As Told To

“This is an author who really has his finger on the way kids think,”The New York Times says of podcast guest Todd Strasser, the author of over 150 books, including the award-winning young adult and middle-grade novels The Wave, Give a Boy a Gun, and Fallout. He is also the author of the wildly popular Help! I’m Trapped series of books for young readers, as well as several other best-selling series and movie tie-in books and novelizations.

His books have been translated into more than twenty languages, and several have been adapted for film and television. Many of his standalone books are pulled from today’s headlines, exploring difficult themes like bullying, homelessness and school shootings.

Join us as we talk with Todd about his influences as a writer, and his unlikely career turns writing X-rated fortune cookies (“clairvoyant contortionist is one who can see her own end”) and soap operas (“Guiding Light”) to become one of our most prolific YA novelists.

Oh, and he also finds time to share one of the best pieces of writing advice he ever received, after struggling for a way to explain how the character of Cameron Frye managed to place a chair on the edge of a diving board, facing the pool, before sitting himself down in it, as he attempted to “novelize” a key scene in the “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” script: “You just cut to it!”

Learn more about Todd Strasser:

• Website
• Twitter
• Facebook
• Summer of ‘69
• The Lazy Person’s Guide to Surfing (with Lia Strasser)

Please support the sponsors who support our show:

• Ritani Jewelers
• Daniel Paisner'sBalloon Dog
• Daniel Paisner's SHOW: The Making and Unmaking of a Network Television Pilot
• Unforgiving: Lessons from the Fall by Lindsey Jacobellis
• Film Movement Plus (PODCAST) | 30% discount
• Libro.fm (ASTOLDTO) | 2 audiobooks for the price of 1 when you start your membership
• Film Freaks Forever! podcast, hosted by Mark Jordan Legan and Phoef Sutton
• A Mighty Blaze podcast
• The Writer's Bone Podcast Network
• Misfits Market (WRITERSBONE) | $15 off your first order
• Film Movement Plus (PODCAST) | 30% discount
• Wizard Pins (WRITERSBONE) | 20% discount

Veteran magazine journalist Genevieve Field joins us to discuss her mid-career pivot into ghostwriting, as she celebrates the success of her “Andy Award”-winning collaboration with Hollywood stuntwoman Kimberly Shannon Murphy.Glimmer: A Story of Survival, Hope, and Healing, Murphy’s unflinchingly honest account of intergenerational familial abuse, was honored this winter with an inaugural “Andy Award”—so named for the “and” credit often awarded to ghostwriters—at the first annual “Gathering of the Ghosts” conference in New York City, jointly sponsored by Gotham Ghostwriters and the American Society of Journalists and Authors.

Genevieve Field is no stranger to long-form storytelling in the voice of one of her subjects, but she is a relative newcomer to book-length memoir and collaborative non-fiction. Prior to embarking on a freelance writing career, she worked as a story editor atThe New York Times Magazine, as the editorial director of Seventeen online, and the features director at Glamour. While atGlamour, she was a frequent contributor to the magazine’s first-person celebrity features, presenting “as told to” articles in the voices of notable figures such as Rachel Maddow, Cecile Richards, and Sarah Silverman. She alsoco-founded the Webby-Award winning magazine and dating site, Nerve.

“I help writers unearth the stories in their hearts, get that deep wisdom on the page, and create breakthrough books,” she writes on her website. “Whether serving as a collaborator or editor, my purpose is always the same: to help bring important stories and great writing into the world.”

"This book is so much more than the sum of its parts,” notes actor Cameron Diaz in the forward to Glimmer. “It is a gift. It is Kimberly's offering to readers suffering in silence. It is a companion for anyone who has endured trauma, at any level. And it is a beautiful tribute to the strength and power of the human spirit."

And, in the talented hands of podcast guest Genevieve Field, it is a powerful example of what it takes to collaborate on a deeply personal memoir of sexual abuse and childhood trauma.

