Local author flies off in new direction.
It was divine intervention that inspired the idea for her new book, says Brookhaven author and magazine editor Allison Entrekin. It happened five years ago while she was enjoying the view of sky and sea from a vacation spot in Pensacola.
“I saw a flock of geese flying in formation, but then one peeled away and started flying in the completely opposite direction,” Entrekin says. “Then in 30 seconds, this book idea downloaded into my brain. I had a journal nearby, and I wrote the entire story. It felt divine.”
The result is The Goose Who Talked to the Wind, a book for 3- to 5-year-olds that follows the adventures of a nameless goose that is beckoned by the wind to set out on a different course. But the 32-pages hold meaning for adults as well.
“It’s what we’re seeing more and more of: a book aimed at young readers that also speaks to their parents,” Entrekin says. “Children will read one story, but whoever is reading to them reads for themselves. I have found that happening for people who have read the drafts. The adults hear the call to the message of adventure.”
The story of the goose’s creation mirrors the book’s message in several ways, Entrekin says. Her first work, For the Love of Dogs, came out in 2011 from Triumph Books that handled the production and publicity. This time was different. “I had no intention of writing a children’s book, but I thought if it was divinely inspired, then publishing it would be easy. Silly me. The ones who were interested wanted to make too many changes. It made me freeze for a few years.”
The idea surfaced again on New Year’s Eve as she talked with her husband and two children about their 2023 goals. “I decided I was going to self-publish it,” she says. “I could do a gorgeous book the way I wanted to with the words I wanted. But then I learned that self-publishing has changed so much. It’s very different from my past experience with a traditional publisher.”
Flying away from the publishing flock meant learning all the intricacies of survival on her own, Entrekin says. “This was way out of my comfort zone. My flock is staying in my lane with magazines where I know what I’m doing. To do all the many facets to get this book out into the world was taking me in a different direction. I didn’t know where it was going. In some ways, I’m the goose.”
For the journey, Entrekin hired a local designer and an illustrator, and put her own money into the project. “I am incurring some risk, but I believe in it. I think we all have an inner longing to try something new, to take a risk. This was my going in a different direction.”
And the journey might continue in the future. “I don’t know where it’s going to go,” she says, with just a hint that there may be more goose adventures to come.
The Goose Who Talked to the Wind is available on Amazon and at allisonentrekin.com.
