Jeffrey Getzin has a sense of humor that stands alone. He has made me laugh so hard my belly hurt. At sarcasm, none can compare. I stand in awe because I haven't a sarcastic bone in my body. In addition, he designs software for Google so you know he's smart. Oh yeah, and he works in New York, that makes him courageous. Smart, sassy, and courageous. Yep, that's him. Without anymore ado, I would like to take this time to announce Jeffrey's new book, Shara and the Haunted Village. <-----Buy link for another great October read. Blurb: A Desperate Gamble An ancient mystery, a legendary wizard, ghosts, magic, a demon … and Shara, an impoverished seamstress. Shara has fallen on hard times recently. She’s starving, has just lost her home, and she can’t find work anywhere. However, a chance encounter with a a sociopathic giant and a charming rogue might just be her escape from her hand-to-mouth lifestyle. All she has to do is guide them to the haunted village she had stumbled upon when she was a child. But can she trust them? Biography Jeffrey Getzin graduated from Clark University where he won the Loring Holmes and Ruth Dodd Drama Contest for an original one-act play. He has a master's degree in Computer Science from the University of Pittsburgh. Jeffrey currently develops software for Google in New York City, and lives in New Jersey with his long-time girlfriend Kate and a seemingly infinite number of cats. Jeffrey is a lifelong practitioner of various martial arts, and currently holds a blue belt in Brazilian jiu jitsu under world-renown Mixed Martial Arts fighter Renzo Gracie. He has competed in table tennis at the national level. Jeffrey is an avid film and home theater buff. Also, his mother says he is very handsome. He has such a sense of humor. Imagine, his mother saying such things about him. Reviews for Shara and the Haunted Village All five stars I might add. From Three Kings Books Fantasy isn't even my "thing," but this was a delightful, fast, engaging read. Who says self-published can't be of high quality? Jeffrey Getzin proves that adage wrong, big-time. The narrative is clean, pure, clever, and visual. Beyond the usual fantasy readers, this will appeal to all adult and young adults. HIGHLY recommended! From Dana Brantley-Sieders This wonderful tale is part adventure, part fable, and all kinds of fun when the unlikely trio of a starving seamstress, a charming cad of a swordsman, and an axe-wielding giant team up in search of a lost village where there be treasure - and danger. Reminiscent of The Princess Bride, this story will make you laugh, make you think, and maybe make you fall in love with D'Arbignal. I'm definitely a fan of this world and cast of characters - D'Arbignal especially. He is such a charming cad of a swordsman. Equal parts hero, philosopher, and comedian with a heart of gold, you know he's trouble, but you can't help but follow him, as Shara does, on his latest adventure. My only complaint? I want more! Luckily, I know the next installment is in the works and I hope (hint hint) that D'Arbignal will keep bugging Mr. Getzin until he writes even more! The Interview Thank you for visiting today, Jeffrey. Don’t give away any secrets, but what’s your book about? Shara and the Haunted Village is about an impoverished seamstress whose situation is so desperate that she leaps at the chance to earn some money by leading two adventurers to a haunted village that she had chanced upon when she was a child. One of the adventurers is a charming rogue and the other a sociopathic giant, so the risk for Shara is very great. The alternative, however, is to slowly starve to death. Sounds fantastic. What inspired you to write Shara and the Haunted Village? This one’s a bit of a spoiler, so you might want to skip ahead to the next question. Once upon a time, in my daily life, I had to work with a truly horrible woman. She was rude, boorish, and despite being somewhat stupid, thought herself a genius. She was perhaps one of the very few truly evil people I had ever encountered, and she caused me no end of misery. I came out of that experience thinking what a great inspiration she would be for a character. So I filed her away in my brain until I needed her. Then, years later, I released my novel Prince of Bryanae <---- buy link, and while it wasn’t a financial success, it had many people who loved it and were clamoring for more. And see, I had some characters in that fictional world that I’ve been meaning to introduce to my readers; I just needed a story. That’s when I remembered the evil woman, and I let her inspire my creation of a villain who exemplifies the phrase “the banality of evil”. So I had a heroic figure and I had a villainous figure, but I needed someone to tether this to real life: an ordinary person with whom the reader could identify. And that’s when Shara came to life. What a perfect way to remember a nasty person. So, how did you come up with the title? Well, there’s this haunted village, see, and this woman named Shara … Funny. Seriously, though, it was a bit difficult to come up with a title that adequately described what the book was about, but was vague enough to be enticing. Is there a message in your novel you want readers to grasp? No, no message in particular, though a common theme in my work is how ordinary people can become extraordinary under the right circumstances. Shara is an ordinary woman, but when things get dark she rises to the challenge. If you had to do it over again, would you change anything about your book? Not a darn thing. I love how this one turned out! :-) Do you have plans for a new book? Is your book part of a series? I have several items in the pipeline, all loosely connected. My first released novel Prince of Bryanae is actually a quasi-sequel to a book I never released called King of Bryanae. PoB and KoB have character crossovers, and KoB has a character crossover with Shara and the Haunted Village. Next, I have another novella that I’m preparing for publication called A Lesson for the Cyclops, which also has character cross… ok, this is getting a bit convoluted. Perhaps what’s needed is a table or two: Sigh. I told you he was smart. I had to learn how to turn the graph into a picture so I could insert it into my blog. So, you can see that the same characters come and go in this collection of books, but it’s not really a “series” per se, as there isn’t a continuous narrative; decades sometimes pass in the fictional world between books, and the main character frequently changes, too.