Learn more about Genevieve Field:

• Website
• LinkedIn
• Glimmer: A Story of Survival, Hope, and Healing
• Glamour piece by Sarah Silverman, on her battle with depression, as told to Genevieve Field

Please support the sponsors who support our show:

• Ritani Jewelers
• Daniel Paisner'sBalloon Dog
• Daniel Paisner's SHOW: The Making and Unmaking of a Network Television Pilot
• Unforgiving: Lessons from the Fall by Lindsey Jacobellis
• Film Movement Plus (PODCAST) | 30% discount
• Libro.fm (ASTOLDTO) | 2 audiobooks for the price of 1 when you start your membership
• Film Freaks Forever! podcast, hosted by Mark Jordan Legan and Phoef Sutton
• A Mighty Blaze podcast
• The Writer's Bone Podcast Network
• Misfits Market (WRITERSBONE) | $15 off your first order
• Film Movement Plus (PODCAST) | 30% discount
• Wizard Pins (WRITERSBONE) | 20% discount

Seth Davis is a veteran sports journalist and broadcaster, and The New York Times best-selling author of Wooden: A Coach’s Life and When March Went Mad: The Game That Transformed Basketball. He is the co-author of the just-published memoir It’s Hard for Me to Live with Me, written with NBA veteran and University of Kentucky basketball legend Rex Chapman—a book that transcends (and upends!) the sports memoir genre and stands as a devasting and inspiring story about the human struggle for self-acceptance.

Over the course of his career, Seth has written for The Athletic and Sports Illustrated and served as a college basketball studio analyst and reporter at CBS Sports.

“You have to make the phone ring,” he says, echoing a piece of advice once shared with him by his one-time SI colleague and longtime friend and mentor Rick Reilly, of his efforts to grow his game from magazine and broadcast journalism and jump-start his career as an author and collaborator.

Join us as we celebrate “March Madness” with one of our leading sportswriters who is fast becoming a sought-after ghostwriter, calling on the hard-won experience he’s developed in thousands of locker room and post-game interviews to help his subjects reflect on the games we play and the reasons we play them.

Learn more about Seth Davis:

• Twitter/X
• Substack: “Seth Davis Writes Again”
• TikTok
• Wake Up with Purpose! (with Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt)
• Empower: Conquering the Disease of Fear (with Tareq Azim)

Please support the sponsors who support our show:

• Ritani Jewelers
• Daniel Paisner'sBalloon Dog
• Daniel Paisner's SHOW: The Making and Unmaking of a Network Television Pilot
• Unforgiving: Lessons from the Fall by Lindsey Jacobellis
• Film Movement Plus (PODCAST) | 30% discount
• Libro.fm (ASTOLDTO) | 2 audiobooks for the price of 1 when you start your membership
• Film Freaks Forever! podcast, hosted by Mark Jordan Legan and Phoef Sutton
• A Mighty Blaze podcast
• The Writer's Bone Podcast Network
• Misfits Market (WRITERSBONE) | $15 off your first order
• Film Movement Plus (PODCAST) | 30% discount
• Wizard Pins (WRITERSBONE) | 20% discount

Veteran journalist and collaborator Mark Dagostino is the author of more than two dozen books written with some of our most compelling public figures. He has helped to write seven New York Times best-sellers, including the #1 best-sellingThe Magnolia Story, with Chip & Joanna Gaines, co-stars of the hit HGTV show “Fixer Upper.”

Mark began his career atThe Boston Globe, as a general assignment news reporter, before moving on to a ten-year stint at People, where he turned his focus to popular culture as a correspondent, columnist, and senior writer. While at People, he conducted interviews with such celebrities as Michael J. Fox, Christopher Reeve, Justin Timberlake, Sting, Ben Afleck, and Nicole Kidman, developing many of the skills that would help him become one of the most sought-after collaborators in publishing.
Join us for an engaging, insightful conversation on what it takes to pivot from journalism to the journalism-adjacent field of ghostwriting.

Learn more about Mark Dagostino:

• Website
• Facebook
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• Hulk Hogan: My Life Outside the Ring
• Crossing the Desert by Payam Zamani

Please support the sponsors who support our show:

• Daniel Paisner's Balloon Dog
• Daniel Paisner's SHOW: The Making and Unmaking of a Network Television Pilot
• Unforgiving: Lessons from the Fall by Lindsey Jacobellis
• Film Movement Plus (PODCAST) | 30% discount
• Libro.fm (ASTOLDTO) | 2 audiobooks for the price of 1 when you start your membership
• Film Freaks Forever! podcast, hosted by Mark Jordan Legan and Phoef Sutton
• A Mighty Blaze podcast
• The Writer's Bone Podcast Network
• Misfits Market (WRITERSBONE) | $15 off your first order
• Film Movement Plus (PODCAST) | 30% discount
• Wizard Pins (WRITERSBONE) | 20% discount

“What really amazed me here was that so many of the authors who submitted stories wrote something completely outside their genre,” reflects best-selling author Douglas Preston, one of the project editors behind the dynamic new collaborative novel Fourteen Days. “This book is full of all kinds of weird stories.”

