Herbert Gold Kicks off his Tenth Decade with his 20th Novel

Jorvik Press has some exciting news:

What does a prizewinning author do when he’s about to enter his tenth decade with a track record of more than 30 books, sound of mind and body, full of ideas, and still obsessed with characters he’s been developing for years? If you’re Herbert Gold, you write another novel.

Just before his 90th birthday last March Herb was talking to an old friend he’d known since the late 1960s, lamenting the fact that his long-time literary agent was suffering from “cognitive impairment.” So here he was, wondering what to do with his recently finished 20th novel.

As it happened, he was talking to Hammond Guthrie, newly appointed associate publisher at Jorvik Press, a Portland start-up with a mere three titles out. “Will you look at the manuscript?” Herb asked his friend. “I’ll get my word processing person to send you a computer file.” He has no computer or cell phone in what he calls his “ancient beatnik hovel” in San Francisco’s Russian Hill neighborhood, where he still taps away on his trusty old Royal typewriter.

When Jorvik Press founder Peter Stansill read the manuscript, he was thrilled but mystified. He had also connected with Herb decades earlier – they met briefly in London in 1970 and intersected at a distance in Berkeley in 1975, places where Stansill edited alternative newspapers. So he wrote Herb by snail mail to make sure he was serious about letting an upstart like Jorvik Press publish his new novel. “Absolutely,” Herb replied.

The result is When a Psychopath Falls in Love, due out in hardback, paperback and eBook editions in February 2015 – a story of “lost souls seeking attachment, revenge and redemption at the edge of San Francisco Bay.”

“I’ve been exploring this character in different incarnations through several novels,” Herb says of the book’s protagonist, Dan Kasdan. “He’s been inhabiting me for a long time, and now he’s more alive than ever.”

Herb’s last novel was Daughter Mine, published in 2000 by St. Martin’s Press. His latest book is the memoir Not Dead Yet: A Feisty Bohemian Explores the Art of Growing Old (2011), originally published in 2008 as Still Alive! A Temporary Condition.

Get more details and links (including a brief video of Herb in his study) at Jorvik Press.