SPOTLIGHT w/INTERVIEW - YA - GRENADE BOUQUETS (Runaway Train, #2) by Lee Matthew Goldberg

Grenade Bouquets

Runaway Train, #2

by Lee Matthew Goldberg

Date of Publication: August 5th 2021

Publisher: Wise Wolf Books

Genre: Young Adult

ISBN: 978-1953944078

ASIN: B093G4T9PL

Number of pages: 286

Word Count: 70,000

Tagline: “I’m a time bomb, a cannonball, I destroy everything around me.”

BLURB

I had stars in my eyes and I couldn't see around them...

The year is 1995 and my parents have finally allowed me to take the summer to tour in a VW van across the country with my boyfriend Evan and our band. Yes, my dream to be a singer became reality. Even with Clarissa, Evan's jealous ex-girlfriend, as the lead singer, it's my presence on stage that led us to a major record deal. There are moments you'll always remember in life, but I can't imagine anything more cool than hearing your song on the radio for the first time.

But being a Rockstar isn't as easy as it sounds. Using alcohol and drugs as coping mechanisms, nothing but tension surrounded me, hurting my still blossoming relationship, and continued grieving over my sister's death.

A love letter to the nineties and a journey of a girl becoming a woman, Grenade Bouquets charts the rollercoaster ride of a band primed to explode on the scene, as long as they keep from actually exploding.

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Excerpt:

I’m barefoot on a roof deck, maybe it’s my own, I dunno. Life has been a series of tour buses and motels recently, but I think this is that place the band rented down on the Lower East Side. Everyone hates me and I’m left alone in a huge railroad apartment with a fire escape that twists up to a roof and barely any railing to keep me safe. I have a joint in one hand that’s surprisingly still lit in the rain and a trusty bottle of Absolut Citron in the other. I’m wearing a baby doll pale blue dress, the one I rocked during the Grenade Bouquets set when the A&R manager said he was gonna make us stars. I once heard that when you’re looking at stars in the sky, you’re already looking at the past and they’re already dead. I’m seventeen and I can completely relate.

I’m over myself and have been looking into the past so much, I might as well be dead.

I chug from the bottle, the excess liquid spilling down my cheeks like hot tears. What lands in my throat, burns and my eye twitches...I’m so bombed. My makeup has run all over my face and made me into a clown. I pity whoever will find my ghastly remains. I bring the joint to my lips and suck as the cherry flares, the smoke streaming through my nostrils. I’m a dragon in pursuit. Three stories down below, a sea of umbrellas await. I think of Kristen.

Her spirit no longer visits and I understand. She has better things to do than deal with the living. My sister has been gone now for over a year, and sometimes I forget the sound of her voice. I wake up in the middle of the night frantic that I’ve lost it, and then a glimmer reappears—a whisper in her high pitch calling me back to sleep, aware of how my insomnia can plague me. She would be so proud of my success as a singer and for me to live my dream, not realizing that it was killing me as well. I don’t remember the last time I went to bed sober. I feel distant from everyone I used to care about. Evan can’t even look at me anymore. I’m Nico the Beast, a whirlwind intent to destroy.

If you heard me on the radio, you’d be jealous. I’m that girl you wish you could be. My song like a spit in the face, a baby Courtney Love with scabbed knees, dark red lipstick, hair

dyed so much it’s fried, a scowl for a smile. And then in the next song, I’m scrubbed clean, my dress full of flowers rather than ripped, my bruises bandaged, my makeup a light touch rather than an onslaught, singing about love and hope and everything that grunge is not. Because grunge is dying. Kurt Cobain solidified its end and the record companies can smell it. A future of sugary happy pop awaits. What will they do with me, with any of us? We’re already that dying star. Might as well help give them a push.

The rain has risen in tempo, a drumbeat on my skull. The joint has gone out and I toss it into the crowd. It disappears into the ether, like I will soon. I picture my obituary, the phrase ‘One Hit Wonder’ highlighted. All I’ll ever be. But I don’t have any more songs in me. My quill is broken, my heart has followed—I’m sick of myself.

