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| Outside In: A Novel by Scott Shachter (StarBeat Press) New Book: Outside In: A Novel by Scott Shachter (StarBeat Press) June 3, 2014. Shawn is a hard-luck saxophonist with an unearthly muse. His demented neighbors, a mob boss and a choir of inter dimensional aliens with sharp teeth are not the only things that stand between Shawn and jazz stardom. A bigger problem is no one likes his crazy music. Worst of all, it scares off Carole, the woman he loves more than anyone. It even scares himself because he knows one day he'll follow his reckless muse until he goes insane, and Carole will stay away forever. When his soul collides with reality, Shawn must choose between his art and his love. About Scott Shachter Scott Shachter has been playing his flutes, clarinets and saxophones on Broadway since 1988. He's performed in nearly seventy shows, including Pippin, Kinky Boots, Chicago, Cinderella, Newsies, Porgy and Bess, Billy Elliot, A Chorus Line, 42nd Street, Assassins, Gypsy, and Phantom. His versatility with styles and instruments has enabled him to perform with groups ranging from the American Symphony to Manhattan Transfer. Through it all Scott has been a storyteller. OUTSIDE IN, his first novel, was inspired by his encounters with immensely talented performers who seemed unable to relate to anyone, as if they were separate life forms. This jazz fiction comedy puts the reader inside the wacky life of a working class musician, and explores the "crazy genius" in us all. OUTSIDE IN is a finalist in the 2014 Next Generation Indie Book Awards. It also reached the quarterfinals in the 2011 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award and received Honorable Mention in the 2011 Leapfrog Press Fiction Contest. "Scott Shachter's Outside In is indeed a jazz novel—continually swinging with surprises and insights into human exceptionalism, both inspiring and desperate. It got so inside me I had to go back and read it again for more kicks." —Nat Hentoff, legendary columnist/social historian and author of 32 books, including At the Jazz Band Ball: Sixty Years on the Jazz Scene, and Jazz Is. "An intriguing fantasy from inside the jazz world, all narrated by the main character, Shawn. 'Playing' Shawn is professional saxophonist Scott Shachter, a storyteller who makes you want to know what will happen next." —Ira Gitler, distinguished jazz historian and producer, and author of Swing to Bop and Jazz Masters of the Forties and with Leonard Feather, The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz. "Scott Shachter's Outside In is a funny and warm novel which joins an intriguing genre of 'jazz fantasies'. . . [taking] a music based on passion, skill, interaction and abstraction as a fast-shifting lens through which to look at ineffable questions of identity, ambition, the wills of the heart and maybe even the nature of reality itself." —Howard Mandel, president of the Jazz Journalists Association and author of Future Jazz, and Miles, Ornette, Cecil: Jazz Beyond Jazz. write your comments about the article :: © 2014 Jazz News :: home page |