Gary Goldstein's 'Please Come to Boston' also pays homage to his Long Island roots

Gary Goldstein's third novel may be titled "Please Come to Boston" (Hadleigh House, $17.99), but Long Island gets almost as much attention as Beantown. Throughout the nearly 300 pages penned by the Valley Stream native, Hempstead Turnpike, Hewlett Harbor and even Pathmark make an appearance.

Set in 1975, the story follows naive Franklin Square teen Nicky DeMarco as he arrives at Boston University, where his journey of self-discovery and sexual orientation lands him in a romantic triangle involving star athlete Joe and adventurous psych student Lori.

Goldstein, who has also written several screenplays including those for several Hallmark holiday movies, says the story isn't autobiographical, but make no mistake that many elements of his life creep their way in. He recently chatted by phone from Los Angeles about the book and growing up on Long Island.

Why was it so important to you that Long Island should be an important presence in the book?

Being from New York and having great memories of growing up on Long Island, I figured let me just make Nicky a Long Islander. I had him from the town next to Valley Stream — Franklin Square — which is where I went to high school. … It's fun to write about an area you know really well. It enhances the writing process and it’s just my little homage to Long Island. … In the book there’s a whole section where Nicky comes home for Thanksgiving and he takes his friend on a tour of Franklin Square. I literally remember driving up Franklin Avenue and every little thing that was there at the time. The Carvel stand, the Franklin Bowl, the Pathmark supermarket. All those things that were so much a part of my life.

The book isn't an autobiography, but are there aspects of your personality that worked their way into the characters?

There’s a lot about Nicky that's similar to my thought process back then about being in the dark about a lot of issues yet interested in being on my own for the first time and being independent. … Nicky is a much more intrepid person than I was back then, but the book is also a little bit of a "what if" story. What if I was a little more intrepid back then? What if I had some of the opportunities that I give Nicky in the book? Would I have seized upon them, acted upon them. allowed them to be acted upon? My general thought is no.

A lot of the cultural references you put into the book ("The Partridge Family," "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest") really did a nice job of helping evoke the period the novel is set in.

Back then music and movies had such a different impact. People went to movie theaters all the time, People listened to their radios all the time. You’d take record albums and travel with them from home to your dorm and set up this stereo in your dorm room. That's what people did. … It was so great to write about something in a period where there were no computers, no internet, no cellphones. We didn’t know it back then, of course, but it was a much simpler, more basic time.

Romance seems to be a part of much of your work. This is definitely not a Hallmark story and there's a good deal of sexual content. Was being able to write about sex a freeing experience for you?

In writing a novel, it’s very freeing because you can push the envelope more, you can go off on tangents than you might not in a screenplay. I didn’t want to shy away from the sexual content but I didn’t want it to go over the line. I just wanted it to be realistic to people’s feelings. I tried to strike a good balance.

What are you working on next?

I’ve got a number of script ideas and am trying to get them out there. I've written a number of Christmas movies, which is always fun… And I've started a new novel, which is a divorce dramedy about a couple and their dog and how a dog can change somebody’s relationship with their spouse for better or worse. In looking at relationships, one of my favorite things is looking at what brings people together to an extent that they want to spend the rest of their lives together, and then suddenly they can’t stand each other.