Sorry to break up the ghostwriting series, but a newsflash came across my desk via my old pal Tony from Pittsburgh, along with the local follow-up.

I know I’m going to take heat for this, but I’m going to say my piece anyway. Seems that from now on I should stop calling a particular town “Andoshen,” to honor talented local writer Daryl Ponicsan, and go back to something more well-known in the coal region and more appropriate, such as “Zulu Town” or “Chendo, da fuck; 462 fuck you, fuck you.” Actually, the Zulu tribe is a very fine culture and associating their name with Chendo is an insult to them.

This formally all-white town now has a new minority. The old minority were people with an IQ in triple digits. The new minority are Hispanics.

On one of my last visits to Lantenengo County, I was informed that Chendo was having “a Mexican problem,” and did we have one down here at the Jersey shore?

No, we do not have a “Mexican problem” where I live. I can vividly recall when the influx of Hispanic men began mustering near the railroad station on the west side of Red Bank. On rainy days, neighbors would bring them umbrellas. When someone noticed they’d been standing an awfully long time without anyone offering them work, they’d bring them sandwiches. Yeah, that’s the kind of “problem” we have down the shore. There are a lot of churches on the Westside, though not as many as in Chendo, which has one on almost every corner. The difference is that the people in Red Bank seem to actually listen to the sermons.

Chendo has always been like this. I can recall driving through there before I could afford a car with air conditioning. Passing through with your widows down, you’d dread coming to a stoplight. Inevitably, a bunch of knuckle-dragging cement heads standing on the corner would shout, “You wanna fight?” And I wasn’t even Mexican.

Unlike most of the rest of the region, this is Chendo’s legacy. Yes, like many young men who grew up in the coal region, I can actually recall being pulled out of said car window by a gang of troglodytes as they flailed away at me. The fact that Louis Ramirez was stomped to death by such a gang does not surprise me. No one from Chendo would ever have the guts to take on someone in a fair fight, one-on-one. They say some of the assailants were on their “beloved football team.” I don’t know who loved them; they always sucked because football is a game that actually has to be played by rules.

The most cringe-worthy part is where “authorities claim the attack was not racially motivated.” Yeah, a crew of mouth-breathers beat a guy to death while shouting racial epitaphs and that’s not a hate crime. Only in Chendo.

There is no question in my mind that justice will not be served in a place like this. The federal government should come in to prosecute this as a civil rights case, which they have the ability to do, because no local jury will ever drop the hammer on a bunch of “local lads.” Of course, we will have to wait until the Exxon/Mobil administration is out of office and the American people retake the White House before we have a Justice Department that cares about civil rights in this country again.

Some of the more morally outraged local denizens are shouting for the death penalty. I say nay. I would rather they do life … in a Mexican prison.

Okay, so where were we? Oh yeah, ghostwriting.

Funny thing happened with my last post. I mentioned the words “Donald Trump” and I got this really weird e-mail from some Trump-related organization or URL. I guess he tracks all things Trump so he can vet it and turn it over to his lawyers or something. So, with that in mind: Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump …

‘Cause I could use the publicity.

So back to ghostwriting …

How do you get these gigs, once you have proven the capability of writing a full-length book? Well, first off, look for the sorts of places who are looking for ghostwriters (duh!).

A lot of folks just take out an ad and go solo. That’s risky.

A better idea is to reach out to your lit agent, or any lit agent, and let them know you’re available for this sort of work.

Thirdly, you can look for book packagers. Now, I was under the impression that a book packager is someone who works at the UPS Store and packages your books for you. Naw, that’s not it. A book packager is sort of an agent and yet tends to create his or her own projects. This may mean that, say, Farmer Jones has fallen down his well and is suddenly on national TV as “a nation holds its collective breath to see if this heroic rescue will be successful.” You see those folks standing around who don’t look local and have cell phones up to their ears? They’re book packagers, waiting to go up to Farmer Jones to say, “Hey, wanna write a book?”

