The Write Way Café welcomes award-winning author Keith Steinbaum, who talks about his stories and his writing process.
Tell us a little about You Say Goodbye.
The premise of the story is this: The murder of an ex-rock star’s girlfriend leads a detective to conclude that the perpetrator is not only a renowned serial killer, but probably somebody the singer knows.
I refer to my novel as a Beatles themed whodunit murder mystery. For those Beatles fans that read this, they will recognize the title as a line from, Hello Goodbye. But something that any potential reader should know is that the book isn’t one that only focuses on the basic murderer vs. detective storyline that features multiple deaths in the search for the killer. I mention this because it was as important for me to develop engaging character relationships as it was to tease the reader about who committed the crime, especially the rapport that’s cultivated between a bitter ex-rock star and a little neighbor girl fighting cancer. And, by the way, that relationship is a main ingredient through the climax so both aspects work hand in hand up to the final page.
If You Say Goodbye was made into a movie, who would play your main characters and why?
Sean Hightower is the protagonist, a fifty-year old ex-rock star who’s now a bitter guy who feels his best days are behind him. Although my character is described as a man whose blond hair is now graying, an actor who isn’t blond, Paul Rudd, the Ant Man, has the face and mannerism to be a perfect fit. He’s still youthful enough to convince an audience that he’s a rock ‘n roller at heart, yet someone who could reflect an arc of maturity very well. I can’t answer for a child actor to play the little girl, but the grizzled Latino detective, Ray Maldonado, could be played quite believably by Raymond Cruz from Breaking Bad fame.
Who is your intended audience and why should they read your book?
The answer to this one is reflected in my answer to question # 1. For people who like to channel their inner sleuth and read a fun whodunit murder mystery, I believe I’ve delivered that for you. And, for those readers who want to be given the chance to fully engage in the characters and involve themselves in interacting relationships that are integral to the storyline, then my book gives you that as well. Let’s just say that
You Say Goodbye is a Whodunit with a Heart.
How did you become involved with the subject or theme of the book?
I’ve described the origin of my story in detail with a previous Write Way Café interview, so I’ll break it down briefly here. The little neighbor girl with cancer was patterned after a true story I came across in the obituary section of the Los Angeles Times about Alexandra Scott from the Alex’s Lemonade Foundation – a charity to raise money for childhood cancer. She started selling lemonade at the age of four after being diagnosed with cancer, and by the time she died at the age of eight, Alex’s Lemonade stands were in all 50 states, in much of Canada, and parts of Europe. The story both fascinated and moved me to a point where I cut out her photo and taped it to my office wall. After a number of months, I started developing a character to play off of someone like her who was so young and fighting for her life. And that’s how my protagonist, Sean Hightower, was born – a selfish, grumpy fifty-year old who feels that his best days are behind him and that life is a bitch (something he utters often). Eventually, after a couple of short story versions focusing on these two characters, I decided to write a murder mystery with these two highly dissimilar people playing prominent roles.
Who is your favorite character from You Say Goodbye and why?
This is an easy one for me – it’s Kayleigh Michaels, the little girl with cancer. As you can see from my previous answer it’s because of Alexandra Scott that this story ever came to fruition, so how could Kayleigh not be my favorite character? When I occasionally glance at my story and read some of the passages, it’s the Kayleigh scenes that either make me smile or make me get teary-eyed. For people reading this, thinking that I’m somehow exaggerating the effect that a character of my own creation can move me emotionally like this, authors will understand. Characters are born from the heart and in looking back at the words I wrote and the people I created, it can seem as if someone else wrote the story. What I learned from many years of writing poetry and song lyrics, that a right brain/left brain disconnect is part of the creative process also applies to novel writing; but magnified by a much greater amount because there’s so much more writing involved.
How about your least favorite character? What makes them less appealing to you?
I’m going to refrain from answering this one because if I offered a name it would be logical for the reader of this interview to feel that I wouldn’t name the killer as the answer to my least favorite character because that would be too obvious and thus that person would be eliminated as a suspect. And they’d be right!
Tell us a little bit about your cover art. Who designed it? Why did you go with that particular image/artwork?
James Avery is my website designer and at first there weren’t plans for him to be involved in the cover. But when I showed him an original concept he felt he could improve upon it. While writing the story, I visualized sheet music as the primary background with a portion of a gun showing. The irony here is that I believe the use of guns in promotional visuals, especially movie posters and billboards, have reached the level of cliché because they’re shamelessly overused. So look at what I did? That said, I felt it was imperative to tell much of the story through the cover – and this includes the gun, handcuffs, and the small portion of the Jack of Hearts playing card that’s peeking through from underneath the sheet music. For those who have read the story, they’ll know exactly how each item applies, but for those who haven’t, I’m offering a tease that I hope intrigues. The stark black and red coloring is consistent with the theme of the story and that was important to me. Going back to the gun, the last thing to mention is that the murderer uses a Glock 19 handgun and coincidentally James has a friend that has one so he ‘borrowed’ his friend’s Glock for the photo.
Tell us about some of the reviews for You Say Goodbye.
