163 pages
$5.00 E-book
$12.79 Paperback
One dollar from the sale of every book goes to the United Way New York City.
$5.00 E-book
$12.79 Paperback
One dollar from the sale of every book goes to the United Way New York City.
Will Entrekin’s self titled book, Entrekin, is a book that has had some exposure already. Upon writing this review, I have not taken a look at his popular MySpace page. Nor have I read the PODler review he links to on the book’s page at Lulu. Having read Mr. Entrekin’s book for myself now only validates why I started The Lulu Book Review in the first place. This is a POD book with lots of heart and character. It’s well polished. It is good writing. And it deserves to be read. I told Mr. Entrekin in an email that the cover sold me. If I had eventually come across this book on my own, based on the cover and the blurb on his Lulu page, I would have bought a copy. Great job at making this book your own, Will!
It is important first to look at the layout of this book since it is a collection of the author’s work. It is an anthology of short stories, some fictional and some nonfictional, interwoven with some poetry. Entrekin begins with a short story called “For Cynthia” in which the author meets a girl in a bookstore and briefly begins seeing her. He falls pretty hard for her only to have her call it quits, but they can still be friends. There’s nothing new to this story you haven’t read before. But the author does a brilliant job of leaving the reader hanging, just as humans are sometimes left hanging when a relationship abruptly ends unexpectedly. He has captured that moment perfectly, gently exposing himself right on the page. The best line in the story is, “Maybe home’s just not as familiar as I thought it would be.”
Next is an award winning poem called “This Ain’t Wonderland.” Yes, it’s about Alice and the White Rabbit. Each verse describes an all too familiar scene from Carroll’s beloved work, but then the author hits the reader with a line that compares it to real life. For example:
I was expectingto eat myself smalland drink myself hugebut didn’t realizeI was already just the right size.
I love the sense of discovery here and how the reader can definitely relate. Using Alice in Wonderland as the metaphor is genius because it’s a story we all know well. My only problem with it was the repetitiveness of “I was expecting…but didn’t realize.” I would have liked about every other verse to be something different just to avoid the predictable repitition of these words.
“Dear Author” is a short story that begins with another dreamy relationship. The true heart of this piece begins at the bottom of page 17. The narrator begins to compare his love life to the anticipation of waiting for a literary agent to send an acceptance letter….
The day my letter comes, I’ll be expecting to open that envelope and find it addressed to Author. But it won’t be. It will say Dear Mr. Entrekin (that’s me)…
Any writer can relate to this feeling. We all have strong relationships with our writing and our characters from time to time. Will writes…
Somewhere, somewhen, there is a letter, and it is addressed to me. I just worry that all the rest will be addressed to ‘Author’, and I’m tired of opening the mail.
This book truly starts on page 27 with a short story called “Deluded.” It’s an entire piece about a writer dealing with query letters and rejection. Entrekin has a talent for putting the reader exactly where he wants them. He doesn’t cloud his writing with lots of needless words. He “shows” us, instead of “telling.” Take the opening lines for example:
My crummy little Jersey City apartment. Baldwin Avenue. Near Journal Square. Mohammed Atta, one of the 9/11 hijackers, lived less than a mile from me.
I read these lines over and over to myself. Entrekin doesn’t tell us what the apartment looks like or what the view from the window is, but he doesn’t have to. And yet, when you read these sentences you know exactly how that apartment looked. I, myself, wondered if maybe the narrator ever passed the hijacker on the street. But that’s not important here. In so few words, he has given us endless visions of curiosities. It is what makes this short story work so damn well. He goes on to say everyone knew him as a writer.
The sometimes poet, the editor of the literary magazine: everything short of the tweed jacket with the elbow patches, basically.
Again, a simple detail like that jacket gives the reader a specific vision of who this character is. As a writer, I also related to his anger over the rejection letters, thinking you did your homework, sitting there and waiting, only to end up with rejection. This was probably my favorite piece of the collection.
Mr. Entrekin also dabbles into historical fiction with two longer pieces about Edgar Allan Poe. They are Addicted to Praise and Raven Noir. Overall, both are brilliant and should be developed into novel length pieces. Raven Noir is available for free by itself on the author’s Lulu page.
