RICK GOELD
About Rick Goeld
First, the dull part: I was born in New York City, and grew up in Miami, Florida. I loved the South Flor-ida lifestyle—fishing, boating, and swimming—so, to teach me a lesson, my parents exiled me to a boarding school in Western Massachusetts. After graduating from progressive and left-wing-leaning Windsor Mountain School, I earned engineering degrees at the Massachusetts Institute of Technol-ogy and Northeastern University, and then went into the field of high-tech electronics. I was a nerd, with slide rule, pocket protector, and coke-bottle glasses.
I gradually outgrew my nerdiness. Encouraged by my wife, I learned some social skills. Against all odds, I slithered up the corporate ladder and, employing smoke and mirrors whenever possible, I be-came a vice president at two different companies.
A few years ago, the corporate flunkies got tired of my act and put me on the street. I asked myself: Self, what should I do next? Since my main interests were sex, sports, reading fiction, sex, old-time rock-and-roll, classic movies, and sex, I decided to become a writer. I started out writing short stories, but you've got to be "literary" to get short stories published, and anyway, there's no money in them, so … I decided to write novels.
My first novel was "Searching for Steely Dan," in which I parlayed my own near-obsession with Steely Dan and my son's misadventures in New York into a sensitive, touching, and compelling coming-of-age story. Eddie Zittner, my protagonist, is a 29-year-old Jersey boy with no job, no ambi-tion, and a failing marriage. After his wife dumps him, he takes to the sidewalks of Manhattan, searching for answers, searching for inspiration, searching for ... well, read the book.
My second novel, "Sex, Lies, and Soybeans," is a sexy techno-romp—whatever that means—with a timely message about the evils of genetically engineered food. This story takes place in a near future where soy has become the world's primary source of protein, and the Soy Industry has become the world's most powerful food consortium. This book is loaded with things I'm interested in: sex, politics, old-time rock-and-roll, sex, a beautiful bisexual woman, off-the-wall characters, sex, references to classic movies, screeching plot twists, and did I mention sex?
Since my novels had only limited success, I decided to try non-fiction. My third book, "People of Windsor Mountain," combines a history of the boarding school I attended with the personal stories of a couple of dozen alumni and former faculty. It began as an investigation: trying to find out what happened to the other 46 members of my 1963 graduating class. I found that too limiting, so I broad-ened my scope, eventually interviewing more than 100 people. It became a labor of love.
My fourth book and third novel, “Covid Seasons,” is a contemporary novel dealing with 2020, the year from hell. It’s the story of three suburban Arizona couples and how they cope, or don’t cope, with the pandemic, masks and sequestration, death counts, mis-information, George Floyd’s murder, police brutality, a nasty political campaign, and, finally, a president who might not leave. The charac-ters include a democrat, an evangelical republican, a libertarian, and a female police lieutenant, so there’s lots of political debate, not to mention guns and a steamy affair. The bottom line: some char-acters survive, some don’t.
My wife and I live in Scottsdale, Arizona. Our three grown children have been replaced by two dogs who behave better than the kids ever did.
