Sunday 5 July 2015

Sunday July 5th, 2015 How to Hire a Ghost














Ghost writing can often be a ghoulish way to make a living. A ghostwriter is someone who writes under a pseudonym or another author’s name without taking credit. Ghostwriting, or also known simply as “ghosting”, can be found in all sorts of mediums. Examples of ghosting can be found in fiction and non-fiction writing, religious or political texts, as well as even musical ghostwriting.
           
Specifically, one can find countless examples of ghostwriting in the Thunder Bay Public Library’s fiction collection. You may be surprised to learn that many beloved writers did not actually write the piece of literature in question. As a result of circumstance, a ghostwriter has succeeded writers ranging from V.C. Andrews, Tom Clancy, Arthur Conan Doyle and most recently Stieg Larsson.

Did you know that ghostwriters wrote the adventures of beloved children’s characters Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys? Under the names Carolyn Keene and Franklin Dixon came the titles The House on the Cliff and The Hidden Staircase written in 1927 and 1930 respectively. To this day, Keene and Dixon are still “writing” new adventures for our young sleuths. Similarly, the Warriors series by Erin Hunter is another example of a pseudonym used by a trio of writers.

In other cases a ghostwriter may take over from a previous writer, often times due to the original writer’s passing. V.C. Andrews is well known for the Dollanganger series that began with the much read, Flowers in the Attic. The conclusion to the Dollanganger series ends with Garden of Shadows written by her ghostwriter Andrew Neiderman. Neiderman has continued to write under Andrews’ name since her death, using similar story telling structure.

Tom Clancy and his globetrotting Jack Ryan have become synonymous with the military and espionage genre. Jack Ryan first appears in the 1984 novel The Hunt for Red October, a thrilling story about a former marine turned C.I.A analyst who must track a Russian submarine. Jack Ryan and his stories turned out to be a great success for Clancy, who continued to write about his stories for the remainder of his career. After Clancy’s death, ghostwriter Mark Greaney took over writing duty and continued Jack Ryan’s story in Support and Defend and Full Force and Effect.

It can be hard to imagine a modern hero such as Jack Ryan to exist if it were not for Sherlock Holmes. The most well known name in crime solving comes from the great mind Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Detective Holmes first appeared in A Study in Scarlet and since has appeared in countless spinoffs. Recent Sherlock Holmes incarnations include A Slight Trick of theMind, which follows the detective in his older years revisiting an unsolved case.

As Sherlock Holmes, Lisbeth Salander, the antihero of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, similarly uses cold logic to solve crime. Most recently, the late Stieg Larsson’s epic Millennium trilogy will be soon gaining a fourth edition in its saga. The fate of the brilliant computer hacker will soon be revealed in the upcoming The Girl In the Spider’s Web. With a release date in September 2015, readers will have to wait to see whether this ghostwriter’s newest addition will live up to Larsson’s name.  

While you wait for the latest Lisbeth Salander mystery or whether you wish to find a new Sherlock Holmes’ adventure, TBPL’s fiction collection will be sure to satisfy your curiosity. In addition, the online reader’s advisory is a great tool that can help you find other popular titles written by ghostwriters. So you can be sure you will find a ghost or two lurking at your library.

Petar Vidjen 

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