YALLFest Interview with Jeff Zentner

by Jocelyn Rish

I can’t believe YALLFest was over a month ago already! It was another fabulous weekend, and the festival just gets bigger and better every year. This year it pretty much consumed the entire city of Charleston. I’m honored that for the third year I got to interview some of the charming and talented authors who were there.

However, I must apologize for taking so long to get the interviews posted. November did its usual chaotic thing and had me feeling like this:

and like this:

I’ve finally had a chance to transcribe my interviews and will be posting them over the next few weeks. Luckily, these authors were worth the wait!

First up is Jeff Zentner, who won the William C. Morris Award and was longlisted for the Carnegie Medal for his novel The Serpent King.

Not this kind of Serpent King

This kind!

Jeff, I know you started as a musician – so what did your journey to publication look like?

I did music for a long time, and I started volunteering at Tennessee Teen Rock Camp and Southern Girls Rock Camp, and through that I kind of just fell in love with young adults and wanted to make art for them. By that point, I was too old to make the kind of music that gets marketed to young adults, and so I decided to switch horses and try something else. So I tried my hand at writing a young adult novel to reach young adults, and I gave it to a friend to read, and she had a literary agent, and she said I think my agent would like this, so she passed it on to him, and he liked it and took it and sold it to Random House.

Wow, that’s one of the easier journeys to publication we’ve heard about here at AYAP! So do you think being a songwriter impacted your writing in any way?

Yeah, it did. It made me have an appreciation for economy of language and for musicality of language and the way words flow. And more than anything else, it gave me confidence in my ability to create original stories and ideas.

Do you still write songs?

No. Nope, totally retired.

Besides the setting itself, does being a Southern writer affect your writing?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, obviously the place influences my writing greatly – all my books are set in the South – so the setting kinda becomes almost like a character. And I read a lot of Southern writers, and I love the way they write about place and they way they write about unique cultural quirks of the South and Southern people. Southern people are just really kind of like natural storytellers, and so it’s fun to write about them.

Has there been an AHA! moment during your publishing journey where you finally felt you had the key to writing?

No, no, I would love for that moment to come, but every time I go to write a novel it’s like I don’t know what I’m doing there. I have no clue. I have no idea how to write a novel. I always feel like a fraud. Like I just somehow found my way into this, and I have no idea how.

Can you tell us more about your next book, TV Six?

Yeah, so it was pitched as Wayne’s World meets Ghost World, and I have to give David Arnold credit for that piece of brilliance. It’s about two girls who have a TV show on their local public access station where they show cheesy horror movies from the 50s, 60s, and 70s, and they dress up like vampires and do little skits and puppet shows and interludes during the movie. One of the girls wants to use the show to reconnect with her father, who abandoned her when she was young and left behind his trove of horror movies on VHS. And the other girl wants to use the show to springboard her TV career. The book is really about whether each one of them will be able to use the show to do what they want to do or if they’re gonna have to go their separate ways.

What is your greatest weakness as a writer, and what have you done to improve that?

I used to be really afraid to write dialog. I just didn’t think I could write dialog. So I read a lot of books with really good dialog and really studied it, really started listening to people talk, and studying the way people talk. And just practicing writing dialog to where my new book, TV Six, is mostly dialog. It’s probably like 80% dialog at least.

So you just dove right in?

Dove right in, yeah, just forced myself.

Thanks for chatting with me, Jeff!

Readers, do you have a musical background? Has it affected your writing? What about the region where you live – has it become a character in your novels? How are you at writing dialog – is it a strength or weakness for you? Share your thoughts about the interview in the comments!

Happy Reading,

Jocelyn

ABOUT THE BOOK

Goodbye Days
by Jeff Zentner
Hardcover
Crown Books for Young Readers
Released 3/7/2017

Can a text message destroy your life?

Carver Briggs never thought a simple text would cause a fatal crash, killing his three best friends, Mars, Eli, and Blake. Now Carver can’t stop blaming himself for the accident and even worse, there could be a criminal investigation into the deaths.

Then Blake’s grandmother asks Carver to remember her grandson with a ‘goodbye day’ together. Carver has his misgivings, but he starts to help the families of his lost friends grieve with their own memorial days, along with Eli’s bereaved girlfriend Jesmyn. But not everyone is willing to forgive. Carver’s own despair and guilt threatens to pull him under into panic and anxiety as he faces punishment for his terrible mistake. Can the goodbye days really help?

Purchase Goodbye Days at Amazon
Purchase Goodbye Days at IndieBound
View Goodbye Days on Goodreads

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jeff Zentner is the author of the William C. Morris Award winning and Carnegie Medal longlisted book The Serpent King (2016) as well as Goodbye Days (2017). He lives in Nashville, Tennessee. He came to writing through music, starting his creative life as a guitarist and eventually becoming a songwriter. He’s released five albums and appeared on recordings with Iggy Pop, Nick Cave, Warren Ellis, Thurston Moore, Debbie Harry, Mark Lanegan, and Lydia Lunch, among others.

Now he writes novels for young adults. He became interested in writing for young adults after volunteering at the Tennessee Teen Rock Camp and Southern Girls Rock Camp. As a kid, his parents would take him to the library and drop him off, where he would read until closing time. He worked at various bookstores through high school and college.

