Updated May 2026 to reflect current data. Original recording: 2025.

Richard Lowe (The Writing King) joins Bhawna Sharma on PodQuest for a fast, wide-ranging conversation about reinvention. Richard talks about walking away from a stable corporate job to become a ghostwriter, the $25,000 first week that silenced the doubters, the FBI informant whose book he refused to write, ghostwriting science fiction for a triple-platinum rock star, eight years of throwing dancer parties as a performance photographer, a hurricane that left an alligator on his porch and a bobcat in his tree, and the through line that ties it all together: capturing a person’s essence, whether through a camera or on the page.

PodQuest is hosted by Bhawna Sharma, who interviews guests with compelling reinvention stories.

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Interview

Bhawna Sharma: Welcome back to another episode of PodQuest, where we take great sessions with great guests. Today we have a guest who proves that life is all about rewriting your own story, literally. From leading computer operations at Trader Joe’s to throwing a dancer’s birthday bash and moving to Florida, he flipped the script on his life in the most epic way. Now he’s a premium ghostwriter, helping people bring their deepest stories to life. Let’s welcome the man who turned words into legacies, Richard Lowe.

Richard: Thank you for having me.

Bhawna: You left a stable job at Trader Joe’s to become a ghostwriter. What was the craziest reaction you got when you told people about your plan?

“You’re Crazy”: Quitting for a $25,000 First Week

Richard: Well, it was precisely that. You’re crazy. I moved to Florida and got a job for a ghostwriting company and wasn’t making anywhere near enough money. I was basically working for pennies, and decided to leave and start my own company. My new boss told me, you can’t make it, you won’t be able to find the clients, blah, blah, blah. So I quit that job. And within three days, I had $25,000 worth of books to write. Then it was all over. I was just busy writing and writing, finding clients and writing.

Bhawna: Did you ever think of a plan B at that time, if it wouldn’t work?

No Plan B

Richard: Well, I had some money in the bank, so I had enough to survive for a couple of years. But I don’t believe in plan Bs. You focus on plan A and you just don’t fail.

Bhawna: So what’s the weirdest or most unexpected book topic you’ve ever been asked to write about?

The FBI Informant Who Wanted Names

Richard: The most unexpected, and I didn’t take this book, was a confidential informant for the FBI. He basically got into the mafia to find out information about them, and he wanted me to write a book that named names. And these are mafia guys. On the other side was the FBI. I decided real fast, I can’t spend any money if I have a bullet in my brain. And I told him that. He said, well, I’ll protect you, blah, blah, blah. And I said, you’re writing a book naming names, you’re not going to protect me for two seconds. So I turned that book down.

Bhawna: So it was like a crazy movie story.

Richard: It was a crazy story. He did a lot of interesting things with drug dealers and cartels, and I was like, no way I’m getting involved in this.

Bhawna: You also help people tell their deepest stories. Ever had an interview where you thought, wow, this could be a movie?

Stories That Could Be Movies

Richard: Oh yeah, that happens all the time. I’ve written a science fiction novel for a rock star that could have easily been a movie. I’ve written several autobiographies that could easily be movies. I obviously can’t go into details because they’re all in confidentiality agreements. But there are times when I’ve actually said, you need to make this into a movie. They never did yet, but maybe somebody will.

Bhawna: Do you love fiction or fantasy?

Twelve Genres and a Love of Science Fiction

Richard: I like science fiction and fantasy. One of my goals for myself is to write one book in each of 12 different genres: science fiction, fantasy, romance, westerns, and so on.

Bhawna: And what’s your favorite genre?

Richard: Science fiction. That’s the one. I’ve written one for a client and one for me, plus a bunch of short stories. That’s probably the favorite.

Bhawna: As a ghostwriter, your name isn’t on the book. Does it ever make you want to scream, hey, I wrote that, at the bookstore?

The $30 Million Book With Someone Else’s Name

Richard: The only time I was really sad that my name wasn’t on the book was when the book wound up bringing in $30 million. I was like, I would have liked a piece of that. But I got paid up front, so whatever.

Bhawna: If you had to ghostwrite a book for your past self from 13 years ago, what would the title be?