What I Saw That Day (also available by itself at Lulu) is a short story about the author’s point of view on 9/11 while he was working in New York. Obviously, it’s a very personal story that all of us can relate to. While reading it, I paused to remember where I was that day. The author does not cloud his story with vivid pictures of chaos and terror. Instead, he distances himself and the reader from it on purpose because those are visions we already know too well. “It was like opening the closet door when you’re thirty, and meeting the bogeyman,” he says. Great line! He was several miles away from where the towers were, but steps out to leave work and describes the heavy dust-laden air. His imagery of this is just as disturbing as watching the planes hit the towers on television over and over again back in 2001.
I wonder if my breath caught the World Trade Center and won’t let it go.
Other first person stories of dating, dreams, humor, joyrides in old cars, and dance lessons kept this reader turning the pages. Mr. Entrekin has also included two chapters from what he hopes will be his first novel.
Throughout my journey of Mr. Entrekin’s work, I often stopped and wanted to know more. This writer had pulled me in like a close friend telling me how his day went over a happy hour drink. I wanted to know why he chose to tell this story, or if that was how it really happened. Did he embellish on the page? Did he make this up entirely? Where did he get the idea for his Poe stories? If you read this, I think you will find yourself feeling the same way. The last part of the book is called After the Words, which reads like a sit down chat with the author. Here, he gives explanation for much of the work. He talks a bit about his own self-publishing journey. “There are no first, nor even seventh, drafts here,” he says. In reference to the popularity of online publishing and blogs, my favorite line of his is…
It is getting more difficult, then, to separate the wheat from the chaff. Google can sometimes help, but not always.
If you want to discover the kind of heart and soul that should be put into a POD book, then I highly recommend reading Entrekin today. As a writer or reader, you will not be disappointed.
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Wow. Thank you for the truly excellent review. I’m thrilled to find you liked it so much, and appreciate your notes on the individual pieces. Interesting comments on “This Ain’t Wonderland,” and certainly something for me to bear in mind.
I also wanted to note that I’m no longer on MySpace, nor even have a profile there. I did, however, take up blogging at blog.willentrekin.com, for anyone interested.
Once again, thank you for allowing me to be part of your launching this exciting new venture.
-Sorry for the mention of MySpace, but thank you for bringing your new blog to our attention. -LLBR
I haven’t read the book, but what intrigues me is that it sounds like the sort of collection one would never find in traditional publishing. A major publishing house would consider a collection of fiction, non-fiction and poetry unmarketable and not worth their time, unless it was by someone uber-famous.
IMHO, this is the real value POD brings to literature– the ability of the author to create what they want to create and to hell with what the publisher thinks is most likely to make a buck. There will naturally be a lot of hit or miss, but there are also opportunities for writers to experiment and maybe re-define the literary landscape. Or just have fun.
Bunny-
You are absolutely right. Will just so happens to mention Stephen King’s The Night Shift twice in this book which is a great single author anthology. I think the day of the single author anthologies is just about over though. Back in the day of Southern Lit’s peak, authors like Flannery O’Connor and Truman Capote had some of their best work featured in their own anthologies. Today, it seems collected works are best saved for when an author is long gone. I, myself, have been published in a few multi-author anthologies, which are very popular. Readers still embrace the short story genre. I’m a fan of them myself which is why I chose to review Will’s work. I like reading a few stories at one setting and having closure. I don’t feel as bad if I have to put the book down for a few days, and I haven’t missed out on anything. When I pick it up again, it’s a fresh start. -LLBR
I read Will’s blog when he was on MySpace, and I know self-publishing was something he struggled with. It’s something he got attacked for pretty regularly afterwards. He published his work this way because he didn’t think there was a market for his short stories and poetry. Will is an excellent writer, but sadly, he doesn’t fit under the thumb of traditional, “literary” markets. I’m a writer who does fit under that category and have had some success–but so what? The problem with publishing is that a lot of non-traditional talent is easily overlooked, and others are only read by other writers. Surely, there’s a better system where all writers can have the freedom to write and be read. Maybe, it’s POD.