“Uh, I cain’t write.”

“Neither can Donald Trump. We’ll give you a ghostwriter. His name is Zukus and he works cheap, but that’s not important now. Just sign this …”

Once a book packager or two gets to know you and sees that you can do the job, they’ll have all sorts of disaster victims lining up for you to write their stories.

Lastly, there are major publishers themselves. This is the top of the food chain. When a Random House reaches out to, say, Donald Trump (I can’t wait to see how many e-mails this generates), they don’t expect him to stop making money in order to write a book. They get a ghost and assign that ghost to hang with the Trumpster for a while, taking down all his witty bon mots. Since they’re already giving Trump millions for the rights to do his book, there’s usually a lot left over for the lucky ghost, so as I said, it’s a primo gig.

The thing is, there are individuals who want their story told and will pay a ghost to bring it to life. They may look for a ghost via word of mouth, a Google search, or an ad. They may find an individual or perhaps an agency (book packager who in turn finds the individual writer). But the bigger bucks are in situations where there is already a publisher or agent/book packager who wants to represent the work and they become the ghost’s boss more so than the individual.

More to come …

Kerry

Okay, I may have alluded to this at one point or another, but to supplement the millions I have made writing THE FOURTH HOUSE (Dear IRS: That was sarcasm), I work as a ghostwriter.

Needless to say, this is not the most common occupation in the world, and yet we ghosts help make the publishing world go ’round. I have no exact figures, but I would venture to opine that about 90% of all commercial non-fiction is ghosted, as well as a much smaller percentage of commercial fiction.

Don’t believe me? Do you really think that Donald Trump or Rachael Ray book in front of you was written by that celebrity? Where would they find the time? And just because a person knows how to buy and sell real estate or bake cookies, what makes you assume they also can sit down and write a book? There is no direct connection between these skills. And so, enter The Ghostwriter.

If this revelation isn’t already surprising enough, it may jolt you even more if you knew how many of us writers are out there doing this. Unless you are making J.K. Rowling money, being a novelist is not all that lucrative. Thus, instead of standing on the corner turning tricks, we resort to this.

Yes, sometimes we get co-writing or “as told to” credit, but that’s not really ghostwriting in the purest sense, although it is what most ghosts aspire to. By and large, though, we are, as the name infers, invisible, like Casper.

(The patron saint of ghostwriters)

How do we get gigs like this? Well, there are a lot of people out there who claim to be writers. What makes a writer a ghostwriter? I’d say that the primary talent is the simple ability to write an entire, engaging book. As simplistic as this sounds, many people from the world of journalism or other shorter forms of writing try to make the crossover and are unsuccessful at it.

I compare it to competitive running. A great sprinter does not automatically become a great marathoner simply because he or she decides to try it. A book is what I like to call “the long form” and if you’ve never done one before, for all your talents, you may not actually be able to do it. It is an art unto itself. On the other hand, once you have proven that you can work within the long form, you might possibly have the skills to do it again and again, only this time acting as a conduit for another person’s ideas.

More on this later.

Kerry

I think sometimes I should rename this blog, “Death and Food,” or “Food and Death,” which sounds an awful lot like a bit by comedian Eddie Izzard called “Cake or Death.”

I was back in Mountain City the other day, a rare occurrence outside of Christmas these days, for the funeral of our closest family friend. Did you ever have someone who was so close, so special to your family, that they were closer than 90% of your blood relatives? It was that sort of loss.

At the cemetery, the Odd Fellows Cemetery, a name I always chuckled at even though I have recently come to find that the Odd Fellows are quite the honorable, altruistic fraternal organization, although I know of no chapter still in existence in Mountain City, we stood in the steady rain. Rain is the most appropriate funereal weather.

