My first ghostwriting project started when I was seventeen. My grandfather handed me his World War II diary and asked me to turn it into a book.
He’d served on the USS Panay, part of the Yangtze River Patrol, before the Japanese invasion of the Philippines in 1941. After the fall of Corregidor, he was marched through Manila as a prisoner. When I reviewed his journals decades later for the memoir, I discovered this detail had been conflated with the Bataan Death March in family retellings. It was its own nightmare.
He spent the next three years and four months as a prisoner of war in a Japanese camp. Forced labor, scarce rations, appalling conditions, physical abuse, dysentery, beriberi. The slightest perceived transgression met with severe punishment. He was liberated by US forces at the end of the war.
My family warned me he was “weird” and “off his rocker.” What I found when I sat down with his diary was a man who had survived something most people cannot imagine and needed the world to know what happened. Publishers rejected the manuscript. They said the world had seen enough war books. My grandfather didn’t care. He was determined that his experiences would be recorded.
That project taught me what ghostwriting actually is. It’s sitting with another person’s experience, understanding it deeply enough to put it on the page in a way that makes a reader feel what the original person felt. I was seventeen and I didn’t know what I was doing. But I knew that my grandfather’s story mattered and that getting it right was more important than getting it published.
The book was eventually published as Behind the Wire. It remains one of the most important things I have ever written.
What Came After
That first project set the direction for the rest of my career, though it took decades and a 33-year detour through technology management before I came back to it full time.
Since leaving Trader Joe’s, where I spent 20 years as Director of Computer Operations, I’ve completed 54+ ghostwriting projects and published 113+ books. The range of subjects has been wider than I could have predicted when I was sitting with my grandfather’s diary. For more, see how i became a writer and bjørn larssen.
I’ve written a memoir for an Afghan politician. I’ve written the story of a woman who escaped human trafficking. I’ve written business books on cybersecurity, AI, the metaverse, and IoT. I’ve written about cleaning supplies, dentistry, and insurance. I’ve written science fiction, young adult fiction, and children’s books. One client’s book helped him raise over $30 million in venture capital. Another landed TEDx speaking invitations. Another was adopted for coursework at Purdue University.
Every project starts the same way my grandfather’s started. Someone has a story or a body of expertise that matters to them, and they need someone who can sit with that material long enough to get it right. The subjects change. The process doesn’t.
Why Does Range Matter for a Ghostwriter?
Some ghostwriters specialize in one genre or one subject area. I write more about this in the story that made me a storyteller. I don’t. The ability to write across subjects isn’t a limitation. It’s the skill itself.
A ghostwriter who can only write in one genre is a writer with a preference. A ghostwriter who can move from an Afghan political memoir to a cybersecurity handbook to a science fiction novel is a ghostwriter who knows how to learn a subject, interview an expert, and build a manuscript that serves the client’s audience regardless of the topic.
That range comes from the interview process. I don’t need to be an expert in your subject. You’re the expert. My job is to ask the questions that draw out the material, challenge the assumptions that need challenging, and build a manuscript that captures your voice and your knowledge. Whether the subject is venture capital or human trafficking or dental practice management, the process is the same.
The Work
Ghostwriting isn’t romantic. It’s interviewing, researching, writing, revising, and delivering on deadline. It’s sitting with someone’s life story and treating it with the same care I gave my grandfather’s diary when I was seventeen, even when the subject is insurance compliance instead of a prisoner of war camp.
The projects that work best are the ones where the client has something real to say and trusts the process enough to say it honestly. The interview is where the book comes from. The quality of the questions determines the quality of the material. The ghostwriter’s job is to turn that material into a book the client is proud to put their name on.
That’s what I’ve been doing for 54+ books. It started with a teenager and a war diary. It hasn’t changed.
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