I raise my arms like Brandon Lee in The Crow. Evan and I saw that at the Angelika, an artsy movie theater down on Houston St., which I mispronounced like it was the city Houston. We toured Manhattan that day, the first time either of us had been: hand in hand through The Met and wandering down paths in Central Park, sneaking through the Plaza and pretending I was Eloise, hot chocolates at a place called Serendipity, his blue eyes never letting me out of his sight. I never imagined I could be so in love. Only a short time ago but might as well be a lifetime, those blues will never look at me in the same way again. I’m tarnished, I’m filth. I heard a song called “Only Happy When It Rains,” and it couldn’t be truer. Miserable people feed off misery and that’s all I have to give.

I wonder what my mom and dad will say when they have to identify my body. They’ve both found new lives with new loves that will be a shoulder for them. Maybe they’ll be relieved.

Back home, my friend Winter has her own shit to deal with and brought Jeremy into her drama, so they’ll mourn but are preoccupied enough to only think of me in passing. I know that’s what they do now. They are still in high school and I’ve dropped out, promising my folks I’d get my GED, but I never did. And high school seems so pointless and far away. I’ve lived in the real world. I’ve skipped down New York City streets with crack vials crunching under my feet. Out of spite I’ve let a man inside of me whose name I didn’t even know. I’ve crowd surfed over a hundred bodies chanting my name. I thought I was in love and never want the pain of it ending ever again. I’d rather be numb. I’d rather be gone.

My feet are cold against the tar of the roof, the toenail polish chipped and starting to fade. I give another swig until the bottle is empty. I aim to launch it into the sky, not caring who I’d hit down below. I climb onto the edge, wobbling, teeth chattering, knees knocking, singing a Matthew Sweet song to the world, to this dark city where I never belonged, so far from a home. “But I’m sick of myself when I look at you, something is beautiful and true. World that’s ugly and a lie, it’s hard to even want to try.”

My vocal chords are raw from the vodka and pot, my tears make everything blurry. I go to pitch the bottle and my foot slips from a slick of water. I lose my heart as it leaps out of my throat and I think I’ve gone over the edge, plummeting headfirst to my death. But I fall backwards, smacking my head on the tar. The grey clouds above go in and out of focus until they disappear entirely. My eyes have shut but I can see the night sky, and one little star, so dead but so bright, guiding me not to slip into unconsciousness, praying for my survival. Like a diamond it glows brighter, and I think that maybe it’s Kristen’s eye, somewhere up in heaven, winking at me to stay on Earth for a little longer because I haven’t finished all I intended to do, as the rain washes me pure, its drumbeat now playing Letters to Cleo’s beautiful, simmering song, “Here and Now,” while I travel back to what led me to become these twisted remains once called a girl. 

Author Info

Lee Matthew Goldberg is the author of seven 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. After graduating with an MFA from the New School, his writing has also appeared in The Millions, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, LitReactor, Monkeybicycle, Fiction Writers Review, Cagibi, Necessary Fiction, Hypertext, 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. 

The Book Junkie Reads . . .Reckless Dreams  Interview with  . . . Lee Matthew Goldberg . . .

How would you describe your style of writing to someone that has never read your work?

I write very visually and I like to cross genres. My favorite books are literary thrillers, but I also write science fiction, YA, and horror as well. 

Do you feel that writing is an ingrained process or just something that flows naturally for you?

Definitely it naturally flows. If I’m not feeling it, it’s very hard to write unless I have a deadline. Luckily, I love what I do and love to write, so when I’m involved in a manuscript, I’m always excited to get back to it!

What mindset or routine do you feel the need to set when preparing to write (in general whether you are working on a project or just free writing)?

I usually edit in the mornings what I’ve written the day before, work-out, eat lunch and then write all afternoon. Sometimes I tinker at night. On nice days, I write under the same tree in Central Park that has a perfectly mix of shade and sun. 

Do you have a character that you have been working on for a long time that still isn't quite ready, but fills you with excitement to work on the story?

