Pinellas County Ghostwriter: I Know the Whole Peninsula

Pinellas is a skinny peninsula packed with towns, and I’ve driven most of its roads since I got here in 2013. I’m Richard Lowe, a ghostwriter based in Safety Harbor on the bay side of the county. I’ve authored 113+ books under my own name and ghostwritten 54+ more. My local clients have come mostly from Safety Harbor and Clearwater, plus Largo and St. Petersburg, and nearly every one of them wanted the same thing: a book about their life, written by somebody they could sit across a table from.

Why hire a ghostwriter in Pinellas County?

The Gulf’s on one side, with the beaches and the water that turns rough when the weather does. The calmer bay’s on the other. In between sits a chain of towns, each with its own shops and its own personality. I take road trips through the county for no better reason than to see what’s there, and I still find corners I’d never noticed. It’s building up fast, but it still rewards anybody willing to wander.

It’s also full of people who got here after the part of their life that makes the book. They built careers up north, raised families somewhere else, and retired to a county where the neighbors don’t know any of it. I wrote about that in retiring to Florida with a life behind you. A national agency will send those people a Zoom link and a stranger. I live here, and I’ll meet you for lunch.

Who have you worked with across Pinellas County?

Memoir clients, nearly all of them, and mostly older people with a story to tell. They’ve come from Safety Harbor and Clearwater more than anywhere else, and I’ve written for one client in Largo and one in St. Petersburg. Some of those stories were funny. Plenty weren’t. When a subject’s too painful, I offer to leave it out, and almost every time the client insists it goes in. Clients in their nineties aren’t unusual for me.

I’ve shown up around the county in other ways, too. I’ve spoken at the Quak Center Lifelong Learning Program at Westminster Suncoast in St. Petersburg, at the Palm Harbor library, and to a women’s group at the Safety Harbor Art and Music Center. In 2016 I was part of RealTalkers Toastmasters, which met off Ulmerton Road. I founded the Clearwater SciFi and Fantasy Critique Meetup and I’ve sat in critique groups in most of the county’s cities, most of them long gone now.

How would a Pinellas County book project work?

Wherever you are on the peninsula, it starts with a free call, and then lunch if you want one, at Poblanos Mexican Grill (2451 N McMullen Booth Rd, Clearwater; book a free call to set it up) or the Safety Harbor Resort & Spa. Working sessions happen in a reserved room at the Safety Harbor Public Library, or by phone if the drive’s a nuisance. I record every session, you get a written summary after each one, and chapters come to you one at a time so you can steer the book while I write it.

If you can’t get out easily, I’ll come to your home. That adds my travel time and expenses, and we agree on it before we start. Most memoirs take four to eight months, and your share is roughly 20 to 40 hours, almost all of it talking. The full process is in how a ghostwriting project works.

Can a Pinellas County ghostwriter handle a technical book?

Yes. Pinellas has more defense, medical-device and software companies than people expect, and a lot of retired engineers who helped build them. I spent 33 years in enterprise IT, 20 of them as Director of Computer Operations and Technical Services at Trader Joe’s. Those books don’t need dumbing down or explaining twice. The longer version is in why technical books need a ghostwriter who gets tech.

What does Pinellas County give a writer?

Good libraries and a lot of used books. I’ve written a guide to getting your book onto Pinellas library shelves, a tour of every bookstore in the county, and a piece on finding a writing group worth sitting in. If you’d like to meet the people who’ve been writing here for years, a writing group is where they are.

The whole collection, town by town, lives in my Writing in Tampa Bay hub.

Frequently asked questions about working with a Pinellas County ghostwriter

How do you start a book with a Pinellas County ghostwriter?

Book a free call below. Half an hour, no pressure, and you’ll know by the end of it whether I’m the writer for your book. If you’d like to see my work on your own story first, the Book Discovery Intensive ends with a sample chapter in your voice.

This county’s full of people whose stories are going to stop with them because nobody wrote them down. Book the call and make sure yours isn’t one of them.