We chat with author Jeff Zentner about Colton Gentry’s Third Act, which follows a down on his luck country musician who, in the throes of grief after a shocking loss, moves back home and rekindles a relationship with his high school sweetheart.
Hi, Jeff! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
I’m the author of four young adult books, The Serpent King, Goodbye Days, Rayne & Delilah’s Midnite Matinee, and In the Wild Light. On April 30, I’ll be releasing my adult debut, Colton Gentry’s Third Act. On July 9, I’ll be releasing a YA verse novel called Sunrise Nights that I cowrote with my amazing author and poet friend Brittany Cavallaro.
I didn’t start writing until about 2012 or so. Before then, I spent over a decade as a musician. I recorded five albums as a solo act and with a band. I got to record with some of my musical idols like Nick Cave, Iggy Pop, and Debbie Harry. See my next answer for the rest of the story.
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
I first discovered my love for fiction in fourth grade when my teacher made me read Child of the Owl by Laurence Yep. I became a voracious reader of fiction, but I grew up in a pre-internet age when the lives of authors were more hidden from public view, and I had little opportunity to interact with authors in real life, so it left me to imagine the sort of people who produced the magical books that I loved. When you love something, you put it on a pedestal, and so I put authors on a pedestal and assumed that writing books was not for people like me. I took up music instead.
I saw music to its conclusion (if you pass age 30 without hitting it big as a professional musician, you probably never will) and decided to try to pass along what I could to the next generation. So I started volunteering at Tennessee Teen Rock Camp, teaching kids how to play guitar. I really fell in love with the way that young adults love the art that they love and it made me want to make art for young adults. But because I had aged out of making music for them, I had to find something else. That something else was writing young adult books.
So I came to authorship in a very roundabout way.
Quick lightning round! Tell us:
- The one that made you want to become an author: There wasn’t one. It was the amazing kids of Tennessee Teen Rock Camp. But if I had known as a teenager what I know now about authors and how they’re not some otherworldly, unattainable beings, it would have been The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton or Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko.
- The one that you can’t stop thinking about: The book I’ve read this year that I can’t stop thinking about is The Women by Kristin Hannah.
- The one that you always recommend: The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje or The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
Your latest novel, Colton Gentry’s Third Act, is out April 30th! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Colton Gentry has third act.
What can readers expect?
Colton Gentry’s Third Act is the story of Colton Gentry, a country musician whom, while grieving the loss of his best friend, blows up his career and life with a drunken onstage rant in front of an arena crowd. After going through a recovery program, he moves back home to his small town in Kentucky, moves back in with his mom, and tries to rebuild. While rebuilding his life, he has a chance encounter with his high school flame and first love, Luann, who’s also moved back home to start a farm-to-table restaurant.
You can expect to laugh and cry. You can expect a slow burn, second chance romance with lots of descriptions of delicious food.
And you can expect that Petey, Colton’s rescue dog, will not die.
Where did the inspiration for Colton Gentry’s Third Act come from?
I love food and cooking and I’ve always wanted to write a book with a strong restaurant setting. So there’s one element. Also, I really loved the TV adaptation of the book Normal People, and its story of two wounded people who can’t escape each other’s orbit and don’t want to. So there’s another element. And I love stories about people starting over and taking a new path. I’ve taken a number of new paths in my life and they’re scary and exciting and scary and exciting makes for good stories.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
This story takes place in dual timelines—1995 to 1996 and 2015 to 2016. I love exploring the ways that we are, in some ways, who we will always be as teenagers. But then, in other important ways, we grow and change. I loved getting to explore that. I loved writing Colton because he was so different from the characters I’ve usually written. I write misfits and outcasts. I don’t write prom kings who are high school football stars and then successful (to some extent, for a while) country stars. But that’s exactly what Colton is. It was fun to stretch my legs and do something different.
I loved writing Luann’s spirited twin daughters. They were a lot of fun. And I loved writing the scene where Colton finds himself babysitting them while Luann goes on a date, and his heartbreaking reflections on the life he thinks he missed out on having.
This is your first adult book! Can you tell us a bit about shifting to writing for an adult audience?
As far as craft goes, I did nothing different. I hold nothing back craftwise when writing for young adults. There aren’t words that I think are too big or fancy for teenagers to understand. There are sentence structures I think are too advanced for them. Most importantly, there aren’t any emotional truths they’re not ready to hear.
But the fact is that to be sold as a YA book in today’s publishing market, the story has to be told entirely from the perspective of a young adult while they are a young adult. So what was fun about this book was getting to write an adult reflecting on formative experiences of young adulthood, which is something I’ve never gotten to do before. Writing Colton felt like writing a book and its sequel in the same book.
What’s next for you?
Most immediately, I have Sunrise Nights coming out in July. We’re contracted to write another YA verse novel and we’re hard at work on that. Meanwhile, I’m working on another adult book that’s a real departure—it’s set in 1960s Appalachia, 1970s New York City, and the present day. And it involves puppets.
Lastly, are there any book releases that you’re looking forward to picking up this year?
It came out in March, but I’m really looking forward to reading Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky. He’s one of my favorite sci-fi writers.
