Elliot Olshansky (Fordham University Graduate School of Business, 2014), published his first novel, “Robert’s Rules of Karaoke,” on Feb 5. The book is about a serious karaoke fan, Robert, and his ongoing struggle to strike a balance between his pastime and his romantic life.

Karaoke is something of an institution for Rob and his best friend, Chuck, who meet every Friday night to sing at a karaoke bar on 42nd Street.

There are a couple of outside threats to Chuck and Rob’s karaoke idyll, though. The first is Chuck’s long-term, sharp-tongued girlfriend, Gia, who has given up Friday nights with her boyfriend but doesn’t like it very much. The second is Rob’s mother, who wants to see her eldest son married and with children and doesn’t believe that he will meet a suitable companion in a karaoke bar.

The basis of the book’s psychodrama is that Rob needs to learn to let go, to pursue things for his own sake, and finally to regard himself as worthy of all the things—love, happiness, acceptance—that he so badly wants.

The Observer sat down with Olshansky to talk about his new book.

Observer: What was the first spark of inspiration for the novel, what got it going for you?

Elliot Olshansky:  I started writing the book in 2007. I was still working for College Sports Television (CSTV), and I was covering college hockey for them and spending a lot of time on the road, travelling around.

Observer: To what extent is this autobiographical? It does seem like some of the subcultures you’re writing—the major one being the karaoke—are dealt with from a perspective that does suggest some degree of personal familiarity.

E.O.: Rob is not me, but we have a lot of the same DNA, I’ll put it that way. The bar in the book, the one that shows up the most, is Keats, which is on 45th and 2nd, I started going there whenI was working at CSTV at the time.

So I spent some time there, got to know the bartender and some of the regulars.

Observer: How did you go about getting your book published?

E.O.: The first draft I had finished in November of 2008 and I started pitching it to agents. I got a little interest from one who made some suggestions for some edits to make, and I incorporated some of that.

She ended up ultimately passing because she felt like she couldn’t get behind it; so I continued pitching it around and then finally found the Write Deal, a new e-publisher that got started in November of 2011. I submitted my book to them and had a great editor to work with, and they helped me somewhat with marketing and promotion. She really worked with me to finish the book.

There was some serious work done with characters and the book itself wasn’t really finished until two or three weeks before it went on sale.