Entertaining Welsey Shaw: a Novel about celebrity

What happens when an ordinary person who dreams of fame meets a celebrity who longs to be “normal”? He’s a faded novelist, ghostwriting for hacks. She’s a world-famous, elusive and neurotic actress living in the spotlight’s glare. And sometimes opposites attract—or at least get very curious about each other. And after a while he begins to notice that she is actually setting up their encounters.  Is there an ulterior motive for their secret meetings every Friday for coffee and (sometimes volatile) conversation?

Poignant in its unguarded moments as well as dryly funny, Entertaining Welsey Shaw is about our modern obsession with celebrities, told from the point of view of an ordinary person who, by hanging out with the world’s biggest movie star, fulfills a common fantasy, and in the process starts craving his own limelight, even as he sees she would like nothing more than to leave it behind.

For who among us hasn’t dreamed of fame and its attendant perks? Entertaining Welsey Shaw examines our increasing need to be seen and heard as the world becomes more frenzied, more fervid, and more extreme. It’s definitely a story that’s now.

Entertaining Welsey Shaw looks at whether the famous can really be friends with “the rest of us.” It examines our obsession from the inside out with fame and people we can never really know.

John Grabowski grew up on the east coast, has traveled around Europe and now calls Northern California home. He has worked in print, advertising, and television news, where he’s encountered more than a few celebrities. When not writing, he enjoys travel, classical music, web design, and Dunkin’ Donuts. Entertaining Welsey Shaw is his first novel. His second, in the planning stages, is about an artist who starts having a romantic affair with Death.