As Told To

Jodi Lipper is the co-author of over twenty books with some of our leading influencers and game-changers in the fields of health and wellness and personal empowerment, including six New York Times best-sellers. Perhaps the biggest “game changer” among her clients is the “father of biohacking” and founder of Bulletproof Coffee Dave Asprey, with whom Jodi has collaborated on The Bulletproof Diet, Super Human, Head Strong, and the oh-so- appropriately titled Game Changers. She also collaborated on Fran Hauser’s The Myth of the Nice Girl and Dr. Steven R. Gundry’s The Longevity Paradox, as well as brutally honest inspirational memoirs from designer and entrepreneur Steve Madden (The Cobbler) and celebrity chef Jesse Schenker (All or Nothing).

Her latest collaboration, with a three-headed team of McKinsey & Co. veterans, asks readers to consider the pace of their lives from a unique combination of psychology, neuroscience, and consciousness practices. “I truly believe that this book can help everyone learn more about themselves and how to manage everyday stresses and major life crises,” Jodi says of Deliberate Calm: How to Learn and Lead in a Volatile World, out later this month from Harper Business. Prior to finding her voice as a ghostwriter, Jodi collaborated with her friend Cerina Vincent on a series of saucy, sassy primers for young women—How to Eat Like a Hot Chick, How to Love Like a Hot Chick, and Live Like a Hot Chick. Join us as Jodi reflects on a writing life that has helped to shape the ways so many of us live and work.

For more on Jodi Lipper, visit her official website and follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

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“He knew how pain kept inside multiplies, and how pain shared subtracts,” writes podcast guest Jon Sternfeld in the opening bars of Michael K. Williams’s haunting new posthumous memoir Scenes from My Life. Jon was midway through his work with the electrifying actor, known to television audiences for his career-defining turns as Omar Little in “The Wire” and Chalky White in “Boardwalk Empire,” as well as for his Emmy-nominated roles in “The Night Of” and “Lovecraft Country,” when Williams died in September 2021 from a drug overdose. It fell to Jon to complete the project on his own—an intimidating task the veteran ghostwriter was reluctant to take on at first. “I can’t tell you how strange this is and has been,” he says. “When Mike first passed, I was just dealing with the shock and grief. I wasn’t even thinking about things like deadlines or promotion. And now, I’m speaking about his legacy, and while I feel outmatched by the responsibility of it, I do accept it.”

Join us as Jon Sternfeld reflects on his relationship with the late actor and activist, as well as on his other collaborations, including A Stone of Hope, with the noted residential care advocate Jim St. Germain; Crisis Point, with former U.S. senators Trent Lott and Tom Daschle; and the forthcoming Marked For Life, with attorney Isaac Wright Jr., who defends the wrongly accused in the same courtroom where he was sentenced to life in prison.

For more on We Build the Block, the organization co-founded by Michael K. Williams to reduce violence and build community in our inner cities visit https://webuildtheblock.org/. For more on Jon Sternfeld, visit his official website and follow him on Twitter.

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• Daniel Paisner's Balloon Dog
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• Wizard Pins (WRITERSBONE) | 20% discount
• The Thoughtful Bro podcast, hosted by Mark Cecil

“He knew how pain kept inside multiplies, and how pain shared subtracts,” writes podcast guest Jon Sternfeld in the opening bars of Michael K. Williams’s haunting new posthumous memoir Scenes from My Life. Jon was midway through his work with the electrifying actor, known to television audiences for his career-defining turns as Omar Little in “The Wire” and Chalky White in “Boardwalk Empire,” as well as for his Emmy-nominated roles in “The Night Of” and “Lovecraft Country,” when Williams died in September 2021 from a drug overdose. It fell to Jon to complete the project on his own—an intimidating task the veteran ghostwriter was reluctant to take on at first. “I can’t tell you how strange this is and has been,” he says. “When Mike first passed, I was just dealing with the shock and grief. I wasn’t even thinking about things like deadlines or promotion. And now, I’m speaking about his legacy, and while I feel outmatched by the responsibility of it, I do accept it.”