Not to change the subject, but how long does it take you to write a novel? Writing a novel is comparatively easy. It usually takes me a few months. However, that’s the easy part. It’s easy to vomit a bunch of words into Microsoft Word; the tricky part is making those words interesting. That’s where the editing process comes in. My books tend to go through dozens of editing and/or critique cycles. Clarify the action, make the dialog ring true, ensure continuity, keep a consistent tone, and so on. I’ve spent years revising some of my books! (Some, like King of Bryanae, still aren’t done!) What do you think makes a good story? The most important part of any story in my opinion is the cast of characters. Without interesting characters, nobody’s going to bother to read the story. Then you need conflict. There has to be some problem motivating the action, be it a character seeking revenge or trying to control his alcohol dependency. Furthermore, this conflict must be established early in the book and be resolved close to its conclusion. Note that I didn’t say, “solved”. It’s perfectly ok for the resolution to be failure. For instance, the character seeking revenge finds out that his target has killed himself, and as such, is beyond the character’s reach, or the alcoholic succumbs to his need and drinks himself to death. These resolutions are perfectly acceptable, but there must be some kind of resolution. You can’t establish that the character is fighting his alcoholism and then never mention it again! Finally, the basic mechanics of writing must be strong. The dialog must ring true; the tone must be consistent, and so on. What do you do when you are not writing? Oooh, so many things! In addition to my day job at Google, I train in Muay Thai (and a little Brazilian Jiu Jitsu), play Table Tennis, do carpentry, practice with my ukulele, read books, and watch movies with my girlfriend Kate. I also maintain my own author website as well as do all the editing, typesetting, and layout for the various formats of my books. I’m also a serious do-it-yourselfer, and I spend a lot of time working on our house. Do you have a day job as well? Yes, I’m a software engineer at Google. It’s not as cool as it sounds. It’s cooler. Oh, yeah. I knew that. What is your work schedule like when you're writing? Whenever I find the time and inspiration. Inspiration is particularly difficult to come by. I’m not a prolific writer; I need to let ideas gel in my brain, and that can take hours … or sometimes years! However, once I’m hot on a story, I try to bang out a rough draft as quickly as I can, due in no small part to the helpful urging of my girlfriend Kate. Is there anything you find particularly challenging in your writing? Describing scenery. I never have the patience for it, both in the writing of it and in the reading of it. I tend to skip over lots of description when I read books, and when I write my books I tend to write “the good parts version” a la The Princess Bride. Unfortunately, not every likes to have the descriptions be so minimal, and it’s been a consistent weakness in my works. What does your family think of your writing? My mother’s side of the family has always valued art and literature most highly, especially my mother and my maternal grandmother. They’ve always been enthusiastic supporters of my work. My father’s side seems more curious than eager. They respect what I do, but the actual act of writing a book and then publishing isn’t really something they’d have done, so I think it slightly puzzles them when I do it. LOL They’re definitely proud of me, though in a puzzled sort of way. And of course, my girlfriend Kate is the most voracious reader I’ve ever known, and she’s been extremely supportive of my writing. She’s my Intended Reader, and is always the first to see what I write. Her reactions to various characters often drive plot twists! :-D What books have most influenced you the most? Ok, here’s the funny thing: I don’t read a lot of fantasy, and maybe that’s why my books appeal to more than just fantasy readers. What I tend to read, god knows why, are mysteries. In particular, Robert B. Parker’s Spenser series, Gregory MacDonald’s Fletch series, and Steve Hamilton’s Alex McKnight series have hugely influenced me. Two things these authors all have in common are that they write crackling dialog and that their books contain many twists. While I’m obviously not in the same league as these guys (yet?), I do find them inspirational. If you had to choose, which writer would you consider a mentor? I’ve been fortunate enough to be helped by a number of really