In amongst the queries from potential clients that arrive in my inbox every day, there are often letters from other writers who are searching for tips on how to become ghostwriters themselves.
I try my best to be helpful (and to tempt them to buy my own handbook on the subject), and if their query is related to finding an agent there are one or two whom I will recommend because I know that they use ghosts a lot and I also know that they respond quickly and helpfully to anyone who approaches them. Lack of response from people who should be perfectly capable of at least being polite is all too common and can be very wearing on the spirit for people who are already struggling with the difficulties of earning their living by writing.
As Halloween 2013 approached Andrew Lownie, one of these agents and a man whom I have worked with a lot over the years (and who also founded the Biographers’ Club), announced he was going to throw a ‘ghosts’ party’.
Although I have from time to time met other ghostwriters individually or even in small groups, this was the first time I had heard of someone this well connected in the publishing business inviting a large number of us to congregate under one roof.
Lownie’s house rests in a Dickensian street in Westminster, nestling close to the Abbey, the traditional burial place of British monarchs and the scene of all their coronations since 1066. It seemed a very suitable area for ghosts old and new to congregate. It was tucked well away from the loud, costumed revellers already weaving around Victoria Street and Parliament Square amongst the crowds of workers heading home.
By the time I arrived the elegant first floor reception rooms were already thronged with ghosts. There were some I had met but many more were physical incarnations of names that had merely passed through my email box over the years, appearing before me now in corporeal form for the first time.
What was unusual and heartening about the merry throng was that many of them were young, ambitious and excited by the jobs they were getting. Usually when any number of authors are gathered together in one place the average age of the room is startlingly high and the conversations are peppered with woeful tales of financial struggles, disappointed dreams and pessimism about the future of storytelling. This gathering of ghosts, however, was imbued with a surprisingly refreshing spirit.