001okay hey everybody I'm Jeff Zentner I'm the author of the serpent King and yeah it's a it's an honor to be talking with you I am sitting here at my day job right now I'm actually a prosecutor for the state of Tennessee so you can see see there all my fancy law books see that see behind me all the files where I have photos of murder victims and autopsy photos and there's my there's my messy desk where I bring justice down upon evildoers and actually I've only got about 30 minutes today because of my job I had something come up I'm sorry to say so what I really want to do is I want to take questions first and if we run out of questions then we can then we can proceed otherwise but let's
002let's let's go ahead and start with questions if you guys have any questions about the writing process or anything like that we'll be happy to answer those or about my day job if you guys want to talk about murder we can do that too what inspired you to write is are you King I was a musician for a number of years and I got to be about 30 and I realized I hadn't had my big break in music and so basically the way the music industry works if you haven't had your big break and music by the time you're you're 30 then you probably won't it's just kind of a hard fact of that industry so I thought well I better make a plan B so I went to law school got a degree and
003I started volunteering at this rock camp for teenagers called southern girls rock camp and Tennessee teen Rock camp where I would teach teenagers how to play guitar how to how to be in a rock band all of that good stuff so during that experience I really kind of fell in love with with young people with the way they interact with the art they love with the way they really are of discovering the world and discovering the things that move them and the things they love and it struck me that that would be a really amazing audience to create for but you know again I was way past my prime for making it big as musician and I was really past my prime for making it big as a musician who made the sort of music
004that gets marketed to young people so I had to figure out something else to do and you know kind of looking at my skills looking at what I was able to do I settled on writing writing is one of those things where you can write a book if you're 50 you can write a book if you're 60 and it's not that big a deal like Toni Morrison started writing started publishing books when she was 39 years old so there's not as much of an age limit as with music um so the actual direct inspiration from the story the serpent King came from a couple of songs I'd written I went back into my songwriting catalog and I grabbed a couple of songs and I couldn't figure out which one I wanted to write the book
005about so I just jammed them both together in the same book and ran with it was the way the book played out how you Ridge '''l II intended it to be or did the pot change as you begin writing if it changed what caused you to fear off your original plan okay so um basically the basic plot is exactly as I envisioned it um there are some kind of notable changes there's a there's a plot thread toward the end that my editor was really adamant about putting in after what she said was after all you've put these readers through you have to give them this so I put in a plot thread that kind of takes up the last I don't know quarter of the book maybe the last fifth of the book something like
006that and if you've read the book you know the plot thread I'm talking about but that was kind of that was kind of the readers for reward for sticking with me through some of the darker sadder parts of the book but for the most part the book stayed the same plot-wise there I will say before I ever even started writing there was going to be a fourth character in the group of friends and this fourth character was going to be kind of an outcast even even among those outcasts and that fourth character just never materialized in my mind like the way I write books is I have the characters into my mind and they spend three or four months there just talking to me and I just listen to their conversations and uh once I
007feel like I know them well enough then I'll go and start writing their story and they'll kind of guide me by the hand through their story and it's a lot easier for me to write a story that way um so this fourth character would never tell me who they were how many of y'all have read the book have you all read it if I give a spoiler is it going to spoil it for anybody I'm seeing head shaking no yeah I can do a spoiler okay so originally originally Travis was going to die in a different way he was going to die when this fourth character was going to take a gun to school and on the last day of school and shoot a bunch of kids and Travis was gonna die stopping that and
008the reason and the reason I didn't write it that way was because I wanted Travis's death to be a little more challenging like I wanted you to have to really struggle with it and try to figure out if there was any purpose to it because if he died saving a bunch of people that's an obviously heroic death right there's no ambiguity there it's because she's just a hero and the way he died is her it's this kind of is this kind of undignified death and yet by the time he died he had done you know some amazing things he'd met his idol he had started writing his own books he had found a girl who he liked and who liked him he had stood up to his dad he had done some amazing things and
