ghost BOOKS

Have you lived a remarkable life?

"Drama-minded Ghostwriter Seeks A Fabulously Wealthy Client With An Intense, Never-Before-Heard Story That Has Highs, Lows, At Least One Great Villain, Battles - and Victory in the end"

Are you someone who has experienced something amazing, and wants to bring that story to the world? 

If so, read on.

I’m looking for a very special person who wants their story told in a vivid, compelling way. 

Are you that person? Maybe, maybe not. 

It certainly depends on me. 

If I’m not your kind of writer, then what I have to offer may not be your idea of how your book should be written. 

SO LET'S BEGIN WITH ME

Here’s what my life is like. It's quiet. Very quiet. Except in my head.

I get up early, usually around six am, and get a big cup of black tea. Then I’ll put on some music and sit down with the Bible and a couple of prayer books. 

I spend the next hour or so in reflection, reading, and prayer. How that goes is never the same. Some days I pray up a storm and every minute feels like I’m in the direct presence of God.

Other days I can’t keep my mind focused on anything much. God seems to have dropped in at someone else’s house half a mile down the street, and I end up thinking about cutting the grass. Or whether snails have teeth. Why pigs can’t look up. Or whether you’d be much better off cooking spaghetti in a long, tall pan.

(The one thing I have realised is that on the days I don’t pray even a little, writing feels like dragging a rowing boat sideways through a lake of heavy porridge.)

The next thing I do is cook a breakfast (always involves eggs, one way or another), have a coffee (super strong, black with honey), think a bit more, and take another cup upstairs to my office. 

The big window faces east, so the morning sky is bright, and I can see the planes coming in off the North Sea with all their pretty vapour trails, and the cars, and the buses, and the vans and the trees and the people ... all which recede as I sink into what I’m doing. 

Writing is freedom

I really do love my work, and I will confess, I’m a writing obsessive. Since I began writing books, I’ve loved the freedom to write for hours a day and tell stories that I couldn’t do on TV. 

I’ve always got three books on the go — one for a client, one my latest novel, and one is always the very early dreaming-and-playing-around for my next novel. 

When I get chance I tinker with song lyrics, and short stories. (Plus the one screenplay that won’t leave me alone. Colossal budget, action-adventure, steampunk fantasy, after all these years, when I really should know better).

Bouncing between all this is an amazing way of keeping fresh. The books all benefit from the energy, and all get written faster. 

It’s quite a workload, but the older I get the more I realise how precious life is, and how little time we have. 

After about five hours I surface from the world of story

When I'd done enough I’ll eat something and head out the house. One of the people who goes past my window in the morning is a friend who walks the four-mile circuit of the roads near my house. She does it in just under an hour, faster than I could run it, and she certainly gives me something to aim for. 

After this, I see friends, or family, or I head over to the church to volunteer. I’ve moved a lot of chairs in my time, but I also serve on the church council and run a small Bible study group.

It’s a quiet, peaceful life, so different from the way I used to live, when I was out in the world, tasting all the things the world had to offer, some good, some not so good.

These days I crave all kinds of peace, and calm, and honesty, and goodness.

Except in my writing!

There, I still want to deal with high drama, huge stakes, and life-changing moments.

I want to dramatise sudden shocks, surrenders, torments, rescues, great losses and immense victories.

I want to tell surprising stories, with big characters who love and suffer and battle and rage and weep and lose and betray and sacrifice and save and win, in all dimensions, in the darkest corners of this world, and sometimes in the most ethereal corners of the next. 

Look. You want a writer who can grab hold of your story and tell it in the most engaging way, whether it’s a bank raid gone wrong, your years spent as an inner-city pastor, your tour in the bomb squad in Kosovo, or a life of quiet desperation in the Outer Hebrides.

You also want someone who can capture your voice. The way that you alone talk, and the way that you alone think. 

