Confessions of a Ghostwriter. Andrew Crofts

      

      Confessions of a Ghostwriter

      BY ANDREW CROFTS

       The Friday Project

      An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

      77–85 Fulham Palace Road

      Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      This ebook first published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2014

      Copyright © Andrew Crofts 2014

      Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2014

      Andrew Crofts asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

      FIRST EDITION

      A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

      Source ISBN: 9780007575404

      Ebook Edition © SEP 2014 ISBN: 9780007575411

      Version: 2014-07-23

       To my wife, Susan, who I love with all my heart.

      Contents

       Title Page

       Copyright

       Dedication

      Introduction

      An eight-foot transsexual hooker in the living room

      A million books in an African warehouse

Discovering ghostwriting

The story of Stumpy

The glamour model versus the ‘arbiters of taste’

Secrets and confidentiality agreements

Glimpses of hell

That splinter of ice

Suddenly you’re history

Abused children find a voice

Sacked by a glove puppet

A debt to Dale Carnegie

The first questions a ghostwriter should ask

‘You need to come to Haiti …’

Tyrants and other interesting monsters

Lunching with Imelda Marcos

Afternoon tea with Mrs Mubarak

Filthy lucre

       Big Brother is watching and listening

       A real-life Shades of Grey

       A gift for a billionaire

       Rich men’s toys

       The soporific brothel

       An opportunist hack

       A book goes global

       Revenge can be bitter

       The Princess speaks

       Confessions of my infidelity

       How can anyone write four books a year?

       Waking up in the orphanage

       Under armed guard in Lahore

       The tentative handling of firearms

       The faulty memories of rock gods

       Soldiers’ tales

       Win a ghost of your own

       Selling your story to a magazine

       Calls from out of the blue

       I am an addict

       Evangelists of technology

       ‘Mr Harris would like to quote you …’

       A confession of conceit

       Guilt and self-doubt

       The awesome power of a tear on daytime television

       Christina Foyle, queen of all she surveyed

       A new breed of stars

       The reality of reality television stars

       A genuine talent

       A real media circus

       Culture clashes and other bad marriages

       Clubs for gentlemen and players

       A Year in Provence unleashes an avalanche

       Jim Martin’s island

       A Russian in hiding

       Education at Madame Jojo’s

       From the lips of an Iraqi child

       I love supermarket bookshelves

       Confessions from the British Library

       ‘You may just have to get a job …’

       The forgotten rules of grammar

       A forgotten weekend in academia

       A little lone wolf

       The greatest living playwright

       The selling power of celebrities

       The soap star who came to stay

       Not everyone can be Hamlet

       Discovering Jay Gatsby

       ‘The Principessa is throwing a party …’

       A black BMW behind King’s Cross

       Tales of courtesans and mistresses

       Deathbed delivery

       The mid-book blues

       Addiction to charts

       Tales from below stairs

       A confession of cowardice