Yes, it is. And so is podcast guest Douglas Preston, co-author of dozens of New York Times best-selling thrillers written with his longtime writing partner Lincoln Child—a shining example of what it means to write in collaboration. In all, Preston has published 39 books of fiction and non-fiction. In addition to books, Preston writes about archaeology and paleontology for the New Yorker. He has worked as an editor for the American Museum of Natural History in New York City and taught nonfiction writing at Princeton University and is the recipient of numerous writing awards in the U.S. and Europe. He served as president of the Authors Guild from 2019 to 2023.

Set in a Lower East Side tenement in the early days of the COVID-19 lockdowns, Fourteen Days turns on a narrative frame written by Preston, with contributions from a disparate collection of contemporary writers, headed by fellow project editor Margaret Atwood. In addition to Atwood and Preston, the novel features the “voices” of Charlie Jane Anders, Joseph Cassara, Jennine Capó Crucet, Angie Cruz, Pat Cummings, Sylvia Day, Emma Donoghue, Dave Eggers, Diana Gabaldon, Tess Gerritsen, John Grisham, Maria Hinojosa, Mira Jacob, Erica Jong, CJ Lyons, Celeste Ng, Tommy Orange, Mary Pope Osborne, Alice Randall, Ishmael Reed, Roxana Robinson, Nelly Rosario, James Shapiro, Hampton Sides, R.L. Stine, Nafissa Thompson-Spires, Monique Truong, Scott Turow, Luis Alberto Urrea, Rachel Vail, Weike Wang, Caroline Randall Williams, De’Shawn Charles Winslow, and Meg Wolitzer.

All proceeds from the book will be directed to the Authors Guild Foundation, the charitable and educational arm of the Authors Guild, dedicated to empowering all writers, from all backgrounds, at all stages of their careers.

Learn more about Douglas Preston:

• Author’s Guild
• Author’s Guild Foundation
• Instagram
• Facebook
• Preston & Child website
• The Lost Time: And Other Real-Life Stories of Bones, Burials, and Murder

Please support the sponsors who support our show:

• Daniel Paisner's Balloon Dog
• Daniel Paisner's SHOW: The Making and Unmaking of a Network Television Pilot
• Unforgiving: Lessons from the Fall by Lindsey Jacobellis
• Film Movement Plus (PODCAST) | 30% discount
• Libro.fm (ASTOLDTO) | 2 audiobooks for the price of 1 when you start your membership
• Film Freaks Forever! podcast, hosted by Mark Jordan Legan and Phoef Sutton
• A Mighty Blaze podcast
• The Writer's Bone Podcast Network
• Misfits Market (WRITERSBONE) | $15 off your first order
• Film Movement Plus (PODCAST) | 30% discount
• Wizard Pins (WRITERSBONE) | 20% discount

“Sometimes the truth is just too much, and sometimes it’s not enough.”

That’s a line from Sarah Tomlinson’s new novel, The Last Days of the Midnight Ramblers, the story of a young ghostwriter scratching at the truth that threatens the legend of the fictional rock band of the title.

A veteran journalist, essayist, music critic, ghostwriter, and memoirist, Sarah’s work has appeared in The Boston Globe, Los Angeles Review of Books, Marie Claire,Los Angeles Times, Publishers Weekly, andHuffington Post. Her new novel puts an exclamation point on the maxim that says writers should write what they know: Sarah has covered the recording industry and the music scene for years, writing for Spin.com, Billboard.com and penning a local music column for the Boston Phoenix.She’s even written band bios for record labels like Virgin, Red Ink/Columbia, and MySpace Records, and contributed to the electronic press kits for artists on Warner Bros. Records.

As a ghostwriter, she has helped to write more than a dozen books, including three New York Times best-sellers and the forthcoming Dancing on the Edge, co-authored with the iconoclastic actor, dancer, choreographer Russ Tamblyn.

Join us for a candid conversation on what it means to pick up a pen on behalf of someone else, and then to set that pen down to tell the tale of a ghostwriter looking to make sense of the senselessness and sensibility of a rock ‘n roll life gone sideways.