good writers. I can’t really choose only one, but I can narrow it down to three: R. A. Salvatore, who has given me a lot of great advice about the publishing industry in general, and the Fantasy genre in particular; Steve Hamilton, who has led by example through his amazing stories, and also telling me how to deal with reviews (namely, don’t pay attention to them, especially the good ones); and Chris Boucher, who shredded my first novel with his perfectly on-target critique of my writing that at first made me want to give up the craft, but eventually helped me become a better writer. What book are you reading now? I’m currently reading Very Bad Men by Harry Dolan, a follow-up to his brilliant Bad Things Happen. So far, I’m really digging it. Do you work with an outline, or just write? I just write. The one time I tried an outline, the book died. All the fun stuff of figuring out what was going to happen next had been removed, and all that was left was the onerous task of writing words onto paper. Now when I write, I have the idea for a character and a conflict, and a basic idea of some key plot points, but I give the characters a great deal of flexibility to go where they want to go and do what they want to do. The result is that I’m as eager to find out what happens next as the readers are! How do you market your work? What avenues have you found to work best for your genre? I’m still looking. Seriously, despite all the great reviews, I’m having a terrible time finding readers. If you think of something, let me know! *laughs* The bain of writers is readers and how to find them. Do you prefer e-books, paperbacks, or hardcover? I prefer to read paperbacks, largely because they’re easier to carry and, more importantly, I love reading in the bathtub. Reading a hardcover in the bathtub is asking for trouble. Reading an eReader in the bathtub is asking for an excuse to replace the eReader! Is there a particular movie you prefer over the book version? I definitely preferred the film versions of “Lord of the Rings” to the books, which I found dry. I also couldn’t stand Tom Bombadill! :-D Fun Questions: What’s your favorite gadget? It’s probably my table saw. You can do so many cool things with it: dados, joints, as well as plain vanilla cuts. If you could be any character in fiction, whom would you be? I think probably Corwin from Zelazny’s awesome Amber series. Corwin is essentially a demi-god, with amazing powers, but a strong sense of morality. It’d be fun to be Corwin! If Hollywood made a movie about your life, who would you like to see play the lead role as you? I think Brendan Fraser would do an excellent job portraying me. I can’t imagine how I’d be able to convince him to do it, though. If you could be a superhero, what would you want your superpowers to be? Amazingly good luck. I’d like every lottery ticket I buy to be a winner, every bullet fired at me to get stuck in the phone I carry in my breast pocket, and when the timer on the bomb’s almost at zero, I want the wire I cut to always be the correct one! Good choice! If you won $20 million in the lottery, what would you do with the money? Um, buy $20 million worth of more lottery tickets? Just kidding. In my family, we consider the lottery a tax on people who can’t do math. If I seriously won $20m, I’d probably buy a few toys and invest the rest. Boring, I know, but there you have it. White wine or red? White, preferably a Riesling. (I like my wines sweet, and darn it; I’m man enough to admit it!) If you could be a car, what type would you be? Josephine Carr I get it, Josephine wrote your blurb. Coffee or tea? Good lord, neither! I take my caffeine in carbonated form. All writers drink coffee and tea. What's the matter with you? OK, Dogs or cats? *sigh* Cats. Lots and lots of cats. My world is filled with cats. Bet they keep you up at night. So, sleep in or get up early? I’d like to sleep in; I have to get up early. Life’s just not fair sometimes, is it? No it isn't. Dark or milk chocolate? Milk chocolate! Yummy! Rocks or flowers? I’d rather eat the milk chocolate than the rocks or the flowers. And that ends my interview of the incomparable, Jeffrey Getzin. I hope he'll come back to visit after his next release. Happy reading, everyone! *hugs* Louann
Cat Rehoboth
10/9/2012 02:39:47 am
i read Jeff's other book and it was awesome. I'd recommend this one as well.
Louann
10/9/2012 04:30:13 am
Hi, Cat. Thanks for dropping by. 10/10/2012 04:41:40 am
Thanks for the kind words, Cat.
Louann
10/10/2012 05:09:16 am
You are very welcome. Comments are closed.
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