I’m Richard Lowe. I write books for people who have something to say and no time to write it down, and a good amount of that work happens right here around St. Petersburg. Not “served from a distance.” Here. I work on Florida’s Gulf Coast, I meet local clients in town, and I’ve spent years pointing cameras at these streets. If you want a ghostwriter who actually knows the place you live, that’s a real thing I can offer.
Why St. Petersburg Suits a Writer
St. Pete is an art town, and it wears it honestly. They call it the Sunshine City, and somewhere along the way it became one of the great street-art cities in the country, with more than 600 murals painted across downtown after the city traded an old ban on street art for an embrace of the artists who wanted to paint it. Walk the Central Arts District along Central Avenue and the walls are a gallery. Every October the SHINE Mural Festival brings artists from around the world to add to it. I’ve spent time in these neighborhoods, and they tell you something about the place: it takes making things seriously, in a relaxed, unpretentious way. That’s exactly the atmosphere a book gets written in.
I’m a photographer as well as a writer, and St. Pete has given me no shortage of subjects: the murals, the waterfront, the Pier, and the people, who are half the reason an art town is worth photographing in the first place. The same attention that finds a photograph in an ordinary street is the attention I bring to a manuscript: noticing what matters, and framing it so a reader sees it too.
I’ve spent an afternoon at the Dalí Museum down on the waterfront, the one in the glass-bubble building, and it stays with you. It’s a beautiful place, and the thing that stuck with me most was their “Dalí Lives” exhibit: the museum used artificial intelligence to bring Salvador Dalí back, training the system on hundreds of interviews and archival films until a life-size, talking Dalí greets you from the screens, welcoming you and talking about his own work decades after his death. I spend my working life in artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and digital transformation, so standing there watching a dead surrealist resurrected by machine learning hit me differently than it might hit most visitors. A city whose marquee museum does that with AI feels like the right place for a technical writer to set up. The museum’s own director put it well: Dalí embraced science, and would have loved to work with AI.
How I Work Here
When local clients want to meet, downtown St. Pete makes it easy: a table near Beach Drive, a walk through the Central Arts District, or a coffee before a stroll past the murals. If you want the full picture, here are my ghostwriting services. That’s where a lot of books have started: over a good meal, talking through what someone actually wants to say before a single word is drafted. It’s a better way to begin a book than a phone call with a stranger three states away.
Part of what I do is help people figure out whether they need a ghostwriter at all, and I’ll tell you honestly if you don’t. Sometimes the right outcome is that someone walks away ready to write their own book. I count that a good outcome too.
My Process
Every book starts with an interview to find its shape and build a working outline. Then we go deep, anywhere from twenty to forty interviews depending on the size of the book. I serve clients throughout Pinellas County. That’s where your voice and your knowledge come out, and it’s the material everything else is built on.
I use AI tools to help structure the overview outline, which you approve before any writing starts. After that we work chapter by chapter: I outline each chapter, write it myself, and send it to you; you approve or request changes; I revise; and we go back and forth until it’s right. That’s about a week per chapter. You get revisions as we go, plus one full revision pass at the end. A 30,000-word book usually takes about four months through the writing; an 80,000-word book, seven to eight. I also work across Florida. Most of the work is remote, but for local clients, we meet here in St. Pete.
Locals Worth Knowing: Derek Donnelly
If St. Pete is a mural city, a lot of the character comes from local artists like Derek Donnelly, whose playful, imaginative pieces have become some of the most recognizable sights downtown. His work, from a T-Rex gone fishing to a raptor on a jet ski, captures the city’s quirky spirit and helped define the look of the Central Arts District. That’s a quality I respect: he took something he loved and made it big enough for other people to step inside. I also write for authors in Largo. A good book does the same thing, opening a private world up so a reader can walk around in it.
What I Actually Do
I take your ideas and your expertise and turn them into a finished book that reads as if you wrote it on your best day. You stay the author; your name goes on the cover. I’ve written more than 113+ books under my own name, including the Kindle bestseller Focus on LinkedIn, and ghostwritten over 54+ for other people.
The Technical Difference
Before I wrote books, I spent decades in information technology: data centers, systems, the demanding technical side of business. That means I can write the books most ghostwriters turn down: artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, digital transformation, machine learning, the Internet of Things. If your book lives in a technical or business world, you won’t spend the first month teaching me the basics. I already speak the language: a writer who came out of the technical field, not one faking his way into it.
Common Questions
Do I keep the rights to my book?
Yes. You keep all rights and all credit. It’s your book and your name on it. I also write for authors in Clearwater. I’m rarely on the cover, usually just acknowledged on the copyright page or in the back, if at all.
Is the book written by AI?
No. I use AI to help structure outlines, but I write every chapter myself, and you approve each one. The work that makes a book sound like you is human work.
How long will my book take?
Roughly four months for a 30,000-word book, seven to eight for an 80,000-word book, including interviews, chapter writing, and the final revision pass.
Can we meet in person?
Yes. Local clients usually meet me around downtown St. Petersburg, near Beach Drive or the Central Arts District.
What is St. Pete known for artistically?
St. Petersburg is famous for its street art, with more than 600 murals concentrated in the Central Arts District along Central Avenue and the Grand Central District just to the west. The city is also home to the Dalí Museum, known for its “Dalí Lives” exhibit that used artificial intelligence to bring the artist back to talk with visitors, along with the Chihuly Collection, the Morean Arts Center, and Florida CraftArt. St. Pete also hosts the SHINE Mural Festival each October.
Nearby and related
I work throughout the area. You might also be looking at Clearwater, just up the coast, Palm Harbor to the north, Tampa, across the bay, and the wider Pinellas County area.
Let’s Talk
If you’re in St. Petersburg or anywhere around the Pinellas peninsula and there’s a book in you that isn’t getting written, let’s meet, maybe downtown near the waterfront. The first consultation is free, and there’s no pressure. You tell me about your book; I’ll tell you honestly whether I’m the right person to write it.