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 blog 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 (which is, of course, job requisite numero uno)? Well, first off, look for the sorts of places who are looking for ghostwriters (duh!).  There are agencies that specifically advertise that they pair ghosts with clients, or as they are often called, Subject Matter Experts.
A lot of folks just take out an ad and go solo. That’s risky, since you will likely have some upfront cost and greater liability, but it certainly can be done.

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.

Fourthly (this is the fourth idea, right?), 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 …”

A book packager is sort of like an agent and sort of like a ghostwriting agency. The agent part is that they will likely represent the work when it is finished or possibly publish it themselves through their own channels. Unlike an agent, though, they may not necessarily be your literary agent, which has its upsides as well as its downs. For the ghost, the packager acts a lot like a ghostwriting agency, though, so do seek them out.
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