Alma-
Thanks for your insight. However, I don’t think it’s sad that Will doesn’t fit under the thumb of traditional markets, as you say. I don’t even think I agree with that statement. I think Will is ahead of the market today. Too many people are still oohing and ahhing over the Secret and Harry Potter. Right now, Will just lacks a paying audience. Walk into any bookstore today and what do you see? Brown, Grisham, King, Steel, Rowling….do we buy those books because honestly they are good writing? Or do we buy them because everyone else is reading the same damn thing and we want to be part of the in crowd?
I’m proud to say I haven’t read one single Harry Potter book, and I never will. They don’t interest me. I’m happy that authors like Rowling have a story to tell that amazingly appeals to the masses, makes the author filthy rich, so they can then do what? Stop writing about what got them there in the first place. There is a breaking point in a writer’s life (notice I said writer, not author), an epiphany when we stop thinking about the dollar and we write solely because it is in our blood and we have to do it. We write to fulfill those needs. We write for ourselves. We write to be heard. And Will has proudly reached that point. If he had not, would we be here now discussing him?
I’m not trying to offend you in the least bit; bravo to you for being publishing traditionally, but sometimes “traditional” is boring. An author writes what his agents and editors tell him will sell. Does it end up on the shelf as the story he honestly wanted to tell? Probably not. But he doesn’t care, because his six figure royalty check cleared. Believe me, I’d love a six figure royalty check myself, but some writers choose POD because they believe in the story they need to tell, not in the story an editor bends his writing into. POD is the best option sometimes for that writer, and it may or may not get him a paycheck. But in the end, a true writer won’t care because he came by his book honestly and whole heartedly.
-LLBR
Re: LLBR’s response to my comment
I’m not offended in the least. I totally agree with everything you’ve said, and I do believe traditional publishers are going to have to bend if they’re going to be successful. When I said I was sad, I wasn’t saying I was sad for Will. I’m sad for publishing because it means good writers are overlooked for superficial reasons. My point, I think, is that despite my marginal success in being published in traditional markets, I don’t see any real value in these pursuits. (Hence, my “so what?”). As a short story writer/poet, you’re usually relegated to small literary ‘zines that no one ever reads–unless they’re trying to get in them. Most of the ‘zines that published my early work don’t even exist anymore. I think any serious writer has to think about that. Will, I think, is one of the first to pioneer a new way of doing things. The other thing that makes me sad is how much he has been attacked for it, and how–in some ways–it may prevent him from finding a publisher for his novel. For me, POD is a viable option–nothing to be stigmatized–but stodgy idiots continue to marginalize it. Unfortunately, some of those stodgy idiots actually hold power in publishing. Something has to change, certainly.
What I find puzzling is why anyone would criticize someone for going POD with a book that is obviously not the sort that would get picked up by a traditional publisher. Seeking publication of a hybrid fiction/nonfiction/poetry collection would be time-consuming with very little chance of success, regardless of the quality of the writing. All that time soliciting rejection notices could be much better spent writing new stuff.
I spent some time on the query-go-round with a novel that does have potential to get picked up by a publishing house. It was a big time-suck, and since I have a full time job and other life commitments, actively querying means no time for writing. Every agent wants something slightly different and you can’t just put together one package and send it out to all of them. It’s therefore of little benefit to play the query game with something offbeat unless one is unemployed or in a writing drought.
Now I only bother trying to sell the novels and stories that fit the marketers’ mold. My other stuff gets posted on one of my blogs and/or goes POD. It keeps me in that creative space that makes me happy, and it’s not like I write for money. As I said before, I already have a job.
I hope the hostility to POD will diminish over time. I think it has to. Right now I have a friend who is trying to get a novel published in the traditional way while pre-building a fan base for it on her blog. I’ve suggested she put together a POD book of related stories about her characters to help keep her fans enticed but she’s been advised by traditionally published writers not to go that route. Maybe their advice is correct. If so, I’m screwed because my two POD books are tie-ins to the novel I send out queries for when time permits. I can’t help thinking it’s an odd prejudice, though. Why should it matter if you blog or POD the stuff you won’t be seeking an agent for?
UPDATE: Will is now offering Entrekin as a free download to celebrate his work’s year long journey. Check it out!
http://blog.willentrekin.com/2008/03/01/entrekin-a-year-in-review/#comment-54