Join us as Jon Sternfeld reflects on his relationship with the late actor and activist, as well as on his other collaborations, including A Stone of Hope, with the noted residential care advocate Jim St. Germain; Crisis Point, with former U.S. senators Trent Lott and Tom Daschle; and the forthcoming Marked For Life, with attorney Isaac Wright Jr., who defends the wrongly accused in the same courtroom where he was sentenced to life in prison.

For more on We Build the Block, the organization co-founded by Michael K. Williams to reduce violence and build community in our inner cities visit https://webuildtheblock.org/. For more on Jon Sternfeld, visit his official website and follow him on Twitter.

Please support the sponsors who support our show.

• Misfits Market (WRITERSBONE) | $15 off your first order
• Daniel Paisner's Balloon Dog
• Film Movement Plus (PODCAST) | 30% discount
• Libro.fm (ASTOLDTO) | 2 audiobooks for the price of 1 when you start your membership
• Wizard Pins (WRITERSBONE) | 20% discount
• The Thoughtful Bro podcast, hosted by Mark Cecil

“You need to have a lot of things go right in your life before you can become as miserable as Anthony Bourdain,” writes noted journalist and biographer Charles Leerhsen in his headline-making new book, Down and Out in Paradise: The Life of Anthony Bourdain, hailed by Dwight Garner of The New York Times as “an unvarnished account of a turbulent life.”

The “unvarnishing” of our legendarily turbulent public figures is one of Leerhsen’s things, apparently, as readers have discovered in his books on Ty Cobb, Butch Cassidy, and the celebrated racehorse Dan Patch—a determination to get the story right that was instilled in him as a writer and editor at Sports Illustrated, Newsweek, and People.

As a ghostwriter, Leerhsen brought that same determination into his work with pioneering aviator Chuck Yeager (Press On!), entertainment mogul Brandon Tartikoff (The Last Great Ride), and a belligerent New York City real estate developer named Donald Trump (Trump: Surviving at the Top), a collaboration our guest would come to regret for the way it helped to establish the Trump persona.

Learn more about Charles Leerhsen by visiting his official website and following him on Twitter.

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• Misfits Market (WRITERSBONE) | $15 off your first order
• Daniel Paisner's Balloon Dog
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“The same skills that allowed me to uncover a bid-rigging scandal in local government also are applicable to Jennifer Aniston’s latest haircut,” says veteran reporter and collaborator Danelle Morton. “A journalism skill is a journalism skill.”

Indeed it is—especially when it is practiced at the crosshairs of journalism and celebrity, where Danelle worked for many years at TheNew York Times,The San Jose Mercury News,andPeoplemagazine, developing her nose for news and learning how to meet a deadline.

Those instincts coalesced in Danelle’s work as the co-writer of more than a dozen books, including threeNew York Timesbest-sellers. She’s worked with such headline-making personalities as actress and activist Jane Fonda (What Can I Do: My Path From Climate Despair to Action); one-time DNC chair and noted political operative Donna Brazile (Hacks); Jenny Sanford, wife of former South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford (Staying True); and former NFL quarterback Rodney Peete (Not My Boy). Among her career highlights, she says, was the friendship she developed with the actress Doris Roberts, after the two worked together on Roberts’s best-selling memoir (Are You Hungry, Dear?), a collaboration that led to a ghostwriting gig with “Everybody Loves Raymond” creator Phil Rosenthal (You’re Lucky You’re Funny).

All the while, Danelle continued to write in her own voice for newspapers in magazine and has received many awards and honors for her investigative work; she was nominated for the prestigious ASME National Magazine Award in the public service category, and was named a finalist for the PEN/USA Literary Non-Fiction Award.

