different and more pleasant story would be told. (more…)
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“Comprehending Kings” is in the July issue of The Montreal Review
My story “Comprehending Kings” is the lead story in the July issue of The Montreal Review. Check out the rest of this great magazine, too.
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SHORT STORY – THE SILVER BULLET
The fourth story for my collection Middle of Nowhere is up! In “The Silver Bullet,” a high school stoner becomes obsessed with a socially inept girl after blinding her with a beer bottle that he chucked out of his homeroom window.
THE SILVER BULLET
THE COORS LIGHT BOTTLE SHOT DOWN FROM THE GRAYING SKY LIKE THE SILVER BULLET FROM ITS ADVERTISEMENTS. Logan, however, saw it differently. After he released the cold and wet bottle from his jittery hands, it sprouted wings as it swept the clouds away and spiraled along with a gentle breeze. A girl was walking on the street below and caught it. She looked up and gave him a beautiful smile, followed by a blown kiss.
His nose tingled as his buddy Derek finished another Coors and stumbled over. Derek’s eyes had drifted to the back of his head. Everyone had left school hours ago, but he and Derek still stunk up their homeroom classroom with Marlboro Reds and were doing some blow.
“Throw another one,” Derek said, attempting to hand Logan a fresh brew.
Logan nodded, fiddling with his tongue ring as he pressed his face against the window. He looked out of it every day during Ms. Weitzheimer’s boring history lectures and saw nothing but the meth heads who congregated in the skate park across from his school. His warm breath fogged the glass as screams floated up from below. He aimed to toss another Coors down four stories when he noticed that the same girl he thought had blown him a kiss was now lying in a pool of her own blood. She was crying loud enough to give him chills. A few of the addicts had crowded around, poking and prodding her.
The street became a dumping ground for the girl’s possessions. A clarinet spilled out of its felt case, rolling from side to side. The meth heads were leafing through scattered Physics and Calculus textbooks. Bad clarinet music filled the air as a skeletal junkie brought life to the solemn scene, drowning out the girl’s wails.
Logan fired up his machine gun laugh, pointing at the girl and the broken Coors that rolled around her face as if it was taunting her. Derek also snorted at the scene and then had an appealing suggestion that sounded better than what was happening below.
“Let’s jet and do another line on the back fire escape,” he smirked, and Logan nodded. (more…)
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SHORT STORY – LAGOON
In the third story from my collection, two adolescents caught up in a first love retreat to the lagoon where they had their first kiss and learn the ugly truths about one another.
LAGOON
HERE WE ARE. You told your ma you were at Sandy’s house and she believed you again. Duckweed has covered the lagoon and made it nuclear green—the bullfrogs blend in. I see one of their long, pink tongues snare a fly and wonder what it’d taste like. The sky is white but the sun is strong and the clouds look like smudges. You just took my hand for the first time. Even after this day’s over, I know in my head that I’ll keep these lazy moments with you—I’ll think about them till my memory’s all gone. (more…)
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SHORT STORY – OUR BUICK STOPPED HERE
In the second story from my collection Middle of Nowhere, two young siblings in Nebraska are brought to live with their father’s mistress after their mother becomes institutionalized.
OUR BUICK STOPPED HERE
COLT’S FINGERS CREPT TOWARDS THE SILVER COMBINATION LOCK OF HIS DADDY’S SUITCASE. From the front seat of their car, his daddy reached back and swatted Colt’s hand away with a grimace of twisted yellow teeth. No funny stuff said his daddy’s eyes in the rear view mirror, but funny stuff was what Colt did best. They had stopped in front of a house on a quaint, tree-lined block that Colt found familiar to his own – a slow moving world of nosy neighbors, tossed newspapers, and jingling ice cream trucks. His daddy then changed his tune and teased him by sliding a quarter from behind his ear. Colt knew better. Loose change wouldn’t buy good behavior. He let the sweaty quarter plop into his palm, but kept his other hand in a hidden caress of the suitcase and waited patiently for his daddy to disappear. (more…)