Richard: Unexpected Journey. It was definitely a strange journey.

Bhawna: And how would the story go?

The Grandfather at 17

Richard: Well, I’d actually start earlier than that. When I was 17, I wanted to learn about my grandfather. Nobody would talk to him. He was kind of introverted and a little cranky. So I interviewed him and wound up writing a short book about him. He was in World War II on the Yangtze River Patrol and was captured by the Japanese on Corregidor in the Philippines. Then he was in the Bataan Death March, where 10,000 people were marched across Bataan and half of them died.

Bhawna: So did he also learn the language and culture there?

Richard: No, he was in a POW camp for four years. Saw people being tortured. So I got to learn about my grandfather and realized I was interviewing a hero. That was my first book at 17 years old. And then I had to make a living, raise a family, all that. And finally, when I left Trader Joe’s many years later, I said, I’ve always wanted to write, let’s just go try and do that.

Bhawna: What was your job like at Trader Joe’s?

Running the Computer Department at Trader Joe’s

Richard: I was the computer operations director, so I ran the computer department for the corporate side, not the store side. I had a large staff and probably four or five thousand computers I was responsible for. I was responsible for the accounting applications, HR, payroll, disaster recovery, cybersecurity, basically everything in the corporate office except the network. So that was a big job, and it was very stressful. I breathed a big sigh of relief when I finally walked out the door.

Bhawna: Was it a toxic environment?

Richard: It was a typical corporate environment, which tends to be tough on people who are creative and don’t necessarily fit the mold. There wasn’t anything horrible about it. But I was on call all the time, 24/7. I worked Christmas, I worked New Year’s, I worked my birthday. So that’s the way the job was. I didn’t think it was toxic at the time, let’s put it that way.

Bhawna: Was writing always your passion, or did you realize it later?

The Introvert Who Had to Learn Marketing

Richard: It was always something I liked to do. I always took the writing projects through my career that nobody else wanted, usually technical stuff. And it was always in the back of my mind that I should do this when I retire. When the opportunity came, I had some money to last a few years, so I said, okay, I can do this. It turned out to be harder than I thought, because I forgot about one thing: you have to market yourself, sell yourself. And I tend to be introverted. So that got in the way, and it took me a while to get over it. Now I finally understand how to market myself, at least to a certain extent. And I’m not really shy or introverted anymore, because you can’t be.

Bhawna: A birthday party with over 100 dancer friends. Be honest, how many were actually invited, and how many just heard about the party and showed up?

Eight Years of Dancer Parties

Richard: Well, I was a photographer, mostly of dancers, and I had a birthday party every year for eight years that they all came to. The first one was in a pirate shop, and I had probably 40 dancers come. The last one was my going-away party when I moved to Florida, and I had 260 dancers come over two days at two different places, one in a large bar with a stage, and the other a hall I rented where 150 dancers danced. That was fun. I invited them, they brought their friends along, and we had a good time. Then I went to all their shows and photographed them. I photographed 1,200 shows.

Bhawna: As a photographer, what’s the first moment that made you realize you were good at this?

Becoming the Renaissance Faire Photographer

Richard: The first thing that made me realize it was when I was photographing a show, belly dancers at a Renaissance faire, and the head dancer came up and invited me to sit in the front row center because they really liked my pictures. They gave me a reserved seat at every show after that. Her name was Marjani, and she’s a good friend. She’s got a bone through her nose and all kinds of tattoos and piercings. I was super conservative then, so for a while she scared the hell out of me. But we became really good friends, and I even got tattoos after a while.

Bhawna: Were there any stereotypes in your mind about tattooed people?

Richard: From my upbringing, that tattoos were just wrong and people who did it weren’t right in the head, maybe. That was probably a stereotype, but I outgrew it pretty quick.

Bhawna: What’s the most Florida-man moment you’ve witnessed?

A Florida Hurricane, an Alligator, and a Bobcat

Richard: When we had the hurricane this last year, there were alligators on my porch and a bobcat in the tree, just yards from me, looking at me like, can you help me down? I’m like, you’re a bobcat, you can stay up there. I’m not going to help a bobcat down a tree.

