WHEN IS A GHOSTWRITER NOT? by Jill Amadio
“Impossible”, I said. “Too many
words”
“Imagine each chapter as an
article”, she suggested.
Since then, I’ve ghostwritten more
than a dozen memoirs and autobiographies that required transforming myself into
a U.S. ambassador, a Las Vegas croupier, a Texas oilman, a taxicab fleet owner, a triathlete,
and sundry others. One was quite an experience. Here it is.
I am hovering just to the rear and
right of Jonathan as his sits at a table happily signing his name on the flyleaf
of my new crime novel. We are at Dutton’s bookshop on the edge of Hollywood. Jonathan does not disguise the fact that he’d
hired a ghostwriter for his book. He is introducing me as “my writer” as one
would airily wave a hand and say, “Oh, this is my butler.” Very classy but a
bit confusing to the crowd. With Jonathan claiming me, it is obvious that this
time my ghostwriter jig is up.
Jonathan told me during my initial visit
to his Beverly Hills mansion that he had always wanted a book with his name on to
display on “this coffee table”, he said, patting it. His dilemma was that he
had no idea how to write. Reminded me of the time I was at an airport shop in
Indonesia and picked up President Sukarno’s biography, a heavy red leather
hardcover, only to find it full of blank pages (he was still living at the
time).
Now, at Dutton’s, I help Jonathan set
up his customized pens, business cards, and bookmarks. Two tables almost sag
under the weight of a huge champagne and caviar buffet catered by the Beverly
Hilton, much to the bewilderment of the manager who has never seen such
largesse from a first-time, unknown author. I also spend a ridiculously long
time deciding exactly where to position myself. As a ghostwriter I am always
absent from “my” book signings. As soon as I finish a project and bank the
check, I slink away. But this time is different. The client insists I attend,
and I’m curious to see what kind of crowd Jonathan will attract as a result of
the gilt-edged invitation cards.
Initially, he envisioned a family
drama about a typical insurance scam of which his father had been the true victim.
A little tame, I said, and persuaded him we should add a couple of murders to
spice up the story. He agreed, and said the characters must include his parents,
two brothers, six ex-wives, four mistresses, and three daughters. I told him, No,
far too many. I would take three wives, two mistresses, and two daughters, all
the while struggling to explain to him that in the book they’d be fictional and
would not resemble the real people. He stopped complaining when I asked which
of his family he’d like to be the killer.
Occasionally, during the writing,
my client threw a spanner into the works such as calling from Belize or Paris
and asking me to add even more murders to the mix now he’d got into the swing
of things. Luckily, he was pleased with the various twists and turns,
especially when I included thugs from a Bel Air branch of the Russian Mafia
(honestly, it really exists). I gave the
murderer my great-grandfather’s revered Scottish name for some inexplicable
reason, honored Keats by sprinkling quotes throughout, courtesy of the sleuth,
and withheld adding Cornish cuss words but was sorely tempted. Instead, I saved
them for a crime novel I published last year.
For my part, I enjoyed creating a
series sleuth, a forensic accountant, on someone else’s generous dime, hoping
to continue the collection (Jonathan never did ask me to write another book but
he owns copyright so I can’t use the sleuth, of whom I had grown fond).
An inveterate traveler on both
business and pleasure, Jonathan was absent a lot. In fact, most of the time. He
told me to basically just carry on, and he’d read the book after it was
finished. As it turned out, he preferred me to read it aloud to him, which I
did, leading to an unexpected part-time career in voice-over and narration
work.
Jonathan pronounced himself
satisfied. But then he said his third daughter was going to be very upset that
I’d left her out. He insisted on her inclusion. Fearing my final fee in
jeopardy, I had her join the Peace Corps in Chapter One and whisked her off to Somalia,
never to be heard from again.
However, when it came time to querying
agents Jonathan refused to spend longer than two weeks on the search and
quickly self-published with an expensive hardcover POD press. For which I was
grateful, nevertheless. Saved an awful lot of work and having my client
possibly suffer from the rejection syndrome, for which he’d understandably
blame me.
Now, at Dutton’s (sadly, since
closed) my client is having a grand old time chatting to the two hundred or so clients,
colleagues and neighbors he’s invited to congratulate him. As his eyes keep
darting to the door to see who is arriving I just know he’s hoping it’ll be a Hollywood
producer, a director or an actor who’ll slap an option offer on the table
within the next three days. He’s begun to like this author thing. I decide to
phone a film producer friend and invite him over to put Jonathan out of his
agony.
“Hi, Brandon, how about coming
along to a book signing right now? It’s not far from your place”.
“Who’s the author?”
“Oh, no one you know”.
“So why would I come?”
“Well, I wrote it”.
“Why didn’t you say it’s your book
signing?”
“It isn’t”.
He snorts and hangs up.
Still undecided where to stand I
continue to hover, ghostlike, all the while admitting to myself that Jonathan’s
book looks very, very nice.
Like Tosca Trevant, the amateur sleuth in her crime series, Jill Amadio hails from St. Ives, Cornwall but is nowhere near as grumpy or unwittingly hilarious as her character. She is a true crime and thriller ghostwriter, and was a reporter in Spain, Thailand, Colombia and the United States. She writes a monthly column for the UK-based MysteryPeople ezine, and freelances for My Cornwall magazine. She is a member of Crime Writers Association (UK), Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, and the Authors Guild. She lives in Southern California where it hardly ever rains, much to Tosca Trevant’s annoyance
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