I had that with my most recent novel I finished, The Great Gimmelmans. Originally the character existed in the 1930s during the Great Depression and then I changed it to late 1980s after the Stock Market crash. Totally different book, but the 80s were a much better choice than the 30s. 

Can you share your next creative project(s)? If yes, can you give a few details?

I have an idea for a book that takes place in the 1950s about a Jewish man who begins to work for a new Madison Avenue advertising agency and slowly begins to suspect it’s being run by Nazis. 

Follow him at: 
http://leematthewgoldberg.com/
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https://twitter.com/LeeMatthewG
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https://www.linkedin.com/in/lee-matthew-goldberg-558758178/
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56045373-grenade-bouquets

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SPOTLIGHT w/EXCERPT - SCIENCE FICTION - ORANGE CITY by Lee Matthew Goldberg

Orange City

by Lee Matthew Goldberg

Genre: Science Fiction

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.

After ten years as an advertising executive, Graham Weatherend receives an order to test a new client, Pow! Sodas. After one sip of the orange flavor, he becomes addicted, the sodas causing wild mood swings that finally wake him up to the prison he calls reality.

A dynamic mash-up of 1984 meets LOST, Orange City is a lurid, dystopian first book in a series that will continue with the explosive sequel Lemonworld.

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EXCERPT

As E’s taxi pulled up to the Walled Region of The City, the silhouette of the Man in the Eye Tower stood precisely in the same spot as always—immovable. The Man’s long arachnid-like arms stretched across the windows, his red eyes scanning every movement below from a hundred stories high. The rest of the buildings were less imposing than the Eye Tower, created with The City’s own twinkling glass. The maze of sidewalks below were clean enough to eat off, a stark contrast to the pod apartments in E’s Region, stacked beside one another like eggs in a crate, no sidewalks offering a chance for him to walk by a neighbor and mingle.

Passing a row of silent Guards, E fixed his mouth into a smile as he swiped his ID through the machine at the gate. Besides The Finances, The Scouts were the only other citizens allowed inside the Walled Region. The gate opened as two cameras zoomed in until they practically touched his face. The rest of the area, a square about a half-mile long, resembled a ghost town: not even a tumbleweed rolling past. But through the windows he caught a glimpse of The Finances, all required to be chained to their desks, each of them typing in sync with sweat pooling from their foreheads onto the keys. 

E spied a rogue Finance, his eyes ringed with purple circles, scurrying into a blue glass building. Brain-fried and pallid, the Finance was downing a fistful of black market Levels while glancing at his watch in fright before stuffing the pill bottle back in his pocket. Clearly late, he’d receive a swift punishment for his tardiness. 

In the center beamed the Eye Tower, showing its muscle. For the first ninety-nine stories, an elevator rose through black translucent glass to a windowed office at the top in the shape of an eye. Separate access was required, so E swiped his Scout ID again as two other cameras zoomed in and poked him in the face before massive doors clanged open at the bottom and he stepped inside. 

The elevator whooshed up toward the sky, overlooking the entire City. Pockets of Empty Zones, barren wastelands for disobeying citizens, became visible along with the colorful high-rises of the new Downtown area. The Business Region was a blip at the other end, containing everything from the advertising firms, to a publishing house, to The City’s own movie studio that financed its one film plus all of the commercials and the porn. The Factory Region spewed smoke rings to the right. By the Wharf, a line of Guards monitored the waters with guns in hand; making sure that no one left or entered without an okay from the Man. The elevator continued to climb up higher into the gray clouds until it all seemed enveloped in a morose haze. E still held his smile, his cheek muscles starting to twitch. 

A bell dinged as the elevator reached the top and opened to a metallic entranceway. The door to the Man’s office was also shaped like an eye, but closed, resembling a shuteye. An imposing Guard held post in front. Like all the Guards, he had a skintight white mask pulled over his face with holes cut out around the nostril area, replicating the Man’s mysterious visage. Past the entranceway was a long silver desk with the Man’s relatively new receptionist, Shelby. She had no left eye, the lid sewn shut. E knew the Man required all his secretaries to be missing one eye. Shelby was the fifth during his tenure. 

