#ghost-writing

FIRST PERSON - Richard Flanagan

First Person is a multi-layered novel with a foreboding atmosphere and full of imagery that provided inspiration for the cover. It is about writing, ghost-writing and the pressures of a deadline.

In the book, Kif calculates how many pages of the manuscript he has to complete each day to meet his deadline. The first visual shows a pile of pages with large gaps between each page. The looming shadow under each page is to indicate something sinister.

Mirroring and contrast is at play throughout the novel. Colour and tone, light and dark were used to reflect this. Heidl is compared to a wild dog and a monster. There is a scene in the novel, where a pet bird is caught within a dog’s mouth. The dog I painted has pointed ears and a sharp tail to suggest a devil.

Kif describes writing Heidl’s biography as a dance with evil, “I was his subject not he mine.” Kif was playing with evil, he was warned that Heidl would want his soul. I used the icon of a devil and played with the idea of crossing out the title to reference Heidl’s multiple personalities.

A black jay appears, circling and spiraling above both Heidl and Kif at siginificant moments during the novel. It seemed an important icon. I had asked the illustrator Jimmy Turrell to screen print a moving bird. I placed, what came to be nicknamed the ghost bird, against a painted background. It had a great atmosphere that echoed the building tension in the novel.

The author and his Publisher chose this route for the final cover

The ethics of ghost-writing

This week I was pulled into a discussion on Facebook about ghost-writing. It began when novelist Matt Haig wrote an impassioned opinion in which he lamented the number of books whose true authors were not acknowledged, which kicked off a wide-ranging and emotional debate. One commenter introduced the term ethics and asked me to talk about ghost-writing from that perspective. As that’s far too…

5 essential habits I learned while ghost-writing – guest post at Jo Malby

Some of you know that I began my writing career incognito, as a ghost-writer. It gave me certain habits and approaches that I still use to this day, and I’m sure they were a head start for productive writing processes. Today I’m talking about those habits at Jo Malby’s blog. (And as I’ve had two guest posts this week, I hope you’ll forgive me for taking the rest of the weekend off. There is bank…