The Novel You’ve Been Carrying Around in Your Head
Novels, novellas, and short fiction for writers with a story they can’t get out of their head and a calendar that won’t make room to write it.
The Novel Gets Written. You Stay in Your Day Job.
Most of my fiction clients arrive with a story that’s been with them for years. The opening chapter exists in their head. The ending exists in their head. What’s between isn’t on the page because life keeps winning the calendar fight. The novel waits while careers, kids, and obligations take priority.
The work starts with interviews. You talk through the story you want to tell: the characters, the world, the plot, the questions the book is really asking, the parts you’ve thought through and the parts you haven’t. From those recordings, I write the chapters and send them for review. You read each one, push back where the voice or direction isn’t right, and request changes. The novel develops in real time, with course corrections built into the process.
By the end, you have a manuscript that reads like you imagined it but better, because the craft work is done by someone who writes fiction professionally. The Peacekeeper series, the Victorian reimaginings, the other 23+ published novels — these aren’t side projects. Fiction craft is the work I came up doing.
What Kind of Fiction Work I Take On
Most fiction projects fall into one of a few patterns. Full novels written from concept, where you have the story but not the manuscript. Novella-length works for series prequels or standalone pieces. Short story collections built around a connecting theme. Series continuations where you have an established voice or world and need additional books. And the most common arrival: the partial manuscript that stalled at chapter eight and has been sitting in a drawer for three years.
Genre doesn’t constrain the work. I’ve written across thriller, science fiction, romance, literary fiction, and historical fiction. My own published novels skew toward science fiction and historical reimaginings, but the craft work translates. A well-paced thriller and a well-paced romance have more in common structurally than either has with a poorly-paced version of itself.
Why Writers Hire Me
Clarify Your Story
Most fiction prospects arrive with the story still scattered. A few characters, a setting, a vague plot, an ending that’s strong but a middle that hasn’t been figured out. The first interviews are where we work out what the book actually is. By the end of the structure phase, the story has an outline, the protagonist has a real arc, and the questions the book is asking are clear.
Build Memorable Characters
Characters are what readers remember. They’re also where most amateur fiction fails — flat protagonists, cartoon villains, side characters who exist only to deliver exposition. The craft work is making each character feel like a real person with their own logic, contradictions, and interior life. We figure out who your characters are in interviews, then I write them on the page so they read as people, not types.
Structure the Plot
Plot structure is where most novels lose readers. Either the first act drags, the middle sags, the ending fizzles, or the whole thing feels like events strung together without driving forward. Professional fiction has a structure that works underneath the surface of the prose, invisible to readers but doing the work of keeping pages turning. That structure is what we build in the planning phase, before the writing starts.
Write with Your Voice
The novel sounds like you because we capture how you actually talk and tell stories in interviews. The phrasing patterns. The way you build to a point. The kind of sentences you’d write and the kind you wouldn’t. By the time the chapters are drafted, the voice is yours. The polish is what separates “you at your best” from “you under deadline pressure trying to also do your day job.”
Your Story Deserves to Be Told — Fully, Fearlessly, and in Your Voice
Writing a novel isn’t just about getting words on a page—it’s about capturing the heart of your story. Whether you have a fully formed idea or just the spark of a character or scene, I help you turn that vision into a complete, compelling novel. With a process built on collaboration, discretion, and professional storytelling craft, we’ll bring your fiction to life—without losing your voice or diluting your intent.
The Novel in Your Head Is Better Than the One on Your Page
Most writers carry a fuller version of their novel in their head than what they’ve managed to put on paper. The story is more vivid in imagination than on the page. The characters are more dimensional in your head than in your draft. The scenes you’ve replayed mentally a hundred times have details that never made it into chapter four because chapter four is unfinished.
The work I do is closing that gap. The novel in your head becomes the novel on the page, because I have time to write it and the craft to make it work. The interviews capture what you’ve been imagining. The drafts come back close enough to your vision that course corrections feel like tuning rather than reconstruction. By the end, the manuscript reads like the version that’s been living in your head for years, except now other people can read it too.
This is the project that’s been sitting at the bottom of your task list for too long. The book that, if you were honest, you know isn’t going to get written by you in the next two years on your current schedule. Let’s get it done.
✍️ Take a Concept All the Way to Manuscript
You have the story in your head. The interviews capture it. The drafting work delivers it. The novel ends up on the page in your voice, structured cleanly, paced for actual readers. The journey from “I have an idea” to “I have a finished manuscript” gets done.
🎭 Translate Imagination Into Craft
Your imagination is the irreplaceable part. The craft work (structure, pacing, dialogue, prose) is the part that can be done by someone who’s spent thousands of hours doing it. Your job is staying imaginative. My job is putting the imagination on the page in a form readers will actually read.
