Birth of a Writer

Lee Goldberg’s passion for writing began in the womb.

Bestselling novelist and television writer/producer Lee Goldberg (“Diagnosis Murder,” “Likely Suspects,” “She-Wolf of London,” and “Nero Wolfe Mystery”) always wanted to write. He can’t remember when he didn’t.

He used his mother’s old typewriters to punch out stories in grade school to circulate among his friends––that’s right, grade school. After a few years, he started his own newspaper, the Cochise Courier––named after the cul-de-sac where his family lived––and wrote stories about his neighborhood. He sold it for a nickel a copy.

In high school and college, he edited the student newspapers. He also wrote a thinly disguised, very bad, series of novels based on Simon Templar and The Saint series. His first unpublished novel, The Perfect Sinner, may have been awful, he says, but he learned a lot.

In high school, while living in the San Francisco Bay area, he began freelancing, earning money for college conducting interviews with Hollywood celebrities for various publications. He was maybe sixteen and interviewed them over the phone. Lee used his best anchorman voice, which he’d learned from his father––a local television news anchorman. None of the famous caught on they were talking to a teenager.

He attended UCLA and was putting himself through college freelancing for the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, UPI, Newsweek and American Film magazine. His girlfriend at the time worked at Playgirl magazine and got him a job writing sexually explicit letters-to-the-editor at $25 a clip.

He was interviewing Television Producer Steve Cannell (“The Rockford Files,” “The A Team,” “The Greatest American Hero,” and more), when he let it slip, he was now in Los Angeles. Cannell, who had talked with him previously while Goldberg was living in San Francisco, invited Goldberg to the studio to meet in person.

“Now, he’s going to discover I’m a kid,” Goldberg says. “I was terrified. I knew the moment I walked into his office, he was going to feel deceived. So, I asked him a tough financial question about his independent production company, and we were off and running, and all was fine.”

Years later, after Goldberg and Cannell had become friends, Goldberg asked how he felt when the fledgling interviewer walked into his office. “Oh, I felt sure I’d been conned,” Cannel told him. “I thought you were angling for a job.”

Ironically, when Goldberg became a television producer, he actually hired Cannell to be on one of his television shows.

I’m Rick Pullen, former investigative reporter, magazine editor, and author of the best selling thriller Naked Ambition, its sequel Naked Truth, and a stand-alone thriller The Apprentice. I’m also a magazine columnist and feature writer.

Literary Agent Terrie Wolf of AKA Literary Management represents my work and is currently shopping my next crime novel and a non-fiction book about many of the authors who appear in Idol Talk.

Thanks for reading Idol Talk! Subscribe for free or support my work with a paid subscription. — Rick Pullen