At times I am a little uncomfortable with the term ghost-writer. It conjures up the image of an anonymous writer locked away somewhere writing on behalf of a well-known person who isn’t particularly interested in the content which will ultimately go into what will be known as their book.
Perhaps I have been a little fortunate as I’ve never been placed in this situation and I can honestly say that everyone who I have worked with have taken an extremely active part in their own personal story. Of all the people I have worked with only Horace Greasley has been physically unable to pen his own words because of his arthritic hands. However, the experience with Horace was no less rewarding as not only did the subject matter fascinate me but I sat in wonder once or twice a week at the incredible tales coming from this man’s mouth.
Do The Birds Still Sing In Hell? Was my first effort at real ghost-writing, that is to say working purely from subject interviews, tape recordings, research and notes. It was a experience which I enjoyed immensely and I think it’s fair to say that old Horace became one of my best friends. (Sadly he passed away nearly 3 years ago.) We shared the same interests and enjoyed a drink or two and I was almost lost when the project came to an end and all of a sudden I didn’t have an excuse to go and share a few beers with him on a Friday evening. I count myself very lucky that I stumbled across Horace’s story and deep down I always knew it was more than a little special. For those of you who don’t regularly read my blog, the book is being turned into a movie next year. The option agreements are all signed and in-place and it’s just a matter of keeping our fingers crossed.

Crissy Rock and her book, This Heart Within Me Burns was an altogether more different type of assignment. When I first met Crissy she had written 27,000 words by way of therapy she said. Crissy is dyslexic and needless to say her words were all over the place. She told me at the time that I wouldn’t make any sense of them but I did and I could see reading between the lines that again (Lucky me) I had stumbled on something a little special. Crissy needed to be pushed and convinced that her writing was up to standard and her story was worthy of publication. Crissy’s book became a bestseller spending 10 weeks in the Sunday Times top 10 hardback sales in 2010 and out of the 111 reviews on Amazon 106 are five stars. That sort of praise speaks for itself and I think it’s fair to say that her story portrayed her in a different light and opened a few more new doors. During her interviews for ‘I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here’ most of the producers of the show had read the book. I’m convinced it secured her place in the Jungle and she wouldn’t disagree.
Crissy was not exactly the perfect pupil and her mood swings were hard to take at first and several times I nearly walked away. However, I quickly realised that her mood swings were to be associated with the subject matter we were working on. I cannot imagine what it must be like to discuss and write about for example, the sexual abuse suffered at eight years of age at the hands of her grandfather who she loved and trusted as far back as she could remember. What's more, I think Crissy realised from an early stage that she wasn't just baring her soul to Ken Scott but inevitably to the whole book reading world. Those difficult weeks when I encouraged and cajoled her to tell it how it was were undoubtedly the most difficult.
She was unable to take me back to what she described as the 'dark side' unable even to write it down in the privacy of her own home. In the end she agreed to talk (or rather sob) into an old fashioned desk top tape recorder.
I arrived some weeks later and she announced the dastardly deed was done. She pointed to the tape recorder and said I could listen to it. As I prepared to push the play button she told me she couldn't be in the same room and wandered off into the kitchen. What followed next had the same impact on me as I imagined the policemen who listened to the infamous Brady/ Hindley tapes all those years ago. (Brady and Hindley recorded the screams of one of their victims as they tortured abused and murdered him)
Crissy, incredibly, had transported herself back to childhood. On the tape recorder I listened to the voice of a confused, hurt and frightened eight year girl. When Crissy returned some twenty minutes later I was in tears. She put her arms around me and we cried together.
What Crissy has suffered in life no one should have to undergo and less a mortal would no doubt be pushing up the daisies by now having taken their own life. And while Crissy openly admits she has an 'odd bad day' her positive outlook on life is both remarkable and inspirational. I am currently working with her again on her debut novel, Revenge Is Sweeter Than Flowing Honey.

I wrote Sherlock’s Squadron with Steve Holmes in 2010. This was yet another different approach because even though Steve knew the story of his father’s wartime exploits inside out he openly admitted that he was more of a researcher than a writer. Nevertheless I insisted that he gave it his best shot and badgered him to at least have an attempt at starting each chapter, after all he knew the story better than anybody.
And it worked. Steve would send me a few hundred words and we’d meet up after I’d read through them. Again I took copious amounts of notes and recorded our meetings and Steve supplied me with anything of a historical and technical nature. We worked well together and Sherlock’s Squadron will be published in June 2013 by John Blake Publishing. Stephen I are still great friends and I look upon him now as my researcher. We are currently working together on the book which we hope will be the new film project for Silver Line Productions. It’s a true story based on an observation by an American Marine in Afghanistan, a sort of conspiracy theory. Watch this space.

Lise Kristensen had already written her book in Norwegian when she approached me in 2009. However at just over 30,000 words she will probably openly admit that there were many things missed out. It was also written in Norwegian so I thought it best to start with a blank canvas.
I’m glad we did. Lise was a small child in Indonesia during WWII when one by one her friends started to disappear. It wasn't long after Pearl Harbor when the Japanese invaded Java and were slowly but surely rounding up the Dutch, Norwegian, French and English residents who had settled to enjoy an idyllic lifestyle on the other side of the world in a pleasant tropical climate. Young Lise's family were marched up the garden path at the point of a bayonet to be taken away on a truck and interned into the brutal regime of Japanese POW camps. Nearly seventy years on Lise painstakingly retold her horrific tale from the viewpoint of that small confused, terrified, hungry child. Lise’s book was written by referencing the initial manuscript but I managed to get so much more out of her gently persuading her to relive the real horrors she had kept out of the first book. It was difficult for her but with the help of her husband Kris we managed to get through it. The Blue Door was published by Macmillan in March of 2011.