📖 Finish What You Started
About a third of my fiction clients arrive with a stalled manuscript. Some have a strong opening that lost its way around chapter eight. Some have a strong middle but couldn’t figure out the ending. Some have three completed acts and the structural problems only an outside read can see. The work is meeting your manuscript where it actually is and getting it to a finished, publishable place.
How the Work Actually Goes
The process is structured and the timeline is real. Most fiction projects take three to six months from first interview to final manuscript, depending on length, complexity, and your availability. Longer or more complex novels run longer. Series work runs longer still. The discovery call covers what your project actually needs, not a template timeline that doesn’t fit your work.
The work breaks into clear phases. We start with structured interviews where you talk through the story, the characters, the world, the plot, the questions the book is asking. From those recordings, I write the chapters in your voice. You read each chapter as it’s drafted and direct revisions. By chapter three or four, you know whether the voice is right and whether the direction is working. Course corrections happen early, when they’re cheap.
The result is a manuscript that reads like the novel that’s been in your head, written with the craft skills of someone who writes fiction professionally. Then we figure out next steps: self-publishing, traditional publishing queries, audiobook adaptation, series planning, or just the satisfaction of finally having the finished thing. Different writers want different things from the finished manuscript. That part is yours to decide.
Discovery & Listening
Story Development
Ghostwriting
Final Manuscript
About Richard Lowe
Richard Lowe is a professional ghostwriter and bestselling author. He has authored 113+ books and ghostwritten 54+ more for executives, founders, coaches, and public figures. His clients have used their books to raise over $30 million in venture capital, land a TEDx invitation, and secure deals with traditional publishers. His own book How to Manage a Consulting Project was used as required reading in a course at Purdue University's Krannert School of Management.
His current lead book, The Ghostwriting Advantage, is the comprehensive guide to hiring a ghostwriter. He also authored the bestselling Focus on LinkedIn and the publishing-journey trilogy: Make a Living as a Self-Published Author, Publish Your Book, and Sell Your Books. He served as Technical Editor and Contributing Author on Cyberheist, the cybersecurity book by KnowBe4 founder Stu Sjouwerman. His ongoing series include Enemies of You (nonfiction cultural commentary) and the Victorian fiction series — contemporary reimaginings of classic Victorian science fiction by Jules Verne and H.G. Wells.
Before becoming a full-time ghostwriter, Richard spent 33 years in enterprise technology, including 20 years as Director of Computer Operations at Trader Joe's, where he managed infrastructure across 474+ stores. He hosts three interview podcasts — Leaders and Their Stories, Author Talks, and Conversations With Influencers — totaling 98 episodes, and has appeared as a guest on 100+ podcasts including The Chris Voss Show.
Want to explore all my ghostwriting insights? Visit the Ultimate Ghostwriting hub.
Based in Clearwater, Florida, serving Tampa, St. Petersburg, Palm Harbor, Largo, Safety Harbor, Pinellas and Polk counties, all of Florida, and authors everywhere remotely.
Straight Answers to Real Hesitations
Fiction clients have a particular set of doubts. Here they are, answered straight.
“If someone else writes it, it isn’t my novel.”
The world, the characters, the story you have carried for years — those are the novel, and they are yours. What I bring is craft: structure, pacing, prose, the ten thousand hours of technique that turn a vision into a book people cannot put down. You are in every decision: outlines, chapter reviews, character choices. Doris carried her story in notebooks for decades; the published novel is hers in every way that matters, and she will tell you so. Read the full answer: Will I Lose Control of My Own Book? »
“Do you actually know my genre?”
Forty-five years writing science fiction, plus published work in fantasy, horror, thrillers, dark comedy, romance, and young adult. I have also written craft handbooks on plot, character, dialogue, and world-building. If your genre is outside what I do well, I will tell you on the first call — taking a project I cannot deliver hurts me more than it hurts you. Read more: Fiction Craft Across Genres »
“It won’t sound like me.”
This is the most common fear and the most fixable. The book is built from recorded interviews — your stories, your phrasing, your judgment — and you review every chapter as it is written, correcting anything that misses your thinking. Early samples get tuned until the voice is right, before the bulk of the writing happens. By the end, readers who know you recognize you on the page. That is the entire craft of this work, and after 54+ ghostwritten books, it is the part I am best at. Read more: How a Ghostwriter Captures Your Voice »
“Why not just have AI write it?”
