About Jeffrey Hanlon
Founder & CEO, Zither Studios
From Beach Boy Dreams to getting tossed by a Bull – Meet the Mind Behind the Mic.
From the Beach . . .
I was born in a Southern California beach town.
My family moved to Northwest Oregon when I was 7. Or maybe when I was 8.
Had we stayed in the Beach Boys town, and knowing myself as I do now, I suspect I would have grown long hair, started a rock band, and been heavily into drugs. The rock band would probably have been pretty good. The rest of it, not so much. I’d likely have joined the ranks of those like Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin.
. . . to the Mountain
But fate had other plans: a steep gravel road, two miles up to the end of the world — and the beginning of Jeffrey’s. We moved to a mountaintop. The last five miles to get there were gravel. The final two miles were steep and to the end of the road.
That’s where we lived: the end of the road, 22 miles to the nearest town.
The Bull
Our closest neighbor was a hermit with a goat who wandered up to visit us monthly. I think the goat liked us better. We had cats, too — lots of them. People dumped them nearby, and they found their way to us. We gave them Fancy Feast and love, and they gave it right back.
Friends didn’t visit often. My dad had a habit of roping them into “five-minute” jobs that turned into hours. So I spent my childhood afternoons with a 2,000-pound Hereford bull. He liked having his forehead scratched, and after that, we’d play a game:
“Let’s see how far the bull can toss the little kid.”
And toss me he did — again and again, until he got bored and wandered off to chase heifers.
The Stacks
The nearest library was 30 miles away, and we ventured there often. It was a majestic old building, and the Grand Room had books on all four walls with reading chairs in the center. But that was not where I wanted to be. I figured all those books were popular books or books I was supposed to read. I wanted something different, so I would enter the room with a small sign that said ‘Stacks’. It was row after narrow row after row of books, floor to ceiling, dimly lit, dusty. It was like entering a cave. Filled with treasures!
It was in those Stacks that I discovered the likes of Kerouac and Heller and Huxley and Fowles and Steinbeck and Ellison and Bradbury and Hemingway and many many others.
And those, each in their own way, was the inspiration for the first book I wrote at the age of eight or nine: ‘Pond Scum’.
It was illustrated.
First Book: “Pond Scum”
Written at age eight or nine. The beginning of a lifelong obsession with story.
Founder of Zither Studios. 20+ international creatives help tell the stories. Telling unforgettable tales with sound, soul, and heart.
Now
Philosophy of Storytelling
Jeffrey has dined with presidents.
Spoken in packed auditoriums.
Played serious baseball.
Jetted to white-sand beaches across the globe.
But now?
He writes.
As Stephen King said, “Books are a uniquely portable magic.” Jeffrey works to create that magic.Because stories — real, imagined, or somewhere in between — are the threads that stitch people together.