“Morning, Shelby,” E said. “How are you doing today?” 

“Morning,” she responded with a smile, her voice flat and lifeless. She typed something on the keyboard without looking away from the screen. Pushing an intercom button, she spoke into a speaker. “Scout E to see you, sir.” 

A murmur hissed from the other end. 

Shelby pushed a different button under her desk and the eye-shaped door parted. E gave a polite wave, but she was too absorbed in her work and only blinked her one eye in response. 

E left his suitcase next to the Guard and walked through the eye. Once inside, the metal doors snapped shut. The spacious office was made up of thousands of small television screens and computers along the walls that monitored all aspects of The City. A life-sized wax statue of Stalin greeted all who entered with a salute. He knew of the dictator from history books when the Outside World was a very different place. E was always surprised about Stalin’s small stature; the top of the statue’s head barely came up to his own chin. A long table in the center held a mainframe computer and a dozen gloved cellular phones charging on robotic hands. Some of the phones were ringing, completely ignored. 

The Man posed by the eye-shaped window. Most of the inhabitants only witnessed this mysterious figure on screens, but the fear he radiated was palpable: gaunt to the point of being grotesque, so emaciated that it seemed as if he could snap in two. He did not eat, only fed intravenously from a bubbling orange liquid attached to his side by a tube. E wasn’t sure if it filtered his waste, or was a breakfast that looked like some type of soda. The Man wore the same outfit as always: black suit, white collared shirt and a thin black tie. It was questionable whether the Man had ever changed his clothes, or if he’d lived in this shell of a suit for the past two decades. He often smelled like burning sugar mixed with sour chemicals, and E had to balance holding his breath while speaking so the Man’s fumes wouldn’t trigger any nausea. 

Over the years, the Man had gotten taller and taller through elective surgeries that lengthened his legs until they became distorted. The Man’s extended arms were also his obsession and delight—thin-like branches. A few were long enough to reach from one end of the office to the other. His scientists had spent years perfecting these appendages, made from a mixture of aluminum alloy and real muscle and bone along with computer circuitry. Through chips inserted into his tendons, the Man’s brain signals were read by electrodes and used to guide these artificial devices. Some of his earlier limbs looked more robotic, but his latest were so lifelike, it was chilling to watch them in motion. E wondered how it looked under the Man’s suit: probably all bloody and deformed, a patchwork of humanity; but on the outside, the Man was truly a magnificent creature to behold, both threatening and eerily beautiful, like nothing E had ever witnessed or imagined before. 

The Man’s few extra hands tapped a staccato beat against the windowpane. He rotated his face a few inches to the left. The mask he wore: a skintight white blur molded to his face. E assumed that he liked remaining an enigma. 

“You’re late,” the Man said, his voice gummy as if he’d been chewing on honey. 

A thousand excuses ran through E’s brain. None would suffice. 

“I apologize, sir.” 

The Man let out one solitary laugh through the holes in his mask for nostrils. An extended limb slithered past E and punched a few keys on a computer. 

“Do you recognize this face?” the Man asked as E turned to a television screen. A young man’s headshot: thin face with barely any jaw, eyeglasses, and a forlorn gaze. 

“Is that...Graham Weatherend?” E asked in shock. 

E had not encountered that face in a long time and his legs went wobbly, the dreams that invaded last night coming back swiftly. He thought back to the year he spent with Graham over a decade ago; the year he was forced to be a monster. Now the boy was all grown up, but the sadness in his eyes remained. He was likely in his late teens now and would want nothing more than to pound E’s face to a bloody pulp should the two ever encounter each other again. E remembered how he would go to bed with the boy’s blood staining his fists, even after he’d washed them a thousand times. But he was forced to do that. He had no other choice. 

“I do recognize him,” E said, softly. He tried hard not to show emotion, but it was difficult. 