Receiving good reviews from friends or family is nice, but let’s get real – the ones that truly mean something are from those who have complete objectivity such as bloggers or book site reviews. I’ll mention three here that I find so validating and gratifying of my effort. OnlineBookClub.org, Reader’s Favorite, and the Book Excellence Awards. OnlineBookClub.org has been in existence for ten years and claims to have over a million members. I received a top four out of four star rating from their reviewer. The last I checked I’ve had over 1,900 clicks on the review and 135 members have the book on their ‘to be read’ shelves so that’s very encouraging. Reader’s Favorite is another solid, reputable book site that’s been around for a number of years, and their reviewer gave
You Say Goodbye a top five out of five star rating. I also recently received notification that the book received an Honorable Mention placing in the Readers’ Favorite international writing competition for the Fiction-Mystery-Sleuth category. This means that I finished in the Top 8 voting out of hundreds of entries so I was thrilled with this news as you can imagine. Through them I’ve gotten the book promoted through a large number of media outlets so we’ll see what happens with that. The Book Excellence Awards is another international competition so they consequently also receive many hundreds of entries for each genre from various countries. I placed as a Finalist in the mystery category which is a great feeling of accomplishment.
Inspired by Alexandra Scott’s story, you were able to make a unique connection with her mother. Please tell us about that connection, and what it meant to you.
I’ll never tire of telling this story and despite the need for proper brevity forgive me if this answer requires a lengthier reply than the others. At the end of each year I donate to certain charities and it struck me as ironic that when I did this again near the end of 2018 I realized I’d never given money to Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation. After doing this online, I noticed on the home page that anyone could send a message to the founder of the charity, Liz Scott – Alexandra’s mother. Her website address was listed and as I stared at it I faced a ‘do I or don’t I’ dilemma. On the one hand, it was because of her daughter’s inspiring yet tragic story from the obituary section that the origins of
You Say Goodbye eventually formulated and became a reality. On the other hand, however, this is a mother who lost her child to cancer and all I did was write a fictional novel so was this something even worth contacting her about? I decided that, yes, because Alexandra’s true story became such an integral part of my fictional story it was something I wanted her to know. I wrote a message of a few sentences explaining who I was and the effect her daughter had on this author from the other side of the country. Within a few weeks I received an enthusiastic reply saying how wonderful it was to know how Alexandra affected me as it did and that she’d like to read the book. She also suggested the next time she’s in Los Angeles that perhaps we could meet.
 |
Keith Steinbaum with Liz Scott at UCLA
on 9/14/19, attending Los Angeles Loves
Alex's Lemonade charity event. |
From those two initial communiqués, Liz and I have emailed each other a few other times and, yes, I of course sent her my book – signed and with a message telling her that I hoped my character, Kayleigh, patterned after Alexandra, did justice to the spirit of her daughter. I wish I could tell you that she read the book and sent me a glowing review but at this moment, I haven’t yet received a response about that. However, the final interesting part of all of this is that 5 days previous to this September 19th interview, on Saturday, September 14th, a large charity event for Alexandra’s Lemonade Foundation, called ‘Los Angeles Loves Alexandra’s Lemonade,’ will have been held at U.C.L.A., and by the time you’re reading this, I will have finally met Liz.
Fifteen years ago, in the summer of 2004, I read about Alex in the obituary section, leading to the birth of
You Say Goodbye, and now I’ll meet and have a photo taken with her mother, Liz Scott. It’s going to be as surreal a feeling as I’ve ever had and I’ll cherish that photo for as long as I live.
For anyone interested in the Alex's Lemonade Foundation, be it learning about its origins, donating, or even becoming actively involved, this website has it all:
https://www.alexslemonade.org/
What can readers who enjoy your book do to help make it successful?
An underrated area of importance is writing a review to online sites such as Amazon, Goodreads, and Barnes and Noble among others. I don’t know about the other two sites, but Amazon, with their weird metrics, does depend on review counts for book exposure (or so I’ve been told). It only needs to be a few sentences but if someone develops a curiosity about the book, it would be an expected step to go to one of these sites to read reviews from others before making that financial decision to purchase it. If someone has read my book and enjoyed it, word of mouth is another way, of course. For anyone who lives in Los Angeles that belongs to a book club, if you’d be interested in having this author speak to the group about my book, you can contact me at
keith@keithsteinbaum.com. And, finally, at the end of the year during the Holiday season, if you’re looking for a gift to give to somebody…
Do you have any tips for readers or advice for other writers trying to get published?
Dave Letterman used to have a Top 10 list. Here’s Keith Steinbaum’s Top 5 list (not necessarily in this order and no doubt there’s more I could add):
1. Research which companies publish your specific genre because they’re your target audience and you want to go straight to the source.
2. Google ‘Proper query letters for aspiring authors.’ You’ll get many links about this but just focus on the few that give you examples of what makes good ones and use that as a guideline for yours. Publishers get inundated with so many that you want one that shows you’re worth the next step.