009so I wanted that to be more challenging and plus I didn't want the serpent king to be a school shooting book I wanted it to deal with different issues and if I had had a school shooting plotline in that book then it would have just been a straight-up school shooting book and I'm just I'm just not interested in writing that book so um so that's kind of how it how it changed thank you you bet great question why did you kill Travis about the new just being critical difficult position um why I kill tri-c I yeah I guess I guess I guess there are no spoilers here um I mean the best I can explain it it's gonna sound like a cop-out but the best I can explain it is that's what he told me
010in my mind that that that was how his life was gonna play out like it just had to be final and like in my day job like it happens I mean people people get killed you know Travis is nine one one call is almost exactly like a 911 call I've actually listened to you know and it was from a kid who who got shot for like $200 from his lawn mowing business you know that's just how the world is the world people die people get shot and they don't end up in critical condition they die and so I just felt like it was truer to the story and truer to what he was telling me about his life and how how it would end believe me it was not fun so I when I write
011I write on the bus on my phone so I wrote probably about 70% of the serpent king on my iPhone with my right thumb and I wrote about 80% of my second book goodbye days with my right thumb on my iPhone and when I was writing that scene on the bus like I was getting very upset I actually had to pull the cord and get off the bus and go sit in a grocery store parking lot until I had composed my self and was dignified again and then I got on the next bus and kept riding home but but yeah it was it was not easy to say goodbye to that character for sure where any um characters in the book um they saw people you knew in high school yeah definitely um dill is
012is based kind of there's a big part of myself in each one of the three characters each one of three characters have a piece of my personality so all three are partly based on me the other ones like Lydia is a combination of many girls and women I've known in my life you know when I was in high school I kind of had my own Lydia in high school you know who was sort of my best friend and like we were pretty inseparable um Travis I knew a lot of guys like traps in high school I didn't tend to hang out with them as much because I wasn't interested in the same stuff they were the fantasy novels and stuff and that just wasn't my thing but I saw those kids and they fascinated me
013get to know them better and so that's where Travis is from so the answer is yeah all of them are based on real people but none of them are based on any one real person so like again another inspiration for the character of Lydia is a fashion blogger named tavi Gevinson whose fashion blog I discovered you know a couple years before I started writing the serpent king it just fascinated me and so that's a piece of Lydia my question was do you have any family or friends tied to the Pentecostal religion that you included in the book and also the slick memory and is there easily chosen Pentecostal religion religions wait sorry I didn't hear that last that last question say that again if you would is there a reason you chose Pentecostal religion over
014other religions okay gotcha um yes the question is do any of my family or friends have any ties to to Pentecostalism and snake handling the answer is yes I have some friends who used to go to snake handling churches I used to play in a band actually with a guy played bass in my band who used to play in a in a band in a snake handling church and so that's where I got my information about the practices of these churches that and I did a little bit of reading I grew up in a strict religious background myself uh but it was not it was not snake handling so I definitely know that strict religious upbringing for sure I know it was so like to grow up in a faith as far as why I
015chose the Pentecostal faith I mean all of the snake handling churches to my knowledge are Pentecostal churches and I love the idea of using snake handling because snakes function such an interesting metaphor you know they're these poisonous creatures and people sort of seek to conquer them by by picking them up and holding them and not being poisoned and not being killed and to me that's a real vivid metaphor for taking on your problems taking on the challenges you have in life taking on the things that that are hard for you and that's what I wanted to write a book about I wanted to write a book about kids who do really hard things and have to work really hard to overcome the challenges of their backgrounds and the things that they were born into and
016it happens that the book is set in the rural South and it happens that in the rural South there are these snake-handling religions and I wanted to write a book about a character who struggled with faith so you can see how it all kind of you know swirled around all sort of fit together into a nice nice neat package have you ever thought about finding a sequel to the circuit king and if so would you include Chester I you know the answer is no I've never thought of writing a sequel to the serpent king I very much wanted it to just be a contained story I wanted it to be the story it is and I really wanted you guys to be able to write the story of what happens in your mind like I
017really believe that when a story goes out into the world the author loses control over it and it belongs to you guys now and I really want you guys to write the sequel in your mind um I will say that in goodbye days my second book that I see down there on the table there's a cameo from one of the serpent king characters that gives a few hints as to how I think things may have turned out so it's not a sequel by any means but it takes place in the same world as the serpent king not the same city or the same setting it takes place in Nashville instead of Forestville but one of the serpent king characters makes an appearance in goodbye days and there are a few little hints if you really
