Ghostwriter – The Writers in Residence

by Jill Amadio

Last week, I was sorely tempted to slip back into a non-fiction writing career that has sustained me when my mystery book sales faltered. I gave a proposed project a few hours thought. Then, I came to the decision that my ghostwriting years were definitely gone with the wind, as vanished as the ghost I had become.

Ghostwriting popped up in my life when I least expected, and it was certainly not sought. In fact, I was barely aware of someone writing someone else’s life story for them. It seemed the height of hubris both from the viewpoint of the writer and that of the subject. I believe I thought, when I first heard of ghostwriting, that if you couldn’t write your own story, then forget it.

However, during a particularly “dry” period when my finances were almost non-existent, I held my breath and agreed to at least investigate what was involved. I was writing a business column for Entrepreneur magazine, and one day, the editor told me that a reader called, asking if they could recommend a writer to write their business book for them

“What? Be a fake writer? And on top of that, write a whole book?” I squeaked. “No way! I hardly manage to squeeze out 3,000 words for my column. How can I write a hundred times that number? No way.”

“Jill, look at it this way. Approach each chapter as an article. Besides, it pays well.”

When the editor mentioned the sum of money I could earn, I no longer resisted. Ghostwriting, here I come!

Since then, I have ghosted 19 memoirs and enjoyed the process immensely. I met a fascinating group of clients who took me into the realms of several diverse worlds. I wrote books for a champion cowboy, a nuclear physicist, and just about everyone in between.

After I finished the business book and was telling a friend at the local TV station about it, she passed the word around. I soon received a referral that sent me to Hollywood to meet Ellie, the fourth wife of singer Rudy Vallee. She was one of those larger-than-life ladies who called everyone “Darling.” We clicked right away.

Ellie sent me to the Simi Valley Library, which had bought Rudy’s archives after he died. Five hundred boxes. I spent weeks delving through clippings, photos, contracts, reviews, personal letters, and marriage certificates. The material was rich with wonderfully intimate biographical pieces of Rudy’s rollercoaster life and career. The publisher decided that rather than following the usual process of hiding the ghostwriter, I should be named as the co-author of the book. A great and much-appreciated surprise.

During her book tour in Las Vegas, Ellie had lunch with the owner of the many taxi companies in town, who promptly contracted with me to write her own memoir. I interviewed many of the cab drivers and collected some surprising stories of famous celebrity passengers. However, the cab owner decided to only publish enough books for her immediate family and friends. Thus, those stories remain undercover.

Another memoir (each of the 19 I ghostwrote was by referral, happily) was more of a revenge publication against no fewer than a dozen attorneys for malpractice. My client owned a small business, which soon expanded into selling one of the nation’s leading entertainment devices. However, the clients had hired what she and her husband called “incompetent” lawyers. Soon, there were lawsuits initiated by my clients all over the place. The book was to name each one and detail their transgressions. I knew a little about the law and told my clients we needed to give those lawyers false names or be sued ourselves.

Some of the names we came up with included Mack E. Avelly, Mal Lingerer, Jep Ardy, Rack E. Teering, and an Ignorentia Legis (translation: ignorance of the law).

Several of the memoirs I wrote were written in the first person, from the client’s point of view. A favorite of mine was about Monterey, CA’s first policewomen in the 1950s. The lead female cop rode a Harley to patrol the streets and, occasionally seeing a fellow cop’s car outside another cop’s house whom she knew was working, discovered several love affairs taking place during her tenure.

One client hired me to write a mystery. She’d always wanted to write about a financial scam that victimized her father. It sounded boring, so I suggested we add a murder into the mix to jazz it up. She agreed wholeheartedly and asked how many murders we could include. I talked her down to two.

Some clients decide to write their memoirs after changing their lives. One of these was a model, international actress, and recently divorced mother of two who decided to leave her luxury life in New Jersey and move to California. I met her at her home, where she showed me the minivan they’d be traveling in for the cross-country trek. I was surprised that the SUV was pretty stinky compared to the shiny Rolls-Royce parked nearby. She said she wanted a completely fresh start. She got one when she met and married a California billionaire after arriving in Laguna Beach. Then she moved to Italy, where she bought a villa.

Before COVID struck and I moved back to Connecticut, I received a call from a cowboy in southern California. He had recently completed a humanitarian project: riding horseback across America from California to Florida. The mission was to raise money for an orphanage for disabled children. The book was fun to write, covering how he, the seven horses, and a one-eyed mule he needed completed the journey.

One memoir I wrote on my own was the life story of the first lady of aviation art. A British artist, Virginia Bader, ran a gallery of paintings on both coasts devoted to World War II scenes, dogfights, and heroes such as General Jimmy Doolittle, Air Vice Marshal Johnnie Johnson, and many fighter aces from both sides of the conflict. Her efforts helped establish the careers of the now top aviation artists in their field, such as Nicholas Trudgian, John Shaw, and Sam Lyons.

