Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Bruce Golden. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Bruce, thanks for joining us today. What do you think Corporate America gets wrong in your industry? Any stories or anecdotes that illustrate why this matters?

Corporations make their decisions based on making money. I don’t have a problem with that. They exist to make money. But in publishing the decisions they make–to only publish the same old things that have made money before–become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It often limits them from trying something new. Readers aren’t challenged. They just keep getting variations on the same stories they’ve already been told.

Bruce, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I decided in high school that I wanted to write fiction, but before I could take the first steps on that journey I was drafted out of college into the Army. Some years later I found myself a single parent scrambling to forge a living in the field of journalism. I went from writing freelance articles for magazines to becoming a magazine editor who was hired to design brand-new publications. After more than a dozen years in that field I moved on to radio, where I became an entertainment reporter/film reviewer (among other things). From there I became a television news producer and then spent several years in the non-profit sector as a communications director. All those years I made a living with my writing and creative skills, but couldn’t find the time and energy to do what I really wanted–write fiction. At the turn of the century I walked away from all that, deciding I had the financial means to become a starving artist and only write fiction–speculative fiction to be precise. Over the last two decades I’ve written and published nine books and more than sixty short stories.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

While I having nothing against being rich and famous, no sensible person sets out to be a writer thinking such goals will be attained. I want to be a storyteller. I want people to enjoy the books and short stories I write. I hope they’ll read them and then search out other things I’ve written. That’s my only mission. My goal is to continually expand my audience, and to have readers tell me how much they enjoy the tales I spin. A little fame and fortune wouldn’t hurt, but it’s not what drives me. If so, I would have been driven insane long ago.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

No one wanted my first book. It took a couple of years to find a publisher for my second novel. As I continued to write, I found minor successes by selling quite a number of short stories, but no major publisher was interested in my books. Then I got lucky. A major television producer just happened to read one of my books and wanted to turn it into a TV series. After writing in obscurity for so many years, I almost couldn’t believe it. The book was optioned and put into development. After several delays, they optioned it again–which meant they were seriously interested in getting the show made. Then COVID came along and shut down Hollywood for a year. In that fabled land timing is everything. I’ll never know if it was the COVID shutdown or something else, but now it seems unlikely such a show will ever be made. If I’ve learned anything from the thousands of rejections I’ve received over the 45 years I’ve been a professional writer, it’s resilience. So when what seemed like my one-in-a-million shot at the big time died . . . I just kept on writing.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://goldentales.tripod.com/
• Facebook: goldenmissive
• Twitter: @goldenmissive
• Other: These are links to my books which I hope you will embed in the photos of each, so that if anyone is interested they can click on the photo and get a description of the book. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07Z82YKKS/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1934841323/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i7 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CPS3GC4/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i5 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01901MPH0/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i3 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B085XP9G6R/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i2 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GBG7K78/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i4 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0055PQ2YI/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i1 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001005P90/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i6