What if you have this great idea for a book – you know how the story unfolds, you know who the main characters are going to be, you know roughly how long it should be, and you even have a great idea sketched out for the cover. Or maybe it’s an inspirational book you want to write, something based on the knowledge and wisdom you’ve learnt during your career. You know that by putting your thoughts down on paper, you’d not only be recognised for your abilities, but you’d have a

A memoirist really knows how to capture someone’s voice, how to create a narrative, how to ask the right questions, that sort of stuff. I’ve always managed to anticipate the next trend, to be just ahead of the curve. The same thing happened with ghostwriting. I realized that more and more books on the bestseller list were written by what we call platform authors—personalities who can bring a pre-existing audience to a book but who aren’t writers themselves, and who need someb

No one grows up thinking they are going to be a ghostwriter. Many do it because they are journalists and want some other work. I realized it was what I really wanted to do. Writing a novel was both daunting and liberating. I'd never written or studied fiction. I'd never faced the blank page, so to speak. That was the daunting part. Mark Twain was the one who said truth is stranger than fiction because fiction has to be believable. The daunting part about writing fiction is yo