Learn more about Sarah Tomlinson:

• Website
• The Last Days of the Midnight Ramblers
• Dancing on the Edge
• Good Girl: A Memoir
• Facebook
• Instagram
• Twitter

Please support the sponsors who support our show:

• Daniel Paisner's Balloon Dog
• Daniel Paisner's SHOW: The Making and Unmaking of a Network Television Pilot
• Unforgiving: Lessons from the Fall by Lindsey Jacobellis
• Film Movement Plus (PODCAST) | 30% discount
• Libro.fm (ASTOLDTO) | 2 audiobooks for the price of 1 when you start your membership
• Film Freaks Forever! podcast, hosted by Mark Jordan Legan and Phoef Sutton
• A Mighty Blaze podcast
• The Writer's Bone Podcast Network
• Misfits Market (WRITERSBONE) | $15 off your first order
• Film Movement Plus (PODCAST) | 30% discount
• Wizard Pins (WRITERSBONE) | 20% discount

“How do you tell someone else’s story, but make it authentic?”

That’s the question at the heart of this episode of As Told To: The Ghostwriting Podcast, which is really a repurposed, repackaged edition of a recent episode of Missing Pages, the critically-acclaimed investigative podcast hosted by renowned literary critic Bethanne Patrick—known to readers across social media as “The Book Maven.”

Bethanne and her production team at The Podglomerate, a leading producer of original podcasts, pull back the curtain on the lucrative culture of non-fiction ghostwriting, and offer a compelling take on the art and practice of writing in collaboration, and the role “literary chameleons” have come to play in the telling of high-profile tales. Along the way, Bethanne looks at the evolution of the practice, and interviews ghostwriting veterans like Jon Sternfeld and Dan Gerstein, both formerAs Told To guests, as well as cookbook author J.J. Goode. She also spends some time chatting with As Told To host Daniel Paisner, who weighs in with a hard-won insight or two.

This special crossover edition of As Told To is being presented with the permission of the Podglomerate team, and Bethanne Patrick, and is intended to further the conversation among writers and creatives who continue to write and create in service of someone else’s voice or vision.

Also listen to Part II of the two-part Missing Pages exploration of the ghostwriting trade: “Ghostwriting: Fiction – Will the Real Tom Clancy Please Stand Up?”

Learn more about Bethanne Patrick and Missing Pages:

• Bethanne Patrick’s website
• Bethanne’s memoir, Life B: Overcoming Double Depression
• Missing Pages
• The Podglomerate
• The Podglomerate Twitter
• The Podglomerate Facebook

Please support the sponsors who support our show:

• Daniel Paisner's Balloon Dog
• Daniel Paisner's SHOW: The Making and Unmaking of a Network Television Pilot
• Unforgiving: Lessons from the Fall by Lindsey Jacobellis
• Film Movement Plus (PODCAST) | 30% discount
• Libro.fm (ASTOLDTO) | 2 audiobooks for the price of 1 when you start your membership
• Film Freaks Forever! podcast, hosted by Mark Jordan Legan and Phoef Sutton
• A Mighty Blaze podcast
• The Writer's Bone Podcast Network
• Misfits Market (WRITERSBONE) | $15 off your first order
• Film Movement Plus (PODCAST) | 30% discount
• Wizard Pins (WRITERSBONE) | 20% discount

Kevin Anderson is one of the publishing industry’s leading authorities on ghostwriting and editorial development. As the founder, CEO and editor-in-chief of Kevin Anderson & Associates, a Manhattan-based firm that specializes in developing collaborative projects, he is uniquely positioned to weigh in on what it takes to write a best-selling book. His firm represents over 200 widely-published writers, and relies on the editorial and publishing expertise of more than a dozen former Big 5 acquisitions editors.

“A client who hires a ghostwriter is still the author of their book,” Anderson once told The Washington Post. “With the exception of some research-based projects, the content, ideas and concepts for ghostwritten books come directly from the client… A ghostwriter is an interpreter and a translator, not an author, which is why our clients deserve full credit for authoring their books.”

Join us for an informative conversation on how many of our collaborative books are conceived, and how they fight their way through the publishing process and onto our bookshelves.

Learn more about Kevin Anderson:

• Kevin Anderson & Associates website
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Norman Ollestad's Crazy for the Storm
• Scott Cawhon's Five Nights at Freddy's

Please support the sponsors who support our show:

• Daniel Paisner's Balloon Dog
• Daniel Paisner's SHOW: The Making and Unmaking of a Network Television Pilot
• Unforgiving: Lessons from the Fall by Lindsey Jacobellis
• Film Movement Plus (PODCAST) | 30% discount
• Libro.fm (ASTOLDTO) | 2 audiobooks for the price of 1 when you start your membership
• Film Freaks Forever! podcast, hosted by Mark Jordan Legan and Phoef Sutton
• A Mighty Blaze podcast
• The Writer's Bone Podcast Network
• Misfits Market (WRITERSBONE) | $15 off your first order
• Film Movement Plus (PODCAST) | 30% discount
• Wizard Pins (WRITERSBONE) | 20% discount

“I’m quite good at detaching and passing the tissues and just listening,” says Andrew Crofts, one of the world’s most prolific ghostwriters, on his ability to help his clients share their most intimate, most harrowing, most traumatic experiences in the pages of their memoirs.