As I lingered there, rained upon yet not actually wet (this is also typical of funerals — that there is usually the absence of high winds that might otherwise render umbrellas and raincoats superfluous), I looked about and saw something typical of a small town: I knew each and every name on each and every tombstone. Sure, I might not have known every single family member under each grave marker, as many were dead long before I was born, but not a single family name was foreign to me.

Classic small town American life is like this. Families plant roots and stay in the same burg for generations and become part of the landscape — literally.

To say that a funeral was sad is redundant, but perhaps saddest was looking at all of those names. Along with the oldest generations there were, unfortunately, so very many names of people who meant a lot to me, people who passed after I left Mountain City and whom I would never see again.

I’ve frequently complained to my mother that she oftentimes told me about a local passing far too late for me to be present at the proceedings. Are funerals important? I don’t know. I do know that it brings a feeling of closure, finality, and the opportunity to express respect, appreciation, and admiration for the life of the deceased. On this recent rainy day, I saw the names of so very many people who I did admire, I did appreciate, and I did respect. All gone now. All expressed as nothing more than names on stones.

Yes, I did eat food. When in Gibbsville, it is incumbent upon one to stop at the Coney Island in Yorkville (the one in downtown has started to go downhill in my humble opinion) for a cheesedog with chili and raw. They also fry their Mrs. T’s perogies which, although not very good for you, is something most of us are too lazy to do at home.

Peace and rest in peace,

Kerry

(Is it me, or does it look like this little boy is trying to mace the ex-President?)
Mom sent me a newspaper clipping from Lantenengo County the other day that I read with great enjoyment and amusement.

It seems that shortly before the Pennsylvania primary, a U.S. President visited the Region for the first time since Richard Nixon in 1968. The day was March 29 and the occasion was a St. Patrick’s Day parade in Guntown, a stone’s throw from Mountain City and one of the 11 towns and patches that comprise Mountain City Regional school district (how can you expect to beat Gibbsville in football if you don’t create a mega-district for the purpose of forming a virtual regional all-star team?).

Okay, now if you were paying really close attention, you might have wondered, “Since when is there a St. Patrick’s Day parade on March 29? Isn’t St. Patrick’s Day around two weeks earlier?” and you would have been correct. But this is the Region. Seems this year that St. Paddy’s Day fell during Holy Week (actual Holy Week, not the first week of buck season; that’s the other Holy Week). Back in the Region, our local religious leaders are powerful enough to switch around national holidays to their liking, so St. Patrick’s Day was moved two weeks ahead.

Being that President Clinton, as well as all the major candidates for President and their surrogates, had probably already marched in about a dozen other St. Patrick’s Day parades on the actual St. Patrick’s Day weekend, this opportunity was one that could not be missed, although I can imagine the telephone conversation:

“Mr. President, are you available for a St. Patrick’s Day parade in Pennsylvania on March 29?”

“But St. Patrick’s Day is over.”

“Don’t quibble. You’re the guy still claiming your wife won the Michigan primary even though everyone agreed to not even appear on the ballot.”

Thirty thousand people poured into lowly Guntown; quite a feat considering there are barely that many people residing today in Lantenengo County. “Mouche” McNelis (now there’s a coal region name for you) arranged for the President to be greeted to a heart-healthy meal of perogies, as well as the two greatest pizzas in a town known for its pizza: Centiole’s and Marrone’s. I only pray he was not asked to judge between the two because it might have required enough diplomacy to bring peace to the Middle East.

Members of my family make fun of me for talking so much about food whenever I speak about the region, but the fact that President Clinton’s culinary greetings made front and center in the local news reports of the event support the fact that back home, there is not much else that matters more than food, and I have the stomach to prove it. And like me, President Clinton was offered generous plates of carbs, carbs, and more carbs, ’cause back in the Region that’s how we like it.

Hillary carried Pennsylvania and I’m sure it had everything to do with Bill volunteering to put on an extra 10 pounds while visiting Guntown. They said that Pennsylvania was tailor made for a Clinton win and I believe that is true. Have you ever taken a good look at Obama? That man’s way too skinny to appeal to coal crackers. If he’d have come to Guntown, we could have fattened him up and made it more of a horse race.