018paid attention in the serpent king to to how things turn out but I mean another thing honestly this is just from a purely publishing and marketing perspective is that if I were to write a sequel to the serpent king Dillon Lydia would be adults they no longer be young adults and I'm a young adult writer like if I were to write a book about them being in college it would be marketed and classified as an adult book and that's how it would be sold so just from a purely marketing and publishing perspective like I can't I can't really do it you know what I mean but I'm glad I'm glad I left you wanting more as you're a musical style reflected Adele's music you know I can tell you what's in my own mind but
019what's in my own mind has no uh no bearing on what what you guys imagine okay so I purposely didn't say in the book exactly what dil sounded like because I wanted you guys to be able to imagine in your own minds what he sounded like so I'll tell you what I think he sounds like um and I don't want that to influence in any way what you guys think he sounds like so in my mind I think dil sounds kind of like a combination of James Bay and hozier to me that's how he sounds um but again like you know I don't know maybe dil sounds like Kendrick Lamar to you or ed Sheeran or you know twenty one pilots I don't know whoever dil sounds like to you stay with that because I
020purposely didn't say what he sounded like so that you could imagine what he sounded like yourself what made you decide to make the jump from music to write so the reason I made the jump really was because there was no way I was going to be able to reach the audience I wanted to reach with with music um it just it just wouldn't happen like I wanted to make art for people you guys's age and I was just too old to make that kind of music like the kind of music that gets marketed to people you guys his age is made by people like in their early 20s and by the time I figured out the audience I wanted to make art for I was like 34 years old I was way too old to
021do it so it was partly just necessity like I had to find some other way to reach the audience I wanted to reach and I'm perfectly happy to do it I mean I have always loved books I worked in bookstores in college in high school when I grew up I was an avid avid reader I read constantly and you know even as an adult I read constantly so as it was certainly no burden to be come a writer it was a really great thing it was just really scary after having spent like 14 years doing nothing but music music music music to then switch over and become a writer was was kind of frightening out of all the characters in goodbye days who did I relate to the most um definitely Carver I mean there's
022there's a lot of me in Carver the way he looks at the world the way he's he's kind of an imperfect person the way he's had to grow a lot as a person and change a lot as a person I definitely relate to Carver the most but I relate to to all of the characters in some way I relate to Nana Betsey a lot I relate to Judge Edwards a lot I relate to to Eli's parents a lot I relate to Eli a lot I relate to play a lot relate to Jasmine a lot George a lot all of my characters I have to be able to identify with deeply or I won't write them I can't write them because I don't know what makes them work and I'm not going to put a character
023to run around in my story who I don't know how they work and I don't know what their motivations are and I don't know what they want or what they need so yeah definitely Carver the most but I relate to all of them deeply on some level have you got to meet an author you greatly respect either before after I answer um yeah I really love I really love rainbow Rowell's books and we've gotten to be to be friends since I became a writer I really love John Corey Whaley's books we've gotten to be friends since since I became a writer um my favorite favorite writer is a writer named Jasmine Ward she writes books for adults and I got to meet her at a literary festival in Mississippi that we were both at that
024was really really cool that was really a great experience and all these authors by the way had been very cool to me um kind of like like GM Pennington was to Travis in the book for me though my GM Pennington okay my ultimate GM pennington would be Stephen King I love love love Stephen King so much like I grew up reading his books I would ride my bike to the grocery store and I would just sit there in the grocery store aisle and I would read his books because they had his books grocery store and they would just be like mopping the floor around me like they got to know me and just know that I just came to read their books and never bought anything but they didn't mind these are great questions by
025the way you guys thank you I think these are all the questions we have planned in advance so with whatever time you have left you'd love to hear anything else you want to tell us about the book or your write process and what you're working on next so I'll get that type of you and then with what other teachers would like to say a few words - close - exactly you're out of time yeah you bet well Kay you guys a little bit about what I'm working on right now I'm working on a comedy right now because I figured I've written two pretty pretty sad heavy books so in my third book no one will die I'll just tell you that right now nobody's gonna die in my third book it's it's meant to be
