iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Jeff Zentner @jeffzentner.bsky.social · 14/06/2025

Here’s the thesis statement of LOVE, LIKE APPLES. I write the things I most need to remember.

Jeff Zentner @jeffzentner.bsky.social · 10/06/2025

Truly my eyes were made by my Italian genes. They look good but mechanically they’re crap.

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Jeff Zentner @jeffzentner.bsky.social · 30/05/2025

We will see RFK Jr. anting and recommending anting over vaccines before all is said and done

Jeff Zentner @jeffzentner.bsky.social · 28/05/2025

Imagine, if you will, me saying the phrase “my wife,” but after the manner of the fictional movie character “Borat”

Jeff Zentner @jeffzentner.bsky.social · 25/05/2025

The Peewee Herman doc is absolutely fascinating. I did not know that Paul Reubens looked like Jeff Buckley meets James Dean as a young man, or that he hung out with Phil Hartman and Elvira (together) or what a fascinating counterculture figure he was.

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Jeff Zentner @jeffzentner.bsky.social · 24/05/2025

I’m really excited for y’all to read LOVE, LIKE APPLES

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Jeff Zentner @jeffzentner.bsky.social · 24/05/2025

Honestly feeling pretty good lately about how lousy LOVE, LIKE APPLES is with Springsteen references

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Jeff Zentner @jeffzentner.bsky.social · 23/05/2025

I used to think that any extraterrestrials who managed to contact Earth would probably be hostile. But now I think any civilization that lasts long enough and values science and learning enough to make contact with other intelligent beings is probably a far more benevolent one than us.

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Jeff Zentner @jeffzentner.bsky.social · 23/05/2025

I’m never gonna get used to my friends sending me pictures like this of their kids’ assigned summer reading.

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Jeff Zentner @jeffzentner.bsky.social · 17/05/2025

I’m rewatching “Julia” on HBO Max and I truly cannot emphasize enough how blessed the vibes of this show are. It’s just this cast of sweet, gentle, smart people in Julia Child’s life cheering her on and giving her compliments and going on little zero stakes side quests together.

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Jeff Zentner @jeffzentner.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

Everyone hates you and your super loud car/motorcycle

Jeff Zentner @jeffzentner.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

I am so unbelievably honored to have contributed a short story in verse to ONWARD, an eco-anthology edited by the incredible Nora Shalaway Carpenter! Look at that roster of contributors!! My story is about a young man who’s going to lose his home to the TVA’s construction of Tellico Lake.

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Jeff Zentner @jeffzentner.bsky.social · 05/05/2025

Hey Knoxville/East Tennessee! Come see me speak on Friday night at the East Tennessee History Center!!!

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Jeff Zentner @jeffzentner.bsky.social · 03/05/2025

I am absolutely obsessed with this new print called “Friday Night, Everything I Need” by my friend Dolan Geiman!!

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Jeff Zentner @jeffzentner.bsky.social · 30/04/2025

Imagine being one of those people on the Dominos commercial claiming to have had Dominos stuffed crust pizza when Dominos has never even had a stuffed crust pizza. Exposed to the world as liars, without honor. Total disgrace and humiliation.

Jeff Zentner @jeffzentner.bsky.social · 27/04/2025

Working on edits for LOVE, LIKE APPLES. I’m so excited for y’all to read it.

Jeff Zentner @jeffzentner.bsky.social · 26/04/2025

Rewatching “Dazed and Confused” and if you told me, when I first saw it, that the guy who plays Wooderson would someday be responsible for the most I’ve ever cried in a movie theater, wow would I not have believed you.

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Jeff Zentner @jeffzentner.bsky.social · 25/04/2025

I love this so much 😭😭😭❤️❤️❤️

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Jeff Zentner @jeffzentner.bsky.social · 24/04/2025

Hey Dickson, Tennessee, I’ll be at the Arts, Reads, and Tunes Festival this Saturday, talking romance books with some fantastic other authors named Melissa. Come see us!!

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Jeff Zentner @jeffzentner.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

If you were to ask me to guess the best case scenario for how Nicholas Sparks writes his name, I would say “bookended by cool 90s S’s”

Jeff Zentner @jeffzentner.bsky.social · 19/04/2025

I have two books coming out in 2026. Both call the Gulf of Mexico by its name and no copy editor better come for me.

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Jeff Zentner @jeffzentner.bsky.social · 19/04/2025

You insert the cartridge into the machine as though launching a skiff that will bear you far from the drudgery of your life. A chaos of static greets you. You eject the cartridge and blow into it, as though by sharing the breath that gives you life, you can breathe life into that which is broken.

