I fucking love to write.
I love writing novels, and short stories, and magazine articles, and, yes, I love ghostwriting memoirs. When you get a cool client, and a cool editor, and a cool agent, it's, well, cool. Book writers don't often get to be part of a team, and there's something to be said for a good group think.
This is part of the reason why I rarely turn down a gig. It's always an adventure. It could be awesome, it could be lame, it could be average, it could lead to something else, but no matter what, it'll be interesting, and it'll offer me the opportunity to get paid to write. I've been doing this forever, but it's still pretty thrilling when you A) see your name on the cover of a book, and B) get a check for said book.
So it was kind of shocking to me that I prayed I'd get fired from the Child McStar project.
I've been canned from a ghosting gig once before, by a penurious improvisational comedy troupe from Boston, who decided that they didn't want to pay the second installment of my fee after I'd written the entire first draft of their book, and boy oh boy, was I pissed. On the other hand, if Child fired me, I'd probably do a cartwheel, even though I'd walk away from the project without a damn thing. (Did I mention that I wrote Child's book proposal on spec? Stupid, stupid, stupid.)
The day after my phone call with Editor McPublisher -- the call in which she begged me to kiss and make up with Child -- Ms. McStar herself rang me up. "Okay, Ghosty, we're gonna do this. I talked Literary McAgent down to seven percent, and I'm ready to rock."
Man, I thought, Literary is desperate. I said, "Okay, but listen, if I'm going to write this book, you and I need to have a heart-to-heart."
She said, "What do you mean?"
"One-hundred percent honesty here: I'm on the fence about whether or not I want to stay on the project."
"What the fuck do you mean, you're on the fence?"
"Well, Child, first of all, you'll need to give me your direct phone number, because calling Spouse to get to you isn't an option, and I'll need some assurance that you'll make yourself available when you say you're going to, and you have to stop screaming at me, because if this book is going to happen, I need to feel like I can talk to you without getting my head chewed off. Sound good?"
I'm not exactly sure how much of that Child heard, because I'm not sure exactly when she hung up on me.
Two hours later, Literary McAgent called me with the answer to my prayers: Child McStar was going to use a different ghostwriter.
I don't know if Big House didn't accept the manuscript, or if Child couldn't find another sucker to ghost the thing for the crap money she was offering, or if she couldn't get her shit together to finish the book. All I know is that the thing was never published in the United States. There were whispers that it might come out in the U.K. or Canada, but those were whispers. I never asked Literary McAgent about it, and she never offered up any info, and that was fine with me.
As for Child McStar, aside from some bizarre legal issues, she hasn't really been heard from since. And frankly, the world is better off for it.
THE END
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