I believe I can do this. Very well, in fact. I spent 25 years thinking about screen stories, and in my time writing and editing TV scripts as a professional dramatist, I worked on all sorts. Sci-fi, dark crime, medical drama, children’s school shows, comedy crime, urban drama, serious thrillers and period drama. 

I’ve written thousands of words of dialogue for every kind of character, from Edwardian aristocrat to homeless teenager, from police officers and medical technicians to alien warriors and sentient computers. Scenes that dramatise and hide dry exposition, all the way along to poignant scenes of pure, heightened emotion. 

I’d like you take a look at some of it. The show I did for Lynda La Plante (Trial and Retribution) was a favourite of mine, but old TV episodes aren’t so easy to track down (though IMDB will tell you what to look for). 

I might be easier to assess my range through a couple of my books. 

My first middlebrow literary novel is here; this is the one ghostwriting gig I’ve done that isn’t covered by an NDA; and I’ve nearly finished my second novel, an action-adventure about an armed police unit facing down a sniper in London around the time of the Millenium. That’ll be out soon. 

There’s even a book of weird, semi-literary almost-science-fiction short stories here if you want to test the further reaches of my imagination. 

I’m endlessly curious and I love hearing about other people’s lives. That has led me to do all sorts in my own life, and so I’ve lived all sorts of scenes, been up and down and round and about. 

These days I’ve found my place of peace, and it feels great — but I still want to feel the drama, still want to feel the pain and know the healing, still want to hear about life in all its fullness. 

Most of all, I want your readers to feel the drama too!

It doesn’t take a huge story – anyone who watches EastEnders knows what can hide inside the most simple, normal life.

The best thing for a strong story is a person with a complex character and a powerful desire. A person who battles with themself and wants something so badly they will bend the world to get it. Add someone or something that wants them to fail, and you have the full deck.

When I find people like that my story radar goes on full alert. 

If those people hire me to write their books, well, I’m a happy man. 

WHAT KIND OF CLIENT ARE YOU?

The story chemistry can pop up in the most unlikely places. 

However, there are a few essentials. 

I want to empathise with your story, and as I hear your life I want to be on your side. If I’m not, the audience will sense it, and they’ll put the book down. 

I’m an optimistic chap, so I will look for the redemption and hope in your story. 

I want to tell stories where good wins out. Stories where you battle fate, or evil, or crime, or abuse, or your beginnings in life, or a corrupt system (and maybe that battle takes you down for a while), but you come through in a better place. 

Maybe you began as out-and-out evil, but you saw the light and you came to good. 

Or you’ve seen and done amazing things that no-one else could believe.

Or you’ve been on the inside of history as the moment it turned. 

Or you’ve got theories about the world that other people think are nuts, but you’re burning up through knowing the truth and you need it to be out there. 

Or you’ve surrendered your life to God, and you want to talk about the miracles you’ve seen. (Particularly keen on these.)

Or you’ve known people who other people are curious about. (Maybe you’re one of those people yourself. Through my work in TV I’ve known a lot of celebrities, actors and musicians, and I’m always curious about them. What made you different? What drives you on this path? Where did your path divert away from the anonymous?)

Maybe you’ve fought crime. (I love a uniform police story.) Set up a major charity? Been a front-line doctor. The heroes stand out in these stories. (Yes, the TV series writer is still strong in me.)

Does any of that feel familiar? 

Have you lived anything like that? 

Do you want to tell the world how it happened? 

Well, anyway, that’s what springs to mind when it comes to my dream client.

So what about you? If you’re still interested, what can you expect from me other than my professional background and experience?

WHAT KIND OF GHOSTWRITER AM I?

I can list some of the personality-type things I bring. 

Empathy: I will listen without judgement and get fully on board with you and your world. 

Confidentiality: I sign an NDA, and no-one will ever know I am writing your book (unless you want them to). I only ask for an acknowledgement as ‘Editor’. (I urge you therefore to be as honest and open as you can be. Books that hide things don’t satisfy.)