Try it and read the result out loud — that is usually answer enough. AI produces competent generic text; it cannot interview you, notice the story you undersold, challenge a weak chapter, or carry a voice across 60,000 words. I use AI where it genuinely helps and wrote a book about exactly that boundary. A book that sounds like everyone else’s actively hurts an authority position. The value was never typing speed; it is judgment. Read the full answer: Can AI Write Your Book? »
“That’s a lot of money for a book.”
It is. A professionally ghostwritten book runs $15,000 to $60,000 here, with budget options starting at $7,597, and I will not pretend that is casual spending. Here is the honest frame: the 2024 Business Book ROI study found most business books return their investment through clients, speaking, and authority pricing, and my clients have used their books to raise venture capital, land TEDx stages, and fill coaching programs. If a book is a vanity purchase for you, do not buy one. If it is a business asset, price it like one. And if you want certainty before committing: the Book Discovery Intensive is $4,000 for ten hours of strategy, a full book plan, and a sample chapter in your voice — credited in full toward the engagement if you proceed within sixty days. Read more: What Ghostwriting Costs and Why »
“What if I hate the draft?”
Then we fix it, and the process is designed so it never gets that far. You see samples early, chapters as they are finished, and revisions are part of the engagement, not an upsell. The failure mode you are imagining — a finished manuscript that misses — comes from ghostwriters who disappear for six months and return with a surprise. I do not work that way, and the chapter-by-chapter review is why. If you want proof before the full commitment, the Book Discovery Intensive delivers a 2,000-word sample chapter in your voice for $4,000, credited toward the engagement — you judge the writing before you buy the book. Read more: Will I Lose Control of My Own Book? »
Go Deeper on Any of These
Will I lose control of my own book?
Some prospects arrive with this exact bruise from a previous writer who treated the outline as their territory. The full article maps every control point of a professional engagement: work-for-hire copyright that makes the book yours outright, the five approval gates from strategy through final sign-off, and the working rule that keeps candid professional pushback from ever becoming a grab for the wheel, because every disagreement resolves in your favor. Read the full answer »
Is my story actually worth a book?
Underneath the price and time objections sits the quiet one almost nobody voices: who am I to take up two hundred pages? The full article gives the honest evaluation criteria, none of which involve fame, explains why the people who ask this question overwhelmingly have book-worthy stories while the ones who never ask often do not, and covers the rare cases where the honest answer really is not yet, and what that diagnosis means. Read the full answer »
Will my ghostwriter secretly use AI on my book?
It is happening across the industry: mills charge professional rates, feed your questionnaire into a language model, and pocket the difference, and the clients who hired them paid for months of craft and received a weekend of editing. The protection is structural, not hopeful. There are four things to demand from any ghostwriter before signing, starting with an AI policy written into the contract, and my own policy is published in plain terms: your book is written by me, AI serves as a checking tool only, and your material never trains anything. Read the full answer »
I have started my book three times. Why would this work?
Three attempts feels like a verdict about you. It is not, and the evidence says the opposite: abandoned manuscripts are the debris of motivated people hitting structural obstacles, almost never discipline failures. The full article names the four mechanical reasons books stall, why attempt four run the same way would land in the same drawer, and the two professional routes from stalled to finished, along with what your existing drafts are actually worth to the process. Read the full answer »
How do I vet a ghostwriter when NDAs hide everything?
The better a ghostwriter is at the job, the less evidence they can show you, and the scam operations exploit that gap deliberately, with fake writer profiles claiming the same unverifiable bestsellers real writers cannot prove. So you vet around the NDA wall instead of through it. The full article walks through what cannot be faked, the writer’s own published books, years of public history, named case studies, the questions only working writers can answer, and the red flags that should end a conversation on the spot. Read the full answer »
What happens after the manuscript is done?
A manuscript is not a book; between the two sit editing, cover design, formatting, the publishing path, and launch, and a contract that ends at delivery ends at the moment you need the next map. The full article lays out the honest anatomy of what comes after the writing, how my engagements handle the handoff, why the publishing conversation happens during strategy rather than at the end, and the one question that instantly separates working writers from mills. Read the full answer »
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need a fully developed idea to start?
Nope. Some clients come with a full outline and detailed character bios. Others have just a protagonist, a single scene, or a question they want the book to answer. The interview process builds whatever you have into a complete structure with plot, characters, pacing, and ending all worked out before drafting begins. If you arrive with an outline, we pressure-test it for structural problems first. If you arrive with a fragment, the first few interviews develop it into a working outline you approve before any chapters get written.
Will the book sound like me—or like you?
The voice gets worked out near the start of the project. The first interviews are partly about content and partly about how you actually talk and think. The first one or two chapters come back to you written in what I read as your voice. If something is off, you tell me what’s wrong and the next pass corrects it. We iterate on the early chapters until you read a draft and say it sounds like you. After that, the rest of the book gets written in the voice you’ve already approved.