High Technology High School in Lincroft, NJ is a pre-engineering academy. Like a lot of high schools, once a year they have Career Day. Unlike most other schools, since they are a pre-engineering academy, 99.9% of their speakers are engineers. This can be quite repetitive. I mean, how many different types of engineering is there? Furthermore, a healthy percentage of the student populace attends the school simply because it has been ranked as the number one public high school in New Jersey and the number seven public high school in the entire nation. In other words, they have no interest at all in being engineers; they just want to go to a bitchin’ good high school.

In this spirit, they apparently sent around a questionnaire to the kids, asking them what careers they wanted to hear from this year. Among them were author, policeman, astronaut, super hero, fanatical dictator, evil twin from a parallel universe, and certified public accountant. Of these, they managed to get me (author), and a policeman (state trooper). The rest could not agree to a particular calender date (the CPA was the toughest to nail down).

So there I was a few days ago — me, the state trooper, and 13 different types of engineers (the school still insists on playing to its base). In the lobby, they posted our resumes.

Now, understand that my resume came from the publicity department of my publishing house, complete with Hollywood head shot and braggadocio balderdash. When I submitted it, I assumed they would cut it down and make it match the format of all the others.

Nope.

So as you entered the building, there were these brief little bios of the engineers and the state trooper and then there was this big, blowzy pic of yours truly looking like he was running for President. The only thing missing was the anecdote about me ducking from sniper fire as I visited Bosnia. I have now come to learn that engineers rarely have publicists.
Embarrassed, I carried on. Four presentations — one every 30 minutes as kids filtered in and out. Enjoy public speaking? Like doing it extemporaneously like I do? Then try to do it 4 times in a row and not repeat your pithy anecdotes to the same group twice. Very challenging indeed. I felt like Bill Murray in “Groundhog’s Day.”

I don’t like to brag (bull!) but my crowds were healthy in size as I took on the non-engineering crowd, splitting my booty with the statey (I wonder if they call them that in Jersey as they do in the coal region?). As expected with a group this erudite, no dumb questions, just a dumb speaker (me).

Do you know what’s easier than writing? Lecturing about it. I imagine lots of people with writer’s block turn to this for a way to kill time.

Anyway, I think a good time was had by all — certainly by me. Funny, though. I have two teenaged sons and neither has read my PG-13 rated book, nor have they really insisted on it. The eldest only likes sci-fi/fantasy and the youngest is too damn busy to read fiction right now unless it is assigned for a class. Despite this, I get before their peers and talk about the darn book. Now I have some of their friends asking to read it. I’ll let you know how that all turns out.

I know all about life imitating art, but I thought that in THE FOURTH HOUSE, I made my nominal bad guy, Rick George, three-dimensional enough that he wasn’t all that bad. Now some feller from Taqua (those of you in the know know I’m spelling it right) named Rick George goes and pushes his buddy 500 feet down a coal pit.

http://www.standardspeaker.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7331&Itemid=2

Now that ain’t right.

The truth is, its hard enough walking off-road in Lantenengo County, doing all you can to avoid falling in a gypsy mine, without some guy named Rick George trying to push you off a cliff.

I gotta watch how I name my characters from here on in.

I lead a rather safe life. No commuting, no real physical labor. I don’t even have co-workers who might be apt to bring a gun to work. Almost anything can happen to me and I would still be able to sit at my computer and type.

Well, almost anything.

Exiting my car, somehow my jacket got caught on the door. I was afraid it would tear if the door closed on it, so I quickly tried to unhook the coat from the edge of the door where it got hung up. And like Maxwell Smart used to say, “Missed it by that much.”

Oh yes, I saved the jacket, but the door slammed on one of my fingertips, crushing the end of my pinky. Now my one finger looks like this:

No, not the hand holding the lollypop, but the lollypop itself. It is also black, not green, although I expect it to eventually get to green once it passes through purple.