Bhawna: Then what happened?

Richard: The water receded, the hurricane stopped, and they all went their various directions. I stayed in the house because I wasn’t going to go fight alligators. Have you ever seen an alligator? They’re pretty fierce.

Bhawna: Did you take a picture of that moment?

Richard: It was in the middle of a hurricane. I didn’t even think about it.

Bhawna: From leading computer operations to ghostwriting, what’s the biggest skill you had to unlearn or relearn?

Richard: The biggest issue was introversion and shyness. The skill is learning how to market, how to present myself in a way that doesn’t seem arrogant, that isn’t arrogant, but is real. It’s arrogant to say I’m the best ghostwriter in the world. First of all, it’s probably wrong, there are better ones than me. But you want to say that I’m very good without saying I’m very good, necessarily. Coming up with that skill, for somebody who, I mean, there have been times when I haven’t talked to a single person in months. The pandemic came and they locked us down, and I’m like, okay, fine, I’m in my house, I don’t care. So that was the hardest skill to learn. I didn’t relearn it, I had to learn it. And I’m learning new stuff about it every day. Now I’m doing these podcasts, and I could never have done this before.

Bhawna: What’s the one skill that makes you a good writer?

What Makes a Ghostwriter Better Than AI

Richard: The ability to capture the emotions of my client. That’s what I do. That’s what makes it better than AI. AI can put facts down. It can write a pretty crappy story, but it doesn’t get a person’s heart. I take their soul, their beliefs, their emotions, and I write that. So even if we’re writing a business book, I have to make it interesting, and I want to put them into the business book.

Bhawna: Which was the best project of your life?

The Two Projects That Meant the Most

Richard: There are probably two. The first was at Trader Joe’s, where I led the digital transformation project. They went from everything on paper and these old 1960s NCR machines to computers, and I was one of the leaders of that. That was very fulfilling because it really wasn’t being done at the time, it was the very beginnings.

The other was a novel for a woman in her seventies named Doris, who wanted a lifetime of handwritten dreams turned into fiction. We made it happen, it is on Amazon as Gators in the Soup, and the day I handed her the paperback is one of the moments that told me I was in the right profession.

Bhawna: How long did that book take?

Richard: About 15 months. But I never work on one project at a time, usually six or seven. That is the part people miss about a working ghostwriter: the books run in parallel, which is how the economics actually hold together.

Bhawna: There’s a belief that writers don’t get paid much. Is it true?

Do Writers Get Paid? And Will AI Replace Them?

Richard: No. A writer can get paid like any other job, based on their experience, skill set, and how well they present themselves. We often charge by the word. If you walk in thinking I’m worth a penny a word, you’re going to get paid a penny a word. If you walk in knowing you’re worth $2 a word, you may very well get it. That confidence is what gets you clients. But you can’t short-circuit it with AI. A lot of writers say, oh, write with AI and they’ll never know. Well, they know. I can look at something generated by AI and tell you within seconds, that’s AI. I just did that for somebody. He showed me his book, all proud, and I said, no, you wrote that with AI.

Bhawna: Do you think AI will become a professional writer in the upcoming years?

Richard: No, because it can’t capture emotion. It’s not a person. It can capture patterns, logic, thought ideas, but it can’t capture the emotions and experiences of a person very well.

Bhawna: How do you get new clients? Your own platforms, freelancing platforms, or your offline network?

Building a Network That Works

Richard: All of those. I’ve got an offline network and a very large online network, large meaning they’re in my ideal audience. That’s very important when you’re building a network. A lot of people just add anybody who says they want to join. But what you want is to go for, who’s your client? My client tends to be C-level executives, CEO, CTO, and coaches. So those are the people in my network. If you just add anybody, it’s pretty useless. You have to work it, talk to these people once in a while, build them up, become friends with them to a certain extent, or they’re not going to be helpful to you and you’re not going to be helpful to them. The key is you have to be helpful to them, too.

Bhawna: Do you help with corporate writing too?

Richard: Yeah, I do a little bit of everything. It’s usually white papers and case studies, award submissions, website design, copywriting. I do a lot of case studies for companies.