Danelle is the creator and host of the podcast “City of the Rails,” which debuts on the iHeartRadio Podcast Network on Oct. 26, 2022, and examines the terrible beauty of a life in and around the rails—“the kind of beauty that a lot of us will never see, because it’s only available to you out the open door of a freight car.” She was drawn to the subject when her daughter dropped out of school to hop trains, and in a desperate effort to understand her daughter and keep tabs on her when she went missing for over a year and a half, Danelle got out her reporter’s notebook and started chasing a deeply personal story that would come to stamp her career as a journalist.

Read more about Danelle on her website and follow her on Twitter.

Please support the sponsors who support our show.

• Misfits Market (WRITERSBONE) | $15 off your first order
• Daniel Paisner's Balloon Dog
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• Libro.fm (ASTOLDTO) | 2 audiobooks for the price of 1 when you start your membership
• Wizard Pins (WRITERSBONE) | 20% discount

“When you can’t make sense of what you’re seeing, don’t stare harder. When you’re confused by what you’re hearing, don’t listen harder. Stand back, give yourself some space, and let things come into focus.”

That’s a line from rapper/songwriter/force-of-nature Rick Ross’s empowerment manifesto The Perfect Day to Boss Up, as filtered through the pen of his collaborator Neil Martinez-Belkin, who joins us on the podcast for our first episode of Season Two.

Neil, the former music editor atXXL Magazine who has written extensively about contemporary hip-hop and rap music, burst onto the ghostwriting scene with the extraordinarily candid and unapologetically gritty Gucci Mane memoir The Autobiography of Gucci Mane. That book was followed by Neil’s first collaboration with Rick Ross, the straight-up memoir Hurricanes. All three books were New York Times best-sellers, helping to establish our guest as a fresh new “voice” on the ghostwriting scene—and, perhaps, launching him on a career he never imagined for himself.

“I really had no experience writing a book, or writing in the voice of somebody else,” Neil reflects on chasing his first collaborative project, with Gucci Mane. “But what I did have was years and years and years of being a real fan and listening to Gucci Mane interviews, and listening to the music, so I did have a sense of how he talked. Eventually I figured out.”

Join us as Neil reflects on what it was like to work with Gucci Mane while the rapper was in prison, what it took to win Rick Ross’s trust, and what lies ahead.

Follow Neil on Instagram and Twitter.

Please support the sponsors who support our show.

• Misfits Market (WRITERSBONE) | $15 off your first order
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This episode was first aired on Dec. 14, 2021.

Veteran journalist and author Robert Sabbag joins the podcast to share the story behind the story of one of the greatest books ever written about drug smuggling—Snowblind: A Brief Career in the Cocaine Trade, a classic example of collaborative memoir that helped to establish him as one of the most esteemed chroniclers of his generation. No less an authority on these matters than Hunter S. Thompson hailed Sabbag on the book’s publication as “a whip-song writer,” leading our guest to a long career as a “whip-song” contributor to Rolling Stone, Men’s Journal, Playboy, New York magazine, The New York Times Magazine, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, and other publications.

Along the way, he also found time to work as a true ghostwriter on a couple of notable business memoirs, and to write the books Smokescreen: A True Adventure, Too Tough to Die, and Down Around Midnight: A Memoir of Crash and Survival. Sabbag is the co-writer of the film “Witness Protection,” based on his New York Times Magazine cover story “The Invisible Family,” which was nominated for two Golden Globe Awards, including Best Picture.

Join host Daniel Paisner as he visits with his longtime friend to discuss his classic debut effort—"one of the most dazzling and spectacular pieces of reporting I have ever read," according to the late screenwriter and novelist Nora Ephron. How Robert Sabbag got that story is must-listening for all writers…and readers.

Visit Robert Sabbag's website

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This episode originally aired Nov. 30, 2021.

"William Novak had the career I hadn't even known I wanted," host Daniel Paisner says of this episode's guest, who for a time seemed to have his have his hand in every major celebrity autobiography on bookstore shelves.

