From Trader Joe’s to Ghostwriter: Richard Lowe’s Story

In late 2013, I left my job as Director of Computer Operations at Trader Joe’s after twenty years. I was overworked, stressed, and trading my health for a position that had stopped giving back what it took. I had savings as a safety net and a dream I had been carrying since junior high school. It was time to become a writer.

This is the story of how that happened.

Arts Books and the Library

The used bookstore was called Arts Books. For more, see author interview with richard lowe jr. It was a haphazard pile of literary treasure, narrow aisles stacked floor to ceiling, and the smell of old pages was the best thing in the world to a kid who could not stop reading. I would dig through the stacks looking for forgotten Asimov or Heinlein novels, and finding one felt like discovering buried gold. For more, see richard lowe.

My mother fed the habit. She brought me to the library regularly, and I entered every reading contest they ran. For each book I read, I got a sticker. I was reading at least five books a week. I wrote detailed papers on each one for grade school and started a weekly newsletter for my school, which was my first experience putting words in front of an audience.

One of my clearest childhood memories is watching the moon landings on television. The sight of astronauts taking those steps, and then the suspense of Apollo 13, cemented my love for science fiction. Those real events made the fictional worlds feel possible.

The Books That Made Me

Isaac Asimov came first. The Foundation series and the Robot series opened doors to worlds I did not know existed. Then Robert Heinlein. Stranger in a Strange Land shifted how I saw everything. Then J.R.R. Tolkien, Terry Brooks, Frank Herbert. Lord of the Rings, Sword of Shannara, Dune. I consumed them all and moved on to military history, biographies of wartime leaders, chronicles of campaigns and strategies.

I did not limit myself to one genre. I read everything I could reach. That habit turned out to be the single most useful preparation for a ghostwriting career where you never know what subject walks through the door next.

33 Years in Technology

Before writing became my career, technology was. The path went through three companies before Trader Joe’s.

At Software Techniques, I was VP of Consulting, focused on communicating complex technical concepts to broad audiences. At Beck Computer Systems, I held the same role and spent my time drafting technical manuals and papers, translating sophisticated software systems into language their users could follow. At BIF, I was Senior Designer of the SCADA system. The systems I helped design were used by Las Vegas Valley, New Haven, and Ohai Water Districts. Each project required taking technical specifications and producing cohesive, understandable documentation.

Those years taught me to simplify the complex. That skill turned out to be directly transferable to ghostwriting.

Trader Joe’s

Twenty years as Director of Technical Services and Computer Operations. During that time I built a disaster recovery site in Chino and managed it through numerous successful failovers. I led the PCI compliance project with my peer Jimmy, ensuring all transactions met Payment Card Industry security standards. See also my web development journey. I created a private cluster on VMware technology and managed SAP, Ultipro, and Aldata Gold applications. There’s more on that in my move from tech into ghostwriting.

I led a team that included veterans, special forces personnel, and Marines. Their discipline and problem-solving abilities were extraordinary, and together we navigated the company through several major computer disasters.

I also contributed a monthly column to the VAX Professional, which kept my writing muscles active during two decades of technology work.

Claudia

My wife Claudia was a Guatemalan native raised in New Orleans. We were married for twelve and a half years. She was sick for eight of them, battling health issues with a resilience that still shapes how I think about persistence.

When Claudia passed away, my world went dark. I found my way out through photography.

I photographed Renaissance Faires across the United States, capturing thousands of images at each event. I shot belly dancing and burlesque performances, salsa events, wrestling matches, and historical reenactments. Over those years I took more than a million photographs. Each year for eight years, I hosted a birthday party where hundreds of belly dancers performed. Those events became a celebration of life during a time when life felt difficult to celebrate.

Daania Hidiya dances in Los Angeles at Richard Lowe’s 53rd birthday @Skinny’s Lounge

Photography was grief processing. It was also training. Learning to see detail, to notice what others miss, to observe patterns in human behavior. Every one of those skills transferred directly to ghostwriting.

The Leap

In 2013, I made the decision. I left Trader Joe’s, moved from California to Florida, and started writing full time.

The first years were prolific. I wrote and published my own books across multiple genres. I updated Cyberheist, a cybersecurity book for KnowBe4. I contributed to Digitize or Die, a book on the Internet of Things. I ghostwrote for clients across subjects I had never touched before: AI, digital transformation, political memoir, children’s books, young adult fiction, science fiction. I even ghostwrote for two platinum-selling rockstars.

My book Focus on LinkedIn sold 15,000 copies in three days and hit Amazon Kindle bestseller status in three categories. That proved I could write something the market wanted.

Where It Stands Now

Today I have completed 54+ ghostwriting projects and published 113+ books. My clients’ books have helped them raise $30M+ in venture capital, land TEDx speaking invitations, secure traditional publishing deals, and one was adopted as required reading at Purdue University.

I charge $1 per word. A 50,000-word book costs $50,000. Payment is milestone-based. The project takes six months of writing plus one month of revision.

Every project starts the same way it started with my grandfather’s WWII diary when I was seventeen: someone has a story that matters to them, and they need someone who will sit with that material long enough to get it right.

Everything in my background, the used bookstore, the technology career, the photography, the grief, the million images, the 33 years of simplifying the complex, feeds into the work I do now. Ghostwriting is not one skill. It is every skill I have ever developed, applied to someone else’s story.

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