I wrote three other memoirs as my own client because I became fascinated with the subjects’ stories. One I was asked by the publisher to write about was Gunther Rall, the third-highest fighter ace of World War II and a General in the Luftwaffe. It was published in 2003 and continues sells worldwide.

by Jill Amadio

Like most writers I have read dozens of how-to books, joined Sisters in Crime; Mystery Writers of America; the Authors Guild, and even ASJA – the American Society of Journalists and Authors. I’ve been a panelist at conferences, given talks all over the place, and enjoyed writing for this blog and magazines.

These days I have suffered from a lack of inspiration.

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Previously I had deadlines that worked when I had a demanding publisher or if I was ghostwriting for a client. At present neither apply and I find myself with days, weeks even, of time to work on three books of my own that have been on the back burner.

They include a biography of a woman who pioneered aviation art in America; my third mystery, and a book about a terrorist event that was originally to be ghostwritten.

This last one is a true account of a teenager who was married in 1992 to a Middle Eastern college student who later became a terrorist. Divorced in 1994 she went on with her life. When she saw her ex-husband’s photograph on TV as one of the terrorists she contacted the authorities.

I interviewed her years ago in Oregon, made copies of her marriage certificate and divorce decree, and wrote a 40-page book proposal. I was quickly signed up with a top-five New York literary agent. However, no publisher was willing to touch it back then and a few months later, at the age of 31 and just before I was due to meet with her again, the young woman died in a suspicious car accident reminiscent of the Karen Silkwood story.

Last year, before moving to Connecticut, I emptied my storage unit and found the two bins of research I’d collected containing recordings of the girl, her mother, sister, and brother who knew the terrorist husband. Mindful of the fate she suffered I decided to fictionalize the book. I’d signed a contract with her mother giving me all rights, registered the book proposal with the Copyright Office at the Library of Congress, and went to work. So far I have nine chapters.

The decision to go forward with this project was easy. The implementation almost impossible. I just haven’t been able to get myself to work on it further for the past few months, perhaps because of the overwhelming amount of research I had gathered.

My research includes several books on the event and I have great quotes from the young woman and the family. I visited locations and took photos, and had lunch in the same restaurants her ex-husband had taken her to where they met up with “friends.”

The bins are brimming with marvelous, usable material. I was pumped and eagerly dove into writing. I became so engrossed I made dozens of cups of tea and left them in the kitchen forgetting they were there. The agent lost interest because the subject was no longer alive to promote the book. I stored the names of the detectives who investigated her death; transcriptions; the coroner’s report; the death certificate, and her obituary. So I went on to other projects.

Now, I want to complete it. But guess what?

I can’t get myself to open the document. I’ve thankfully avoided writer’s block for decades and I have come the conclusion that I am simply lazy. This condition is exacerbated by the virus causing enforced isolation more than usual, and my discovery of the wonders of Netflix. Or maybe the 123 files staring me in the face are too intimidating.

I remember reading how John Updike solved his lack of excitement for a story when he lived here in Connecticut, incidentally. In his den he set up three typewriters on which he was typing three different stories, During a day he walked from one to another when he ran out of ideas for one novel and moved on to the next for a while.

What to do? After a stern argument with myself last week which got me nowhere I reached out to friends for a solution and received some excellent advice.

Peggy Ehrhart who is on her eighth mystery in her knitting series, had a suggestion. She told me to start at the front of a bin, pull out the first file and insert whatever material was in that file into the appropriates chapters. And so on. Great idea.

Sandy Giedeman, a well-published award-winning poet who often edits my books offered more advice. I told her one of my favorite guides was “Writing Down the Bones,” by Natalie Goldberg. Sandy told me to re-read it and start putting flesh on the skeleton I had already created in the synopsis that included a sentence or two for each of the chapters. That helped. I had a terrific, ready-made skeleton for the entire book in the book proposal I had shelved years earlier. (It is one reason I am a fanatic for flash drives and printing out hard copies of precious writings)

A third friend said I should listen to uplifting music. I dug out my favorite CDs and heard the Mamas and Pappas singing “California Dreamin’” Well, that was a little sad as I was no longer in California and had a hankering to be back there. I also listened to ABBA, again a bit of a mistake since instead of writing anything I sat on the sofa and daydreamed about my life when the band was famous many years ago.

I also played “The Standing Stones of Callanish,” Celtic music composed about an ancient site in Cornwall but then I remembered I had bought that disc to put me in the mood for my Cornishwoman mysteries. I replaced it with “Puccini Without Words,” which is quite lovely but again, maudlin in parts because operas are so melodramatic. Nevertheless, all three suggestions helped and I am now happily engaged in methodically sorting through the first bin of files.

It is so easy to waste time instead of sitting down and writing. Such a strange paradox as we all share the passion and when inspiration smacks us on the jaw it is thrilling to get our ideas onto the electronic page – and just as disappointing when we don’t or can’t.

I’m sure most writers have their own solutions, even quirky ones, and someone has probably written a book about them. I still like Goldberg’s book not only because I write mysteries and love its title, “Writing Down the Bones,” but also for its content.

My current plan is to finish the first draft of the story by May 15, self-publish, and see how it goes.

Photo by Inside Weather on Unsplash