“We couldn’t touch him as a juvie, but our boy is nineteen now and has tried to rob a liquor store with a wooden gun. I’ll let you guess how that worked out for him. I assumed something like this would happen eventually.” 

The Man’s long arm moved from the computer, brushing against E. 

“I assumed one day it would be time for him to come to The City,” E replied, as the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. Graham’s computer image stared back, causing him to cringe. 

“He’s young and malleable now,” the Man said. “He’ll be indebted to us if we bring him here, easier to fall in line. Who knows if that will be the case in a few years?” 

“Won’t he recognize my voice?” 

One of the Man’s hands groped his own chin, pondering. 

“Doubtful. It’s been so long. We’ll insert a Blocker just in case. Anyway, he is looking at a couple of years up in a penitentiary with all his priors. He won’t be thinking about anything else but survival.” 

“Are you sure I’m the right Scout to bring him over–” 

The Man’s white face spun around. E tried to see something human in the midst of the Man’s facade but there was nothing: a hollow face like a puff of smoke. 

“You are the only choice!” the Man hissed. He then cleared his throat, calming down. “I trust you, Scout E. You were one of the first we had here. Scouts M, X, K, R and A have either been promoted and live in the Estates now, or passed on. Maybe it’s finally time for a promotion for you, too?” 

“A position inside The City?” E asked, salivating at the thought. He imagined himself living in the Estates Region with The City’s elite. An existence with all the amenities one could ask for, and more importantly, a better shot at never being banished to the Empty Zones. 

“If you bring me Weatherend, and he comes without being forced, I will give you what you deserve. Recently, I’ve had to retire the Creative Director at Warton, Mind & Donovan Advertising and Concepts to the Zones. Terrible business.” 

“No more Scouting?” E asked, careful with his tone, not wanting to seem too eager or ungrateful for the job he’d been given. The Man sometimes liked to play games to ferret out insubordination. 

“I know it wouldn’t please you to be a Scout forever,” the Man said, sadly. 

“It’s been an honor,” E replied, in his most convincing tone. 

“Yes, as it should. I thought of giving you the Creative Director position, since you were once a chemical engineer in the Outside World.” 

“I don’t see how that’s connected with advertising.” 

The Man tapped his intravenous tank with one of his appendages, causing the liquid to bubble. 

“Pow!” the Man chuckled, his mouth widening to resemble a black hole. 

“I’m still not understanding–” 

“Let’s say The City is on the forefront of a brand-new vision, one that we want the masses to believe in, but not simply because I tell them.” 

“Okay...” 

“We’re years away from getting the tweaks just right. Think about Moods, how long those took to develop, or the Levels being sold on the black market now.” 

“I’ve never taken–” 

The Man held up one of his many hands. “I am not accusing. I am saying that advertisement firms are the face of The City, the true power. It will only be beneficial for you to work at one. And I will be putting Mr. Weatherend under you there.” 

“But I would’ve been his Scout? We can’t know each other, that’s against the rules.” E knew the Scouts were kept separate from the rest of the citizens in a Region because of a sticky situation that had occurred during The City’s first few years when a Selected became unhappy with his new home and sought out the Scout that brought him there. The Scout ultimately got his throat slit, so now all interactions were forbidden between the two after the initial drop-off. Since the Scouts spent a good portion of their time in the Outside World, the pod apartments were mostly for them to sleep. 

“I made the rules!” the Man said. “And this is what I wish. He’ll be blindfolded as always and won’t know that you were his Scout. And then once he gets here, I want you to make sure he stays insecure, subordinate, even scared. You will morph into a being he fears...again. This is imperative for what I have planned.” 

“Yes...absolutely, sir.” 

The Man’s white face spun back around and he chuckled. 

“Your head is so far up my ass that you can see out of my mouth. I like that about you, Scout E, I always have.” 

E had no idea how to respond. He murmured a halfhearted, “Thank you.” 