026a funnier book and it's about these two girls who host their own TV show on their local public-access TV station so um I'm gonna use two references here that maybe you guys know and maybe you don't but it's kind of like Wayne's world meets ghost world so uh and it's about these two girls and their struggles and they're kind of trying to figure out what they want out of life and it takes place in Tennessee also it's in Jackson Tennessee where I spend a fair amount of time for work and yeah that one that one was oh and on their TV show I should tell you they show cheesy horror movies like from the 50s 60s and 70s and they dress up like vampires and it's like they show it on public access at like
02711 o'clock on Saturday night and it's called midnight monster matinee and it's actually based on one night I came home and I just sat down on my couch and started flipping through channels and that is something I never ever do right there are so many shows on Netflix and Hulu HBO and whatnot but I want to watch but I never just sit down and flip through channels to see what's on TV but this night I did and I came to the local public access station in Nashville they were showing this cheesy horror movie and like what on earth is this and so I kept watching to see what's going on and there would be interludes in the horror movie where it would cut to these two girls who were dressed like vampires and they would
028do like little skits and they would make jokes and they would read fan letters and stuff and they were hosting this film basically and it was a show called midnight mausoleum and so I became really fascinated in the show because these two girls were from like someplace in rural Iowa and yet I was seeing their show from my couch in Nashville Tennessee and it just struck me how fascinating that was that we live in a world where that can happen and these girls were definitely not good at TV I mean they're just not you know TV professionals and yet they had to show I was sitting there watching and enjoying their show it was just a really cool kind of moment of random connection and so I wanted to write a book about two girls
029who do that that arose out of that experience so that that's how I get get my ideas for books sometimes sometimes they just come to me like a bolt out of the blue and speaking of that will tell you guys how I came up with the idea for goodbye days so when I sold the book the serpent King to my editor she locked me down for two books okay serpent King and another book and she's like well I'm sure you have another good idea for a book right I'm like I don't know if I do or not so I ran about six ideas pastor and she shot down each one and I was really struggling for an idea I was really kind of starting to panic because I was under contract to deliver a book
030so I was out walking one day and I these military helicopters flew over my head three big black military helicopters and I guess they were going to the military base in Clarksville Tennessee where the hundred and first Airborne is and I saw those helicopters and I suddenly had this flash of an idea a book about a kid who lives in a military town in the south who takes it upon himself to go do goodbyes days with the families of soldiers who were killed in battle and I took that idea to my editor and she was like okay I like that idea that's cool but what if we tweaked it a little bit so that instead of soldiers it was other young adults because you are a young adult author you write young adult books you
031write for young adults so let's bring it down let's make it more of a young adult book and I was like okay cool so let's have it me so the kids who get killed go to his high school and I was like what if we raise the stakes on it by making it so that the kids who were killed were his friends my editor like that idea she was like okay that's cool I like that idea then he'll know know them better and and the goodbye days will be more meaningful that way and then my editor said why don't we raise the stakes even more by having it be so that he might have been at fault for the death of his friends and I thought that was a very cool idea so that's how
032this that's how goodbye days came about so yeah that's kind of how that's what I'm working on now that's where I get the ideas for my stories and I've got an idea for a fourth book that my editors signed off on I'm not going to talk about that one yet because it's still such a new idea and I haven't really fleshed it out yet but but yeah there's going to be at least two more books for me from me so so keep looking for those okay so we know that your time is short I'm here to kind of like send it off so thank you for doing this um and in particular I want to thank you for writing about small towns when I read a lot of white literature and the main characters I
033was like oh this town has nothing hometown nothing happens here and you find out that there's like 50 75,000 people in that town now I came from the town with it exactly I came from a town to 6,000 people and in your book in Forestville sounded like my town join and the scene were dill is confronted outside the electronic store by the religious couple uh in my mind that was my Main Street and the electronic sources got through like that's how much your town seemed like mine um and as a person who comes from small town like that um I saw myself in all three characters um I was and am still a huge nerd like Travis uh I wanted to get points so much like Lydia uh and I was so afraid to do
034so like do so I pushed this book on everybody s T so I just wanted to say on the student population here at Nova West thank you well thank you man that that really makes me feel great thank you thank you so much you guys honestly it's it's a dream come true to be talking to you guys it's a dream come true to have young people like you guys reading my books and man thank you so much thank you