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

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 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.

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'm so used to being separate from the publication process. I turn in the book to the editor and then I'm done.

None of my clients are criminals, but to a much lighter degree that's what goes on. I hear the story, and I hear it with the level of detail that breeds empathy.

I'm handed a bunch of existing data. My job is to put that in the best narrative form. That is a puzzle I love to solve.