Bestselling Authors Nick & Rhea Stop By The Chelsea

Nick Bienes and Rhea Gallaher are co-authors who collaborate on writing bestselling novels under the pseudonym Judith Gould.  One of our neighbors tipped us off that they used to live here at the Chelsea.  She also said that they had one of the most elegant apartments ever and threw the most sophisticated parties.  Yes, those were the days!  Rhea was good enough to take time out of his busy schedule to answer a few questions.

How did it feel to see your work published under a pseudonym? 

At first, we were both very disappointed that our publisher wanted to use a pseudonym.  After all, we wanted to be recognized for our efforts.  They reasoned that our work was "women's fiction" and that women wouldn't want to read such work by a man, let alone two men.  Maybe they were right.  I don't know.  We certainly didn't consider our work to be for women alone but for readers who enjoyed the early and mid-career novels of Harold Robbins, for example.  I do know that we have many male fans (although the majority are women) both from the fan letters we receive and the online chats/interviews we have participated in on writerspace.com, for example.  I personally began to enjoy the anonymity because I quickly discovered that people reacted to you differently when they found out you were a best-selling author.  Some people said we changed with success.  I think it's more accurate to say that a lot of the people around us changed in the way they related to us.  When it was announced that Joan Collins was going to star in the television miniseries based on our first novel, Sins, Liz Smith interviewed us and did an article about us in the Daily News, our first public exposure.  Our publisher was not happy.  TV Guide mentioned our names also.  Then, a reporter claiming to be from the London Times showed up at the Chelsea to interview us and brought along a photographer.  We were so gullible that we didn't ask for identification.  As it turned out, he was from one of the London tabloids and wrote a lot of garbage and published a picture taken with a fisheye lens that made us both look terrifying. 
What inspired you to reveal yourselves as the voices behind Judith Gould?
In any case, for years we didn't seek any publicity: we just kept working.  But with the popularity of author websites, we finally decided to go public in that way and to participate in online chats monitored by our publisher on writerspace.com. 
How do your readers respond when they learn that Judith Gould is really two guys?
The response has been overwhelmingly positive.  In fact, we haven't actually received any negative responses from readers regarding our true identity.  If there are readers out there who dislike Judith Gould being two men who've lived and worked together for twenty-eight years, not a single one has come forward.  We have developed "virtual" relationships with readers, and the experience has been very gratifying.  It's great to get some of the feedback that authors get at readings, etc., rather than writing in a vacuum with only sales figures to go by.
Does having such a close working relationship affect your personal relationship?

Since the first week we met, we've been working together - as strange as that may seem - so I have no idea how our relationship might have been different otherwise.  We began talking the first night, and neither of us has shut up since.
Which contemporary author(s) do you admire and why?
We both read on a daily basis, and we read a vast range of writers.  It's impossible to list favorites, but I'll mention a few.  We rarely, if ever, read the sorts of novels we write.  Nick as more of a penchant for adventure than I do, but we do read a lot of the same writers.  We both read and like Ian McEwen.  I supposed he's considered "literary," but his novels are also full of good old-fashioned suspense.  We both love John Le Carre.  He's a wonderful writer who's made the transition from the cold war to present day effortlessly.  Another contemporary author we both read is Mark Helprin.  I supposed you can deduce that neither of us goes in for minimalism!  We both love the mysteries of Ruth Rendell (or Barbara Vine, her other persona).  Nick is crazy about Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle and all the current "Slammerkin School" novels, as we call them.  The combination of day-to-day minutiae from another time and a good story, well told, is enormously appealing.  I read Donna Leon's mysteries set in Venice because I love Commissario Brunetti, who reminds me of Simenon's Maigret.  And the food always makes me salivate!  And I admit to a penchant for a few amusing British ladies: Muriel Spark (I will miss her), Penelope Fitzgerald and Penelope Lively, and the late Barbara Pym.  I also love Patrick McCabe and Alan Hollinghurst, and although he's now dead, Lawrence Durrell.  His "guides" to Greece are virtually useless nowadays, but wonderfully written.  W.G. Sebald, also recently deceased, is a hero to me.  His writing astonishes me.  All of these writers are romantic (some accused of being florid), but not necessarily sentimental, and some are great satirists. 
How much of your own life is similar to Judith Gould's life?