How long does it take to write a fiction novel?
Most fiction projects run three to six months from first interview to final manuscript. Shorter or simpler novels finish at the faster end. Longer or more complex novels take longer. Series work runs longer still, since each book builds on the last. Your availability matters too. If you can do interviews weekly and turn around chapter reviews quickly, the project moves faster. If interview scheduling or review time is limited, the timeline extends. The discovery call is where we put a realistic estimate against your specific project rather than quoting a template number.
Do I own all the rights to the book?
Yes. The arrangement is work-for-hire, which means you are the sole copyright holder the moment the manuscript is delivered. You can publish it under your name, sell it, license film or audio rights, adapt it into a series, or do nothing at all with it. I have no claim on royalties, no claim on derivative rights, no claim on future earnings from anything you do with the book. The contract spells this out in writing before any work begins, so there is no ambiguity later about ownership, credit, or future income.
Can I be involved in the writing process?
Yes. Some clients review drafts chapter by chapter as the writing happens. They read each chapter within a week of delivery, send notes, and redirect voice or pacing if something feels off. Others prefer to stay focused on the big picture between interview sessions and read the manuscript in larger chunks of five or six chapters at a time. Either approach works. The early chapters are where most of the calibration happens. By chapter three or four you’ll know whether the voice is right, and corrections at that stage are cheap. By the time the full manuscript is done, the voice and direction have been confirmed all the way through.
Do you help with publishing?
Yes, in several ways. Some clients self-publish and want guidance on cover design, formatting, distribution, and launch strategy. Others want to query traditional publishers and need a manuscript that holds up to professional review plus help with the query letter and synopsis. Some plan an audiobook from the start and want the manuscript prepared with narration in mind. I’ve personally published over a hundred books through self-publishing and small-press routes, so the territory is familiar. The publishing path gets discussed during the discovery call and refined as the manuscript develops.
Is this confidential?
Yes. A nondisclosure agreement covers the project from start to finish. Your name appears on the book as sole author. Mine does not appear anywhere unless you decide to acknowledge me. I do not list clients on my website or in marketing without explicit written permission. If a prospective client asks for references, I will not name you unless you have already authorized me to use you as a reference. The default position on every client is silence, and that holds during the project, after delivery, and indefinitely afterward.
What genres do you write?
I write across multiple genres. My own fiction includes science fiction (the Peacekeeper series) and historical fiction (the Victorian series). I have ghostwritten in literary fiction, thrillers, mysteries, contemporary romance, and speculative fiction for clients. If your project falls in a genre I don’t have strong experience in, I will say so on the discovery call rather than take the project on. Some genres benefit from a writer who knows the conventions deeply, and matching that to your project matters more than booking the work.
More questions? See the full Fiction Writing FAQ.
Client Testimonials for Richard Lowe
Fiction Writing Library
Fifty-plus articles on fiction craft live on this site, written from 45 years of building worlds and the novels published under my own name. A selection:
- ✓︎ How to Write a Novel: From Concept to Finished Manuscript
- ✓︎ Ghostwriting Science Fiction: Why It Is Different
- ✓︎ Writing Young Adult Fiction
- ✓︎ Ghostwriting Comics and Graphic Novels
- ✓︎ Character Development: An 8-Step Guide
- ✓︎ Psychology-First Character Development
- ✓︎ Writing Good Dialogue: Psychology First
- ✓︎ Subtext in Fiction: What Characters Really Mean
- ✓︎ Fantasy World Building: Worlds That Work
- ✓︎ World Building: Geography, Culture, and Story
- ✓︎ Plot vs. Character-Driven Stories
- ✓︎ Plotter vs. Pantser
- ✓︎ Point of View in Fiction
- ✓︎ Conflict in Writing: How Tension Drives Story
- ✓︎ Writing Character Deaths That Matter
Questions about how fiction ghostwriting works? The Fiction Writing FAQ covers process, genres, and what to expect.
Selected Fiction Projects
A selection of fiction I’ve written or contributed to. Some are my own published work, including the Peacekeeper science fiction series and the Victorian reimaginings of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. Others are client projects, ghostwritten under their names. The mix is intentional. I take craft seriously enough to do the work for my own books and the work for yours.
Talk With Richard About Your Novel
Ready to talk about your novel? Book a discovery call. We’ll spend 30 minutes on what you’re writing, what you’ve already tried, and whether the work we’d do together is the right fit. No pitch. No pressure. If we’re not a match, you’ll leave with a clearer sense of what kind of help your project actually needs.