Meet Lee Matthew Goldberg

We were lucky to catch up with Lee Matthew Goldberg recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Lee Matthew, thanks for sharing your insights with our community today. Part of your success, no doubt, is due to your work ethic and so we’d love if you could open up about where you got your work ethic from?

My work ethic comes from doing what I love. Since I was kid, all I’ve wanted to do was be a writer. I found if I wasn’t engaged in something, it was very hard for me to put forth the effort. But writing always came easy. I started with stories about my dog and then in junior high I wrote a four-season TV show inspired by my favorite show, Twin Peaks. If I was bored in class, I’d work on it. I was able to do well enough in school that I could spend the majority of my time writing on the side. I found in life, I would mimic the same kind of ethic. Finish all my obligations, so I could then focus on writing. I usually edit in the mornings and then write most days under a tree in Central Park, weather permitting. I’ve created most of my fourteen books there. When I’m working on a project, it’s percolating in my mind, even when I’m sleeping. So, the work ethic comes from being excited to put pen to paper each day (or honestly, open up my laptop).

If you find what you love in life, it never actually feels like work.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

Hi readers, I’m the author of fourteen novels. Most of them are thrillers, but I have a Young Adult Series too. My first novel SLOW DOWN came out in 2015, a neo-noir thriller about the price of fame in Hollywood. I followed that with THE MENTOR, another thriller about a star editor’s favorite mentor from college who turns on him when he won’t publish his latest so-called masterpiece. After that came THE ANCESTOR about doppelgängers in the Alaskan wilderness, and my five-book series THE DESIRE CARD about a card that promises Any Wish Fulfilled…for the right price. Beyond thrillers, my Young Adult series RUNAWAY TRAIN is set in the 1990s and focuses on a girl who dreams of becoming a grunge singer like her idol Kurt Cobain. My latest, THE GREAT GIMMELMANS, follows a family in the 1980s who lose all their money in the stock market crash and start robbing banks out of their RV.

In addition to novel writing, I’ve adapted some of my books for film and TV and currently attached directors, actors, and producers to a few of my projects, so here’s hoping they continue to move forward.

I’ve also recently started my own indie publishing company called Fringe Press that’s looking for novels in the thriller/horror/crime vein that would be adaptable for film and TV.

My next novel MILES IN TIME and its sequel TIME FIXERS will be out summer 2025 about a teen who travels back in time to save his inventor brother from being killed. Look out for a tour I’ll be doing then.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

The first would definitely be resilience. Being a writer means being rejected all of the time. It can mess with your psyche. You have to be able to use the rejection to be better. And also understand that writing is so subjective. What one person hates, another might love. You can be upset and sad when your work isn’t accepted, but you have to be able to get up the next day and keep trying to sell it somewhere else.

Second, it’s important to be a hustler. Along with resiliency, you have to hustle your work to find its audience. Along the way, you can have a great support team with your agent, your editor, your publisher, but the best writers are absolute hustlers that are always trying to get their work out there.

Lastly, you have to quiet the saboteur. A lot of writing is second-guessing and thinking you are not good enough. You are good enough! Have that mantra every time you sit down to work. For a lot of authors, they are their own worst enemy. Don’t be an enemy to yourself. Trust that what you’re putting out there has been written for a reason.

What was the most impactful thing your parents did for you?

My parents were huge readers and therefore a big support system for my work. Since I was writing at a young age, they read everything I wrote and had notes, especially my father. My father had me at 50 years old and grew up in Brooklyn in a long past era. He never minced words. Even at an early age, he would critique my work and make me strive to be better. Anyone can tell you your writing is great, you need that special somewhere who can be honest. My father was definitely that. He’s passed away now, but even up until his last years he was editing my work, and I’m so thankful we were able to have that kind of relationship. He’s in all my books in some way, especially THE ANCESTOR, which is dedicating to him and I wrote while he was passing away.

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