For his latest book, Gary Goldstein wanted to put his main character in an environment he’s never written about before.
So for “Please Come to Boston,” the award-winning film, TV and theater writer revisited his college years back in Boston.
“It was great fun digging back into my memories of college life to write ‘Please Come to Boston,’” he writes in the book’s acknowledgments section, “even if my actual freshman year at Boston University was far less dramatic, romantic and adventurous than Nicky’s,” referring to his 18-year-old protagonist.
Ahead of a virtual book event presented by Warwick’s on Tuesday, Sept. 10, the Los Angeles-based Goldstein talked about his newest work, which follows “The Mother I Never Had” and “The Last Birthday Party,” a romantic comedy that won an Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) Benjamin Franklin Award for Excellence in Fiction.
Q: This is your third novel. How did this one come to be?
A: Well, I wanted to write another book and was thinking about interesting environments, places where lots of things were possible, environments that can change people. And I realized that I’d never written anything set mainly at a college, which was strange considering how much I enjoyed my four years at Boston University and how vivid that time remains to me so many years later. The question, as it always is, then became: “OK, so who’s my main character and what’s the story?” And it spun out from there.
Q: The way you wrote the book’s first paragraph really put me in Nick’s shoes as he literally “sped across the scenic riverbank,” his heart quaking and his feet pounding. How easily did the opening paragraph come to you?
A: The general rule is that the first few lines of a book are critical — you want to hook, or at least intrigue, the reader from the get-go. Because I opened with Nick in motion, running along Boston’s Charles River, I wanted to immediately sweep the reader into Nick’s energy, his anxious emotional state, on this very important day in his life. I rewrote it quite a few times until I felt it was sufficiently captivating, yet still left something to the imagination.
Q: The theme of “finding oneself” is a big part of Nicky’s story. How much of his story did you have informally mapped out in your head before you sat down to really connect the dots?
A: I tend to structure my novels not unlike the way I lay out my screenplays, maybe just a bit more open-ended. I know my beginning, midpoint and end, and the four or five key story turns along the way. And then, keeping a general word count in mind, I fill in the blanks as I go. But because I like to surprise myself — and the reader — how I get from point A to B to C isn’t necessarily mapped out from the start. Still, I’m careful to keep the big picture in mind and not stray too far afield from the core story.
Q: This book is a journey to self-discovery for Nicky and the others. What was this journey like for you as an author — were there any epiphanies?
A: I loved creating Nicky and putting him on this life-changing journey. He’s not me per se — we’re actually very different types of guys — but I did think of him as a kind of “What if?” version of me. What if I, as a college freshman back in the day, had the opportunity for that kind of self-exploration and to take some of the unexpected leaps that he does? It’s a bit of a fantasy, I guess, which made it so fun and exciting to write. As for any epiphanies? I realized, at that point in time and in my young life, that I probably wouldn’t have had the nerve to follow through with most of Nicky’s “big swings.” In that sense, you could say it was kind of a vicarious writing experience.
Q: This is a work of fiction, but because of the subject matter, it’s dealing with some pretty real-life situations. How much research did you do to make sure that the fictionalized situations are relatable in real life?
A: From an emotional standpoint, I felt very clear about writing — or recreating — those kinds of real-life situations, to make them relatable. I really wanted to bring readers back to a similar time in their lives, to maybe their own version of these characters’ experiences. I think Nicky, Joe and Lori are very distinctly drawn folks and, once I had their personalities down, what they said and did, and how they said and did it, came pretty naturally. Same with the ing characters. Still, I did a lot of research, largely to get the 1975 time period and its trappings right, as well as specific Boston U. and Boston-area geography.
Q: You opened the book mentioning the river and ended with it in the last paragraphs on page 277. Was there any hidden meaning that you intentionally or unintentionally meant by doing that?
A: Not sure there was any special meaning to that, though I do like bookending a story with the same location and vibe when it makes sense. Maybe it’s the screenwriter or movie lover in me. In this case, the river is just such an evocative spot. But if readers see any other significance to that choice, I’m all ears!
“Please Come to Boston” by Gary Goldstein (Hadleigh House LLC, 2024; 288 pages)
Warwick’s presents Gary Goldstein, ‘Please Come to Boston’
When: 4 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 10
Where: Virtual event through Warwick’s
ission: Free