He speaks fluent Portuguese, having lived in the Amazon region of Brazil for two years.

Jocelyn Rish

Jocelyn Rish is a writer and filmmaker who loves researching weird and wonderful animals and sharing what she learns. Her debut was BATTLE OF THE BUTTS, about ten animals that do weird things with their butts. Her latest book is BATTLE OF THE BRAINS, a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection about ten animals with mind-blowing brain abilities. When she’s not writing, she tutors kids to help them discover the magic of reading. Jocelyn has won numerous awards for her short stories, screenplays, films, and novels and lives in South Carolina with her adorable dog. Find out more at www.jocelynrish.com.

Post @ Jocelyn Rish and/or Adventures in YA Publishing. All rights reserved.

Posted: Dec 12, 2017

Category: Imported from AYAP

Tags: YA Author Interviews | YALLFest

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The first slide is an animation of a science/magic room in a castle. A cartoon character of a mad-scientist looking man in in the foreground says: “Hello! Dr. Frankenstein here to say, Well Done on kid lit zombie week! I’m an expert at reviving the dead, and let me assure you, with a little spark, you can bring dead projects to life. Especially if you dig up parts from other dead things. I’ll even let you have a sneak peek at my laboratory’s store room to consider potential parts for your dead project. If you see something with a yellow glow, that means you should click it. Have fun!”

He points to the right side of the screen and a new scene slides in of a castle science/magic storage room. There are various cartoon Frankenstein body parts scattered around. Some of them have a yellow glow. If you click on them, the images below appear (I’ve added alt text to them, so I hope it works).

The Heart of your story is the main character. The protagonist is the beating core that truly brings your story to life. If your MC doesn't make kids (and their grown-ups) care within the first few pages, your story will flatline. </p>
<p>Your main character needs to be:<br />
• Relatable enough for kids to see themselves<br />
• Unique enough to stand out in the slush pile<br />
• Active enough to drive the story<br />
• Memorable enough to survive multiple readings at bedtime</p>
<p>Where do you find this amazing donor heart? It might be the very thing you loved so much about the manuscript you want to revive. It might be the younger sister from your shelved YA novel. Or maybe it’s the hilarious kid you blogged about meeting at a school visit. Find a character beating with potential and place it in the center of your story.<br />

The Brain of your story is the theme or central message. The theme is the big idea that controls everything else. Picture books are more than stories - they're tiny life lessons disguised with humor and heart.</p>
<p>But your theme needs to be:<br />
• Subtle enough not to trigger the dreaded "didactic" rejection<br />
• Clear enough for a four-year-old to grasp<br />
• Universal enough to speak to both kids and adults<br />
• Fresh enough to prevent agents and editors from responding with "Not another sharing/bedtime/first-day story!"</p>
<p>Check your other dead manuscripts to see if there is a recurring theme, something that really seems to be speaking to you. Find the bit of poetry you scribbled on the back of a receipt to see what theme inspired it. Reread the pep talk you texted your critique partner at 1am. Pick the theme that will drive your story, giving it purpose, direction, and deeper meaning.<br />

The Legs of your story is the plot. Not to be confused with a grave plot.🤪 The plot is what keeps everything upright and moving, as well as providing support for all the other elements. You have very few words to use in a picture book, so you need to do a lot with each plot point.</p>
<p>In general, your plot should:<br />
• Hook readers fast<br />
• Build tension that a child can follow<br />
• Create page turns that feel natural<br />
• Wrap up in a way that satisfies</p>
<p>You can borrow a plot twist (a leg) from one manuscript and the opening (the other leg) from a different manuscript. Consider if the subplot of the middle grade novel you trunked would work better as a picture book. Or maybe your Facebook post about a disastrous camping trip could become a story for kids. Just keep putting one foot in front of the other until you have your storyline.

The Arms of your story are the side characters.

The Torso of your story is the setting. Setting helps a story breathe and connects all the elements of the story. It isn't just where your story lives, it's what makes your story ALIVE. It's the difference between "this happened in a park" and "this happened in that park, the one with the twisty slide that burns your legs and the creaky swing that sounds like a baby crying.”</p>
<p>Your setting should:<br />
• Make your character's world feel real<br />
• Contain your story in a way that makes sense to young readers<br />
• Connect different scenes and moments organically<br />
• Give your illustrator enough room to add visual subplots</p>
<p>Half-finished manuscripts are a great place to dig up settings, since you worked out the place details before the plot petered out. Or maybe you had to cut a second fantastic location from your chapter book. You can also revisit the detailed caption from your Instagram carousel documenting your tour of that delish candy shop. Disinter a robust setting that can house all of your story's vital organs.

After you press the Click When Done circle button, the lights flash with the sound of electricity buzzing. Then the screen goes black and lightning zaps across the screen with the sound of thunder.

The screen then lights up to show the storage room, and all the Frankenstein pieces have been assembled into the whole monster. An upbeat song plays in the background. Then a speech bubble pops up with the words, “I’m alive! I’M ALIVE!” Then the screen goes to black.

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