Yes, I can manage to type without that one finger, but I have to think about it, which messes up my fingering, and furthermore, it throbs like hell when it’s pointed downward towards the keyboard.

So now all you coal miners, pro football players, cops, and firemen; you can all stop envying my job; for I, too, can get hurt and not be able to do it well.

I wonder if I can apply for Worker’s Comp …

Looking back, I notice that a number of my blog entries are eulogies or discussions of death.  Odd, I know, intermixed as they are with my more irreverent and humorous musings.  But I suppose it’s an homage to age – the older I get, the more people around me die.

I’m struggling with how to present this entry without being crass, impolite, self-centered, or disrespectful, but here goes…

Death has done a number on my career.  There are people walking around who inherited fortunes because someone died and there are people who received the opportunity of a lifetime because someone blocking their way died and they were moved up.  For me, when people die, it always seems to set me back.

Yesterday, famed motion picture director and producer Anthony Minghella, Oscar winner for “The English Patient,” director of “Cold Mountain,” and producer of “Michael Clayton,” died.  We never met, yet I mourn his loss with altruistic humanism as well as with selfishness.

Along with triumphs and despair, life is often a series of near misses.  I try not to talk much about the near misses for they remain just that.  Near misses are the basis of tears-in-beers bar talk that many often disbelieve.

At the time of his death, Mr. Minghella had been pitched, had requested, and was considering optioning THE FOURTH HOUSE for film.  To have this “hot” Academy Award winner associated with my little book would have been akin to hitting the lottery.  Forget the “B” list; this would have been a major budget, major Hollywood production with the biggest and the best names in the industry.  But alas …

This has happened to me before.  When “Fourth House” was making the rounds in New York prior to publication, the first editor to show interest in it was the legendary Leona Nevler.  Leona is famous for having discovered and shepherded “Peyton Place,” which, for those of you too young to remember, was the Harry Potter/DaVinci Code/biggest selling book of its era.  No sooner had she expressed her enthusiasm in acquiring “Fourth House” than she, too, passed away.  Luckily, I was blessed with the equally illustrious Carole Baron who took a like interest in acquiring and editing me.

About ten years ago, I was running all over Broadway looking for someone to produce my musical, “The Honeymooners,” based upon the famed TV sitcom.  David Merrick, for whom the word “legendary” is too small, read it and requested a staged reading – a trial performance, as it may.  Merrick, quite simply, was Broadway’s single most famous producer EVER.  “Mame”, “Hello Dolly”, “Carnival!”, Oliver!”, “Stop the World - I Want to Get Off”, “I Do! I Do!”, “Promises, Promises”, “Gypsy” – the list is simply endless.

I put the staged reading into rehearsal.  Mr. Merrick died.  We performed anyway.  The project lays stillborn — as I’ve referred to it: “The Greatest Musical No One’s Ever Heard”.

And so, again, death visits me from a distance.

Peace … and rest in peace,

Kerry

Just got back from a visit to speak before a creative writing class at Monsignor Donovan High School in Toms River, NJ. It was a pleasure to spend about an hour and a half with Mrs. Buechner’s class, which consisted of about 30 kids and my old pal, Harold Frazee, the world’s greatest musical director.

The toughest thing about speaking before any group of students is hoping that they are all there because they want to be, not because they have to be, but this crew really seemed to be into it, to my great relief. The questions were excellent and thought-provoking, except for one from my pal Harry (”Is there nepotism in publishing?” I mean, sheesh, isn’t there nepotism everywhere??). Outside of that, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if a few of the people in that room might be seeing their names in print someday.

It’s strange, but I actually enjoy public speaking. Somewhere I read that it is the single most common fear among people. I don’t get that. I’m far more terrified of going to all-you-can-eat buffets that don’t label their food than public speaking. I mean, I’ve never had to spit out a microphone …