Starting with the publication of the genre-defining best-seller Iacocca, by Lee Iacocca—the best-selling book of 1984 and 1985—Novak embarked on a string of collaborations on some of the biggest books of the next decade, including Earvin "Magic" Johnson's My Life, Nancy Reagan's My Turn, Lt. Colonel Oliver North's Under Fire, and Tip O'Neill's Man of the House. In fact, Novak was so busy during this period that he actually turned down the opportunity to work with both Ronald Reagan and Nelson Mandela—an astonishing turn for a writer who candidly admits he was a little out of his element when he got the Iacocca assignment, as he struggled to realize that his job was not to write about Iacocca, as a journalist might, but to help the former Chrysler chairman "write the book about himself, based on how he sees himself."

Join us on this episode of As Told To: The Ghostwriting Podcast as we visit with the writer who helped to bring the work of the ghostwriter out of the shadows and into the light.

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This episode originally aired October 19, 2021.

Laura Zigman is one of our leading voices in contemporary fiction. She’s the author of five novels, including her genre-defining debut, Animal Husbandry, which enjoyed a second life on the screen as the Hugh Jackman/Ashley Judd starrer “Someone Like You,” as well as her most recent novel, Separation Anxiety, which is currently being developed as a limited television series featuring the actress Julianne Nicholson.

Laura’s novels are known for their wit and insight, as she shines compelling light on women and families on the edge, but many of her most faithful readers are probably unaware of her work as a collaborator—most notably with the comedian Eddie Izzard, Texas state senator Wendy Davis, and matchmaker Patti Novak.

Over the years, she’s leaned on her ghostwriting assignments as a way to fill the spaces between novels—and, to sharpen her instincts as a writer as she seeks ideas and inspiration for her fiction. In this episode of As Told To, she tells host Daniel Paisner that she sees herself as storyteller, whether she’s helping to craft someone else’s story or working in service of her own.

“It’s a very delicate dance,” she says of the tug-and-pull that often surfaces between collaborator and subject. “You have to learn how to handle people. You have to give it back to them sometimes. You have to find that balance between being in service to them and their story and pushing back a little.”

Here’s where you can find Laura online:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram
• Website

Please support the sponsors who support our show.

• Daniel Paisner's upcoming novel Balloon Dog
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• Tennants Cove Writers

“It’s a weird job, isn’t it?”

So says veteran ghostwriter Stephanie Krikorian, who started in on her ghostwriting career after a long run as a television news producer. In fact, she sees a through-line from the work she used to do as a producer to the work she’s doing now as a writer, especially in her many collaborations with some of our leading health and wellness experts. For her very first book—Urban Skinny:Live the Fabulous Life and Still Zip Up Your Favorite Jeans,written with nutritionist Danielle Schupp—Stephanie reports that she leaned on what she knew about building a series of compelling news segments in order to help tell a much larger story.

That book led to others, many of them in the self-improvement and empowerment space, includingYou Are Why You Eat, with Dr. Ramani Durvasula; andThe Comeback:How Today’s Moms Reenter the Workplace, with career expert Cheryl Casone. Eventually, Stephanie found herself doing so many deep dives, into this new diet or that new meditation practice, that she was moved to write a book about her own experiences as a self-help-ghostwriter-turned-self-help-user—Zen Bender:A Decade-Long Enthusiastic Quest to Fix Everything.

Alongside her work as a collaborator, Stephanie has contributed to a variety of publications, including The Wall Street Journal, O: The Oprah Magazine, Vanity Fair Hive, and the New York Post, writing about wine, pop culture and wellness. Among her many books are The New York Times best-seller The Promise: A Tragic Accident, a Paralyzed Bride, and the Power of Love, Loyalty, and Friendship, with Rachelle Friedman;Straight Walk, with supermodel Patricia Velasquez; and,Play Big:Lessons in Being Limitless from the First Woman to Coach in the NFL, with Dr. Jen Welter.

Learn more about Stephanie Krikorian:

• Website
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram

Please support the sponsors who support our show.

• Daniel Paisner's upcoming novel Balloon Dog
• Misfits Market (WRITERSBONE) | $15 off your first order
• Film Movement Plus (PODCAST) | 30% discount
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• Wizard Pins (WRITERSBONE) | 20% discount