Jeff Zentner @jeffzentner.bsky.social · 18/04/2025

Yes, hi, I’m looking for something grotesque in a men’s nine

Jeff Zentner @jeffzentner.bsky.social · 17/04/2025

Hey Indianapolis area folks, I’ll be at the Indianapolis library (central) on 4/22! Come see me! John Green will be there! I mean I don’t know that for a fact and have no reason to believe that but he does live there so he might! attend.indypl.org/event/131405...

attend.indypl.org

Behind the Pages: Jeff Zentner Talks Teen Fiction

Experience the award-winning author of "The Serpent King," "In the Wild Light," and "Rayne & Delilah's Midnite Matinee" for an evening talk and Q&A.

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Jeff Zentner @jeffzentner.bsky.social · 15/04/2025

If you wrote, into your YA novel in 2025, a tableful of lunching teenagers as MASSIVE Billy Joel fans, I would tell you you needed to take another pass. And you know what I learned today? I would be wrong.

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Jeff Zentner @jeffzentner.bsky.social · 13/04/2025

❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️thanks Mr. Schu!!!

Jeff Zentner @jeffzentner.bsky.social · 13/04/2025

This is how easy a costume has to be for me to dress up for a costume party

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I realized the other day that I think of and treat New York City like a theme park whose theme is “coolest city on Earth”

I really appreciate the richest man alive showing me on a daily basis that money can’t buy the things I’m most proud of being.

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I wanna know what the job interview is like for the people who sniff out and disapprove pervy personalized license plates for the DMV. “What would you say is your greatest weakness in terms of the dirtiness of your mind?” “Name a time when you got a horny joke that no one else in the room did”

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Jeff Zentner @jeffzentner.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

One of the many reasons we need to be so nice to dogs is think how godlike we must seem to them. We tower over them. We live for 600 years. We can eat deadly poison (chocolate). We bend monsters to our will (the vacuum). We use our dexterous opposable thumbs to open bags of t-r-e-a-t-s.

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You know how dogs are bred to sniff out drugs or cadavers or game birds? I have a dog who was apparently bred to sniff out the absolute coziest places in my house to sleep.

Jeff Zentner @jeffzentner.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

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Reposted by Jeff Zentner

Syd @sydhaines.bsky.social · 10/04/2025

If you've enjoyed this work you should also read @jeffzentner.bsky.social 's The Serpent King. Read it back in junior high and its poignancy still sticks with me years later; it's a book that has survived many shelf purges in honour of its place in creating my being

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Jeff Zentner @jeffzentner.bsky.social · 10/04/2025

A little known fact is that NPR host Terry Gross actually got her start in radio as “Gross Terry” on a morning zoo drive time radio show

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Jeff Zentner @jeffzentner.bsky.social · 09/04/2025

I wonder if anyone’s ever had a pet hermit crab named Thomas Pinchin’

Jeff Zentner @jeffzentner.bsky.social · 06/04/2025

I have such affection for old men who wear goofy jackets (Planet Hollywood, Mickey Mouse, Sons of Anarchy). It’s endearingly toddler-like. “Go get your Elmo jacket. Hurry!”

Jeff Zentner @jeffzentner.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

You know that Paramore song “Ain’t it Fun”? When it was all over pop radio, I got stuck in my head that the chorus was “ain’t it fun/livin’ in the river” like it was written by otters

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Jeff Zentner @jeffzentner.bsky.social · 31/03/2025

I am honored beyond belief that Kirkus Reviews named THE SERPENT KING one of the best books of the 21st century!!! It is in some exquisite company.

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Jeff Zentner @jeffzentner.bsky.social · 30/03/2025

America’s plan for bombing Yemen was less secret than a lot of Apple TV shows.

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Jeff Zentner @jeffzentner.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

[Reads news every day with general demeanor of sheriff from “No Country for Old Men”]

Jeff Zentner @jeffzentner.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

It makes me angry when people use arguments of ableism (“not everyone can….”) or classism (“not everyone has the means to…”) as a way of justifying AI theft. It’s a perversion of the language of social justice. And it reinforces a lot of the very premises that underlie ableist and classist thought

Jeff Zentner @jeffzentner.bsky.social · 27/03/2025

This is Waspbane. Oft has it tasted the guts of wasp interlopers. I shall wield her for as long as my hands have strength enough.

Jeff Zentner @jeffzentner.bsky.social · 27/03/2025

Love that U-Haul puts fascinating factoids on its trucks in tiny print to cull the most intellectually curious humans from the gene pool