3. Expect rejection after rejection, and often times no reply at all. This is why the more query letters you can send the better for you. In a creative writing class I took long ago, our teacher told us that there’s a ‘yes’ just waiting for you. It’s an important bit of optimism you’ll need through those trying times. But that teacher also opened up the class by saying if we were there with the goal of making money on a book, that was naïve. But if we were there because we had a story to tell, then we were in the right place.
4. Relative to # 4, we writers are a sensitive, often times insecure bunch, but you better develop as thick a skin as possible because prospective publishers don’t care about that. They just want a book that has marketability and fits in with their catalogue. You are just one of thousands (hundreds of thousands) of authors seeking the same thing from them – a contract offer.
5. If you finally get to a point where you feel that you’ve exhausted your list of possible publishers, and your patience has run out on your understandable desire to finally see that hard earned work of yours in print, the other alternative is, of course, self-publishing. However, because there are so many thousands (millions) of writers that choose this route, many ‘all show no go’ indie publishing companies have sprouted like so many weeds in the landscape and it’s easy to be taken advantage of with unfulfilled promises as you dole out a lot of money. I recommend going on Google for this as well and research which indie companies have the best track records of sales from their libraries. Those are the ones to focus on.
What can we expect from you in the future?
I’m quite fortunate that Black Opal Books, my publisher for
You Say Goodbye, was also open to reading my previously self-published book,
The Poe Consequence, as a possible acquisition for their company (as long as I owned 100% of the rights, which I did). And, as it turned out, after the Acquisitions Editor read it, I was offered a contract. The book was originally scheduled for release last month but I asked to have the release date moved back to March of 2020 in order to give me a full year to focus solely on the promotion of
You Say Goodbye. But I’m looking forward to improving the book through the billionth editing where I’ll still find ways to tweak, delete, and add for the betterment of the story.
The Poe Consequence is a supernatural thriller with the following premise: After the death of an innocent bystander in a drive-by shooting, the two rival gangs responsible for his murder face an Edgar Allan Poe inspired vow of revenge from beyond the grave.
The release of
The Poe Consequence will buy me some time to find the next source of inspiration to drive me back to the keyboard. I have a shadow of an idea that involves some kind of sports analogy with social injustice. If one day this actually comes to fruition, and the book is worthy of even being thought about, remember, you read it here first.
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After a temperamental meltdown on stage, Sean Hightower, a regretful and resentful “one-hit wonder” rock musician hoping for a comeback, returns to his girlfriend’s condo seeking comfort from the woman he loves. But after letting himself in, he discovers her naked body on the bed, murdered from a bullet to the head. When the police detective arrives and sees the two taped pieces of paper on the wall with the word, “hello,” on one and “goodbye,” on the other, he realizes that the renowned serial killer, The Beatles Song Murderer, has struck again. In the days that follow, he reaches another conclusion—the Beatles Song Murderer is probably somebody Sean knows. Now the detective needs Sean’s help to find the killer.
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About Keith:
After graduating college from UCSB, I set my sights on becoming a professional song lyricist after many years of writing poetry. Had I known through the haze of my naiveté and post college optimism what a difficult task this was to accomplish as a career goal, I would have focused on my other alternative of disc jockeying somewhere. I spent a couple years doing middle of the night work at the college station playing rock ‘n roll for those few listeners either partying or working night shifts, and I had about a hundred resume cassette tapes ready to send. I’ve occasionally wondered where this would have led me had I decided on this course for my career, but as it turns out, although I did have song on a popular album in America, and other songs recorded in a number of foreign markets, I wasn’t able to make a living as a lyricist and moved on into the field of landscape. But my creative writing flame continued to burn. Understanding that idea took time to realize through initial bouts of unhappiness lasting several years. But once I started focusing on poetry again, that’s where I rediscovered the untethered freedom and joy of writing without monetary goals.
Fast forward to an eventual desire to write a novel, culminating in the completion of The Poe Consequence. As a buildup to the idea for the book, my landscape job entailed years of working in many low-income housing projects throughout Southern California, and, consequently, many neighborhoods with gang problems. This experience played a major role in formulating the concept for my story. Originally self-published, this past June I signed a contract with Black Opal Books for it’s re-release next summer. In the future I’d like the opportunity to delve further into all the ingredients that factored into the creation of the book but I’m certainly gratified for receiving valued blogger reviews on sites such as Amazon and Goodreads, as well as other accolades.
Winner of Books-and-Authors.net’s Book of the Year in the Supernatural Thriller genre, the novel also made the 2015 Kirkus Reviews Books of the Year issue. And in 2017, it received a Finalist placing in the international Book Excellence Awards competition.
My second novel entitled, You Say Goodbye, a Beatles themed whodunit murder mystery revolving around the search for a renowned serial killer, is my first with Black Opal Books. The story prominently features a one-hit wonder ex-rock star and a little girl with cancer who's a big fan of the L.A. Lakers. The child's character was inspired by the life, and unfortunate death, of Alexandra Scott from the Alex's Lemonade foundation.
I can be found online at:
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Here are my personal website links: KeithSteinbaum.com and ThePoeConsequence.com