“Stalin said that ‘Gratitude is a sickness suffered by dogs.’ Bring me Weatherend and you’ll be out of the pods by next week. You’ll be my eyes and ears at Warton, Mind & Donovan. As of late, I’ve been concerned about the Heads of all the major corporations. Even though I began here as a Head as well, I am so much more now. Sometimes that breeds jealousy, so I want you to be my consigliore. It will be our little secret. You’ll report to me if one of them is being insubordinate. How does that sound, my little please-and-thank-you lapdog?” 

He reached out to pet Scout E’s white hair.

“There, there, little pet. Moy malen’kiy pitomets.” 1 The Man’s long pale fingers ran through E’s scalp.

“I trust you,” the Man said, his fingers gliding down to 

E’s left eye. He closed the lid with a pleased shudder. “You have such a nice eye. If you ever want to give it over to my collection...?” 

E exhaled. He never knew whether the Man might pluck out his eye on a whim. 

“Yes... I will let you know if I ever decide.” 

“Some were glad to give their eyes over. It is a sign of true devotion. Shelby’s was my latest. Gray. Rather rare.” 

“Yes...rare,” E stammered. Sweat formed on his upper 

lip. “Do you...uhh...have Mr. Weatherend’s file, sir?”

The Man woke from his dreamy stupor. He stopped caressing E’s eye and pulled up Graham’s file on the computer.

E moved back, taking a breath as the printer spit out a glossy copy.

“He’s in Dyanama,” the Man said, picking up the printed pages. “You will meet with a Scout H for this assignment. She is new and will need to be trained.” 

“Are there any boundaries?” E asked.

The Man gurgled his laughs.

“You do like them fresh from the Outside World, don’t you?”
E looked down at his shoes to avoid eye contact.

“Yes, you certainly do. Like the one who got away...all because you lost your grip.”

The Man rested all of his hands on his stomach, satisfied with his dig.

E went to respond, but was at a loss for words. His face turning pale.

“Scout H knows to comply,” the Man said. “Just like you did with the former Scout A, and her odd predilections. And if Scout H doesn’t, I’ll know she’s not in it for the long haul, and her contract will be severed.” 

His fingers caressed E’s eye again, one long fingernail circling around the left socket, drawn to it like an addict. E tried not to flinch. 

“What does Scout H look like?”

“You’ll know when you see her. She’ll be wearing a piece of jewelry with an angel and devil on it as a marker. The penitentiary is in the outskirts of Dyanama. You’ll meet her at midnight tonight in a hole of a bar called Bombed Sally’s. There’s a boat waiting at the Wharf for you now.” 

“Thank you again, sir. I will succeed.” 

E’s mouth dropped, his face flushed with terror. 

“I’m glad we’re clear,” the Man hissed until E finally nodded. 

The Man then folded his many hands in front of him and turned back to his eye-shaped window as a sign that the conversation was over. 

The eye-shaped door opened, and E slowly backed out until he could only see the Man’s faint, arachnid shadow before the door coldly snapped shut. 

“Good-bye, Shelby,” he said, picking up his suitcase by the imposing Guard, but she only answered by pressing a button to call the elevator. He prepped his wide smile as the doors dinged open. 

“Moy malen’kaya sobachka,” the Man laughed. Selected is crucial as I’m sure I made you aware. If you don’t succeed, I won’t hesitate to toss you into the Zones.”

Lee Matthew Goldberg is the author of THE ANCESTOR, THE DESIRE CARD, SLOW DOWN and THE MENTOR from St. Martin's Press. He has been published in multiple languages and nominated for the 2018 Prix du Polar. ORANGE CITY, his first sci-fi novel, is forthcoming in 2021 along with his YA series RUNAWAY TRAIN. 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. After graduating with an MFA from the New School, his writing has also appeared in the anthology DIRTY BOULEVARD, The Millions, Vol 1. Brooklyn, LitReactor, Necessary Fiction, Fiction Writer's Review, The Montreal Review, The Adirondack Review, Essays & Fictions, The New Plains Review, and others. He is the co-curator of The Guerrilla Lit Reading Series (guerrillalit.wordpress.com). He lives in New York City.

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