Our lives are so entwined with the characters and stories in Judith Gould stories that it's difficult to separate reality from fiction sometimes.  We often use people we've met as springboards for characters, and real-life events are often used in the same way.  But the imagination invariably takes over as we write, and the finished novel never has characters or stories that resemble their real-life counterparts.  Also, we travel a lot and these travels are reflected in all of the novels, as are our other interests.
When did you live at the Chelsea?
We lived at the Chelsea from the early 1980s (@1983) to 1995, so for more than a decade.  We'd given up our apartment on Horatio Street and moved to San Francisco on a whim.  Quickly tiring of San Franciso, we moved back to New York and camped out at a German friend's apartment in the West Village for a while.  We had to leave on short notice and remembered that our friend Robert Mapplethorpe (and Patti Smith) had moved into the Chelsea at one point, so we went for a look-see.  We took a room by the week for a few weeks, then got an apartment.  It wasn't really something we planned but more of an accident.  Funny enough, we'd both known Robert, even before we knew each other, but he didn't like to visit us at the Chelsea.  He hadn't liked it - it was a difficult time - and had left owing money, he said. 
Do you think the Chelsea Hotel has a creative spirit?

I won't guess as to whether the Chelsea itself has a creative spirit or not, but a lot of creative people have passed through its doors for whatever reasons.  We certainly got a lot of work done there, and it was something of a comfort to know that other people were slaving away on creative projects upstairs, downstairs, and next door, some more successfully than others.  There was a lot of stimulation from some of the people you got to know.    
Describe the best/worst thing that happened while you lived at the Chelsea?
The worst thing that ever happend at the Chelsea was, hands down, having the apartment broken in to while we were there asleep in the bedroom.  Nick had just flown in from the West Coast and was exhausted, and I had just come home after oral surgery.  He left all of his "hard" Louis Vuitton luggage - a ton of it - open in the living room, and I took off my clothes and left them in the living room, with a jeans pocket stuffed with a lot of cash.  When we woke up later, somebody had come in and taken all of his luggage - along with all of the clothes in it (mostly custom-made bike leathers) - and taken the wad of cash out of my jeans.  To top it off, whoever it was - and we always suspected a bell clerk whose career at the Chelsea was very short-lived - threw up all over our work table - computers, paperwork, etc.  The police said that wasn't unusual, and at least two New York friends asked us if the thief had thrown up or defecated.  Our ancient wood door was quickly replaced with a metal one, after a contretemps with Stanley Bard, the manage/owner (also not unusual). 
What’s your favorite Hotel Chelsea story?

We have so many stories about living at the Chelsea, I can't even begin to choose a favorite.  Despite the problems associated with living in the building - breaking down elevators, poor maintence in general, so many I can't begin to elaborate! - it became almost like an addiction, and it was nearly two years of living in the country before I no longer missed it, along with the constant drama, although we both detested so much about living there.  One thing Nick and I agree on: Stanley is brilliant at choosing tenants.  We've never figured out how he does it, but he knows what he's doing.  The mix was always fascinating, even if there were disgusting individuals and events, and life there was never dull. I will never forget Viva's screams!  She could shake the skylights from the lobby, and I loved her for it.  Or seeing Grace Jones hooded and draped in fur, coming and going to see Richard Bernstein (I really miss him).  Or taking the dog out the morning they wheeled Virgil Thomson out on a gurney for the last time (I miss him, too).  Or coming home from the grocery store and barely missing being hit by a flying shoe when a woman jumped to her death from the ninth floor and hit the street in front of me.  Or screaming bloody murder myself when they were filming Madonna's sex book down the hall and kept knocking out our electricity while we were ghost-writing for someone very famous.  A lot of money and a deadline were involved, but nobody really cared or listened.  It was just another typical daily drama at the Chelsea.  We loved it and hated it.