Author takes unusual path to publishing

Novelist Jeff Zentner didn't get where he is by following his dreams.

"Sometimes the impossible is impossible," Zentner said, addressing students in the Jackson High School library Friday.

Originally, he'd hoped to be a world-famous musician, he said, and moved to Nashville to pursue that ambition.

But at age 30, he had an epiphany: "Very few people make it big in music after age 30," Zentner said. "Your chances just keep dropping and dropping; they don't go up. And this is where I realized this dream is dead. It's not going to happen."

So he went to law school, and became a prosecutor for the State of Tennessee.

As a prosecutor, he said, he gathered evidence and testimony and all of the elements that go into a criminal prosecution, and from that, built a "story": a compelling, thorough case against a defendant.

But he was still hungry to create art, had been since age 17, so he started volunteering at a rock music camp for teenagers.

"I love the way that you guys love the art that you love," Zentner told the assembled students.

Music wasn't the path to success he'd hoped for, but, he said, dreams are like energy: they cannot be created or destroyed, only change form.

Then in his early 30s, Zentner had not met a published author before, and had no idea what kind of person wrote books.

Then, a friend wrote a manuscript, and it was published. It sold enough copies to land on The New York Times bestseller list.

That got him thinking.

First, he needed an idea, so he mined his songwriting trunk and found a few ideas he couldn't decide between. He mushed them together.

Then, he needed characters. He drew upon his knowledge of other people, and pulled pieces of himself into each character.

He sat down to write.

"Nothing happened," he said.

So he listened to his characters, got to know them, let them tell him who they were.

And he started to write, with his right thumb, on his phone, during his daily bus ride to his workplace in downtown Nashville.

That manuscript became "The Serpent King," a coming of age tale in the vein of "The Outsiders" and books by John Green, set in rural Tennessee, published by Random House in 2016.

"Goodbye Days" and "Rayne & Delilah's Midnite Matinee" followed, and his fourth book is set for publication in 2021, he said.

Zentner spoke to more than 100 students at Jackson High School Friday, and, said librarian Mary Pensel, it's a great opportunity for students to hear about a successful writer's path.

Librarian Cyndi Roach noted, "What really got my attention was, he was so interested in young adults as an audience, and he talks about how our dreams aren't going to always come true."

Roach said the school district's support was important in the library staff's efforts to bring more authors to the library, to speak to students who may be aspiring writers themselves -- and who are definitely interested in reading books by a person they'll get to meet.