As the author or co-author of more than eighty books, including a dozen Sunday Times best-sellers, Andrew is well-known in England for his work behind-the-scenes with top television personalities, footballers, politicians, and ordinary individuals caught in extraordinary circumstances.

He is also well-known among publishers for his willingness to take on any subject, and to collaborate with any celebrity, as long as the project comes with the promise of a good story. “Extremes of evil are as interesting as extremes of goodness,” he writes, of his ability to work with heroes and villains alike. In fact, he once told a reporter for The Guardian that he is grateful he was not born early enough to pursue this type of work during Adolf Hitler’s rise to power. “I have a horrible feeling that if I’d got the call from Germany in the 1930s,” he said, “I would have hopped on that plane like a Mitford.”

Learn more about Andrew Crofts:

• Website
• Confessions of a Ghostwriter
• Ghostwriting
• Facebook
• Twitter

Links to some of Crofts’ collaborations discussed in our interview:

• The Boy Who Never Gave Up, with Dr. Emmanuel Taban:
• A Boy Called Hyppo, with Hyppolite Ntigurirwa:
• Sold, with Zana Muhsen

Please support the sponsors who support our show:

• Daniel Paisner's Balloon Dog
• Daniel Paisner's SHOW: The Making and Unmaking of a Network Television Pilot
• Unforgiving: Lessons from the Fall by Lindsey Jacobellis
• Film Movement Plus (PODCAST) | 30% discount
• Libro.fm (ASTOLDTO) | 2 audiobooks for the price of 1 when you start your membership
• Film Freaks Forever! podcast, hosted by Mark Jordan Legan and Phoef Sutton
• A Mighty Blaze podcast
• The Writer's Bone Podcast Network
• Misfits Market (WRITERSBONE) | $15 off your first order
• Film Movement Plus (PODCAST) | 30% discount
• Wizard Pins (WRITERSBONE) | 20% discount

“Voices of their generation. Except for Greta Thunberg. And Malala. Amanda Gorman . . .you know what, I take it back.” — Jimmy Fallon

That’s high praise for the comedy writing duo of Rebecca Shaw and Ben Kronengold, from their former boss at NBC’s “The Tonight Show,” where our podcast guests became the two youngest writers in that program’s storied history and earned a shared spot on Variety’s “Power of Young Hollywood Impact List” in 2021.

Shaw and Kronengold began dating and writing together as freshmen at Yale University and capped their undergraduate career with a 2018 commencement address that went a little bit viral. (Okay, it went a whole lotta viral – their speech was seen by more than 5 million people, and landed them an agent…and, eventually, their “Tonight Show” gig.)

Together, they’ve just published a disarmingly funny collection of essays, stories, and humor pieces called Naked in the Rideshare: Stories of Gross Miscalculations, which was hailed by actor and comedian Will Ferrell as “incredibly original, bizarre, and funny” prior to publication by William Morrow in November.

Join us as we talk about what it means to find your voice in collaboration with your partner, and to take that voice to one of the most dynamic writing rooms in late night television – and beyond.

Learn more about Rebecca Shaw & Ben Kronengold:

• Website
• Rebecca’s website
• Ben’s website
• Rebecca’s Instagram
• Ben’s Twitter
• “Wax Paul Now” Trailer

Please support the sponsors who support our show.

• Daniel Paisner's Balloon Dog
• Daniel Paisner's SHOW: The Making and Unmaking of a Network Television Pilot
• Unforgiving: Lessons from the Fall by Lindsey Jacobellis
• Film Movement Plus (PODCAST) | 30% discount
• Libro.fm (ASTOLDTO) | 2 audiobooks for the price of 1 when you start your membership
• Film Freaks Forever! podcast, hosted by Mark Jordan Legan and Phoef Sutton
• A Mighty Blaze podcast
• The Writer's Bone Podcast Network
• Misfits Market (WRITERSBONE) | $15 off your first order
• Film Movement Plus (PODCAST) | 30% discount
• Wizard Pins (WRITERSBONE) | 20% discount