Commitment: I work hard, and I want to do great work. I will never ‘phone it in’. That goes against everything I stand for. 

Integrity: I charge a proper rate for my work, but I’m not at all driven by money. I’ll only take a project that I believe in, and I literally can’t write a book I feel I’m faking, or I think won’t benefit the world. (As a practising Christian this is extremely important to me.)

Reliability: I do what I say I’m going to do and always deliver on time. (Habit born and forged among the hideous schedules in TV production.)

I guess there are some other things I need to say. After all, you’ve probably never heard of me before, and this would be a big project if you were to embark on it. 

Are you worried about what happens if the project goes wrong? Very early on, I’ll give you a schedule and very clear deliverables. I work month by month, and one month in advance. You never pay more than that, and the contract is written so that you can cut things off at any time with that month’s notice.

Are you worried about the demands on your time? After the initial essential interviews, which will take perhaps 12-20 hours, we can happily shift to an asynchronous mode where you send me your thoughts via voice note, video or email. That means you don’t need to fit me into your routine, you can just send me stuff when you think of it. 

Are you worried what your friends will think when you pop up with a great new book in your name? How you handle that is up to you, but all I’ve heard about so far is friends who were delighted, who felt it was time this story was told, who admired the initiative it took to get the book published.

Are you worried what you’ll do with the manuscript when it’s finished? Well, this process includes a short pitching document of one or two pages, and for an extra fee I can write a longer book proposal for you that you can shop around. (I’ve written a lot of pitching documents for multi-million TV shows over the years.)

For an extra fee I can even put it all together and package it up for you on a new publishing label you will own.

The one thing I’m not set up to do is market the book for you — but that’s no different to most traditional publishers. Many writers feel ambushed when they realise that, even with a big label behind them, after the initial honeymoon it quickly falls to them to do the social media, get on the podcasts, do the public talks, hustle book shops, get the local paper reviews. 

How does all this actually work?

The first step is for us to have an initial Zoom meeting. I’ll see if I think I can help you and we will both work out whether we’re a good fit for what could be six to eight months.

If that’s all good I’ll send you a set of deliverables, a proposed schedule, and my quote for my fee. 

Once that’s agreed and signed, then you’ll remit the deposit, and we’ll meet for our interviews. Though we can do these interviews on Zoom, I really don’t recommend it. This stage is always best done face-to-face. I work by getting to know and understand you, and, as the statistic goes, 90% or so of communication is non-verbal so being in the same room is very helpful. 

Very soon I’ll send you a deliverables schedule, which includes dates for a book outline, dates for any draft chapters, and the dates for weekly or monthly progress reports. 

Note that there will be a time when I will go comparatively ‘dark’. I’ll send you the book outline, and a sample chapter or two once they are done, so that you can make sure I’m on the right track, but after that I’ll get my head down and get on with it. 

Things get very fluid in the middle of a book, with a lot of back and forth in the words on page, so checking in every day, or sending out sample chapters every time one is drafted, isn’t ideal and will only slow things down.

I’ll be in touch every now and then for clarification, and you can always send me more thoughts and information for inclusion, but apart from that I’ll make very few demands on your time.

The next major deliverable, around four-to-five months, is the first draft of the entire book.

You’ll give me your thoughts on it, and I’ll go back and rework, sending you the second draft within a month. 

There’s one more draft after that. I’d work in your final notes, and send out to an external proof-reader (more fees for that proof-reader, but 100% worth it) and then you’ll finally have a polished, professional manuscript in your name that you can take out to the world. 

So there we are

If you’ve checked out my rates, and you're thinking all this sounds good, and you’d like to talk to me, then drop me a line, and give me a very rough idea of your project. 

Maybe we’ll click and maybe we won’t, but, at the very least, you know you’ll be speaking to a professional. 

Very best wishes, 

Philip Gladwin

Thank you for your interest!