SALT LAKE CITY, UT August 6, 2014
Salt Lake City native, Jeffrey Goff, decided the first publisher he’d send his sci fi novel to, aptly named “Hope: 239” would be local.
Goff says, “I did an online search for Utah publishers and found WiDo. After reading the mission statement and the criteria of what WiDo was looking for, it just felt right. Trusting my feeling, I sent in the first three chapters, and here we are, a few short months later, getting closer to telling everyone that Hope: 239 will, indeed, become an actual book, written by Jeffrey Goff, published by WiDo Publishing.”
Allie Maldonado, WiDo’s submission editor, thoroughly enjoyed Goff’s manuscript. “I loved every bit of it,” states Maldonado. “Jeffrey is every bit as good a sci fi writer as Asimov, who by the way, was not a perfect writer. I really look forward to reading more in the Hope series.”
Goff wrote a handful of short stories from 1997-2002, “relegated to a manila folder and the ink dried up in my pen.” He continues, “For five years I lived, poured the beer, mixed the cocktails, got married, got divorced, moved a half-dozen times, and gathered a mental file about people, places and events. In 2007, the need to resume writing finally reemerged.”
This is where the humility comes in, as Goff recalls, “The resumption of writing was one thing, but I still had another big hurdle to overcome. I had to accept the fact that no word was untouchable just because I had put it there. My first novel, The House on Lake Tacit, which I finished in the spring of 2013, was the single most important lesson in my writing self-education. In addition to knocking me from my plinth, it also taught me how to listen to what my characters were telling me, to let the story unfold as it comes, and to not be limited by any preconceptions. I also learned to trust myself as a writer, and to not force words to appear just because I think they should. The words will come without being dragged by their participles. And 290,000 of them did appear. Lake Tacit also proved I could indeed write a novel, a really long one at that.”
After numerous unsuccessful attempts to sell his first novel, Goff decided to move on to another project. He started a story based around the first two Saltairs on the shore of the Great Salt Lake. “As I wandered around the yard, on one of those days when the words were being delightfully stubborn, the premise of the Hope series suddenly popped into my head: transporting colonists to another planet without them being aware they were colonists. I don’t know where this came from, or why it interrupted my thoughts and musings about Saltair, but it did, and it did so persistently.”
A three-thousand word short story evolved into something Goff hadn’t expected. “I am so excited that it did, because writing this has been fun, rewarding, and fulfilling. Only time will tell where the Hope series goes, but I am loving every step I have taken and every one I have yet to take.”
WiDo Publishing™ enjoys the opportunity of giving fresh new voices a chance to be heard. “To take on a writer like Jeffrey Goff, who is excited to go into editing, excited to learn more about the craft of writing and the prospect of marketing and most of all, to see his creation become a published book,” Allie Maldonado says, “is what makes my job just so much fun.”
Jeffrey Goff, born and raised in the Salt Lake Valley, grew up in Sandy and graduated from the old Jordan High in 1990. Several key buildings from his past are no longer around– Mount Jordan Middle School and the first bar he worked at have been torn down. He spent ten years as a bartender making valuable observations about people. He attended Westminster College, where he studied history until realizing he wanted to be a writer, not a history professor. At Westminster, Goff found professors who accommodated his unorthodox writing, and eventually, he learned to overcome the “arrogance of my own literary greatness” and that’s when the writing progressed. Learn more about Jeffrey Goff at his website and blog: http://schmefflandbyjdgoff.wordpress.com/