Bhawna: You’re a photographer too. If you had to describe ghostwriting as a type of photography, what would it be? Portrait, documentary, or something totally unexpected?

Ghostwriting as Performance Photography

Richard: I used to do mostly performance photography, and that’s kind of what ghostwriting is. You’re capturing somebody’s performance in life. So if somebody comes to me wanting a coaching book or a leadership book, I’m capturing them, their heart. That’s what I used to do with the photography. That’s what the dancers and models, even a couple of supermodels, really liked: I got the essence of them on camera. And that’s what I do with ghostwriting. I get the person’s essence, related to the subject, into the book. That’s a tough thing to do, and that’s what the high-end ghostwriters do. That’s why they get paid more money, because they can capture the person’s soul.

Bhawna: What do you think is the best masterpiece made to date? Any favorite type of book?

Favorite Books and Authors

Richard: I would say Lord of the Rings is a masterpiece. The Godfather is another, because they’re both very well plotted.

Bhawna: Are you also a fan of Harry Potter?

Richard: No, it’s just not my style. The books are fine, they’re just not the kind I like.

Bhawna: Who are your favorite authors, your inspiration?

Richard: Isaac Asimov, he wrote 500 books and they’re really excellent science fiction. Mike Resnick, you probably haven’t heard of him. J.R.R. Tolkien. And whoever wrote Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling, I respect her a lot. And R.L. Stine, the guy who wrote all the Goosebumps books. He wrote a book about how to write a young adult book, and I used that to write a young adult book. There’s a very special technique to writing books for children and young adults, and he wrote it up and told you how to do it. So I wrote a book for young adults about how to avoid the dangers of the internet. That went over very well.

Bhawna: Lastly, tell us some do’s and don’ts that new writers should follow.

Do’s and Don’ts for New Writers

Richard: The do’s: first, learn to write in whatever language you’re writing and understand the syntax, because your readers will be turned off by errors. They may not even be consciously turned off, but they see that grammar error and they’ll probably stop reading. Make sure you understand that, or hire a good editor to help you.

Stop being shy. You’re not just a writer when you’re writing, you’re also a promoter, promoting yourself. If you’re writing fiction stories to sell to magazines, become buddies with the magazine publishers and editors. Know who your market is and hang out with those people.

A very important thing that applies to everybody in life: hang out with people who are better than you, who you feel are better than you. If you want to be rich, hang out with rich people, even if you’re not rich. If you want to be famous, hang out with famous people. Don’t hang out with the crowd you normally hang out with if they’re at your level or pulling you down. You want a group that’s going to pull you up. Right now, I’m hanging out with multimillionaires, billionaires, and actors in some of the groups I’m in.

Don’t give up. Don’t fall for myths like writer’s block. What writer’s block usually means is your eyes have been fixed on the screen too long and your brain just shuts down. Take a walk. And if you want to really be creative, get rid of the bad habits, drinking, smoking, vaping. Take care of your mental and physical health and your writing will improve. If you’re diabetic, watch the sugar. Just be healthy, because your whole creativity depends on how healthy you are.

Bhawna: Let’s do a rapid-fire round, short and snappy. Writing at 2 a.m. or sunrise inspiration?

Rapid Fire

Richard: I actually do both.

Bhawna: Tech geek or creative dreamer?

Richard: Both.

Bhawna: Your creativity secret?

Richard: Keep writing. Keep being creative.

Bhawna: A book you wish you had ghostwritten?

Richard: Arnold Schwarzenegger’s autobiography.

Bhawna: Dancing or photography, if you had to give up one?

Richard: Dancing.

Bhawna: One writing habit you swear by?

Richard: Persevering. Keep going. Just keep writing.

Bhawna: It was really nice talking to you. Please tell our audience how they can reach out to you.

Richard: They can go to thewritingking.com or ghostwriting.guru. Either one of those sites is me. Or they can find me on LinkedIn, Richard Lowe Jr. I’ll be happy to connect with anybody, especially writers who want help. I offer all kinds of packages of coaching. So if some writer needs help, come see me.

Find Richard Lowe at TheWritingKing.com.

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