Working with somebody who has a more interesting life than I do - and getting to take on that life temporarily - is an endlessly interesting way to have the experience of writing memoir.

Lizzie Pepper is pure fiction! The character is pulled from tabloids. But I think we all look at celebrity marriages and invest in them.

I think one of the big things that's come out of ghostwriting for me is real compassion for the complexity of fame.

I think people dismiss celebrity memoirs as unreal, contrived and maybe partially made up. But that's definitely not true for anything that I write.

I’ve taken on some of the emotional weight of the stories I’ve worked on. I was writing about a very difficult time in the life of one of my clients and I burst into tears at a small, crowded café... I’m not a crier at all in my own life. Maybe that’s why I’m a ghostwriter.

I think that the celebrity memoir as a genre is looked upon as a lesser form. One of my missions as a ghostwriter has been to elevate that form. Maybe that sounds pretentious!

I don't think you can take a whole genre of very popular books and say, "This is all trash!" When we read a memoir that isn't by a celebrity, we feel like we're about to go on a journey and we don't know where the journey will lead. But when we read a memoir by a celebrity we feel like we already know the journey and we just want to travel it.