Wambtac’s summer schedule is out with  something for everyone: Level II workshops for Ghostwriter Certification Training grads, a quickie peek into how ghosts do fiction for novelists, even a clue-in for high school and community college students on how to write better papers. Details and registration are available at http://wambtac.com/left-coast-institute/summer-courses-2012/ .

Also, have gotten some interesting feedback on my upcoming title release, Buh Bye, M.S.!  It’s the sweet, heartwarming story of how I went mano-a-mano with multiple sclerosis for 42 years until I  finally kicked its miserable, capricious, maggot-ridden butt out of my system for good.

We’re raising money for the initial print run, but you can order in advance (and help that fund-raising effort) by going to http://wambtac.com/wc-publishing/buh-bye-ms/ .

Strong language and irreverent descriptions. May be unsuitable for the fainthearted and politically correct. Spiritual guidance advised.

Finally, we’re getting ready to launch a new service: Book Plans. Every book needs its own strategy to get ready for market, get into the market, and get sold at market. Watch this space for news on this upcoming new, exciting, and effective individualized action plan.

In January, I stopped being a freelance ghostwriter and became the Founder/Creative Director of Wambtac Communications LLC, a one-stop literary shop. We ghostwrite, we educate, we publish. Sounds succinct, doesn’t it? It’s actually a bit more elaborate than that.

We–meaning myself, my partner (aka daughter) Lona Nicholle, our teachers Liv Haugland and JD Moore, and our current intern Teri Stevens–ghostwrite books for people who have wonderful ideas. We are implementing a rather elaborate (read “time consuming and costly”) marketing/advertising campaign to let literary agents, publishers, CEOs, and one-percenters know that we have a growing cadre of professional Certified Ghostwriters who will do an excellent job on their or their clients’ books. Our intention is to spread those clients among the members of the Ghostwriter Guild, which is still in development but will be comprise our graduates from Ghostwriter Certification Training.

We’re  expanding GCT to a three-semester program: Nonfiction, Fiction, and Business, which includes the politics we cover in the class now plus a strong grounding in the book industry itself. Until then, we’re offering Level II classes in Line Editing, A&Rs, Book Proposals, and The Industry.

The idea of taking GCT into Cal State U Long Beach Extension Education is still being bantered around between the parties (them and us), but has  not yet come to fruition. Obviously, eh?

Our consumer-ed classes (The Story in Your Head, What You Know, Writing Your Life, Before Copy Editing, etc.) are also in development. Discussions are ongoing with ed2go.com for some of those, but most are going to come from us at Wanbtac.com.

The publishing part is semi-new. We’ve always been the ones to put out the four editions of This Business of Books  (5th edition in the works) and Secrets of a Ghostwriter.  Now we’re expanding to also publish other titles for writers, editors, and educators via On The List Publishing and general trade titles via Iridescent Orange Press. Our ebooks and multi-media products, such as MS Word for Writers, will be produced by Bad Walnut Media.

Sounds kinda ambitious, doesn’t i? It’s a great work-in-progress with a three-way mission: to help raise the literacy bar of the industry, one author at a time; to train/retrain displaced writers for lucrative ghostwriting careers; and to publish the good works they create if those authors cannot land a traditional New York publisher. We’ve got a fantastic operations director, Kata Schuyler, a great bookkeeper, Nyx Goldstone, a wonderful go-to assistant, Ben Picker, a good publicist, Devon Blaine, and an in-the-wings marketing guy who’s waiting for us to get our act (read $$) together. Which brings me to the logical wrap-up of this piece.

Every pitch session I’ve gone to lately insists one should always end on what one needs, so I’m sharing that, too. We’re a small, literacy-oriented organization, so of course we could use some seed money to launch these programs and products a bit faster. We’re also looking for a location so we can hold workshops and classes, and we could use a few extra pairs of volunteer’s hands around the office for our marketing campaigns.

Should I be putting all this in a blog post? Let’s be real: if I was the kind of person who worried about what I should and shouldn’t do, I wouldn’t be the kind of person of thought up such an elaborate scheme, brought three strangers into my house and made them family and now staff, or taught more than thirty people how to make a living ghostwriting for the absurd cost of approximately $8/hour for my time!

It starts Tuesday, April 5 at 4:30 Pacific time and runs through Tuesday, May 31. Nine days of fiction-writing concepts and perspectives I can pretty much guarantee you’ve never heard presented this way.

I’ll be team-teaching with J.D. Moore, a Certified Ghostwriter who specializes in fiction. Together, we’re going to show you light-bulb popping ways to look at your manuscript, your approach to writing, and your finished product.

Think you know everything about plot, character, premise, and construction? Ha! Think again — then join us to discover the thought processes of those who actually “fix” novels for a living.

It’s gonna be a fast, fun, informative 9 weeks. Details and registration at http://wambtac.com. Got questions? Write to me directly at claudiasuzanne@gmail. com or call toll-free 1-800-641-3936.

“It can’t make you much money,” she said. “Not for the amount of time and work you put in over the three months.”

She’s right; it doesn’t. I spend three hours a week teaching each class–in the fall, that’s going to go up to four hours/week. My students tell me they put in between 6 and 10 hours on their homework every week–homework that I then have to go over, comment on, discuss, and correct. If I add up everyone’s tuition and divide by the number of hours I put in, I’m making …

Damn little.

So why do I teach GCT? Not sure. Let me muse as I write.

If we go back to the beginning, I started teaching the basics of the book business and a little bit about ghostwriting back in 1993, I think. Maybe 1996. Don’t remember. My motive then was to pass on some information and sell my book, This Business of Books: A Complete Overview of the Industry from Concept through Sales, then in its 3rd Edition.

Maybe I was looking for referrals. Maybe I just wanted to share. I honestly cannot remember. But I found I enjoyed teaching. It was fun. It was stimulating. It was educational for me. And people paid me a little bit of money. A win/win.

Over the years, the class ebbed and flowed. I taught sometimes, didn’t the rest. Tried to put together Professional Book Writing School, but life got in my way. Remember, I spent over two decades struggling with serious health problems, which I have now, Baruch Ha’Shem, completely overcome. But during most of the past two decades, I was inconsistent and intermittent with my work habits, my clients, and my teaching.

Looking back, it’s amazing to me how much I managed to get done by just bulldozing through. When faced with allegedly insurmountable odds, some people take it easy, some people rely on the medical community, and some people give up. I just put my head down and worked. Not fast, not always well, but through the best and the worst of it, I worked.

And then I was facing the end.

It was 2000 and I had one of those “life-changing” episodes during a downward health spiral that told me I was coming to the end of my days. But I had a client! How could I transition to the next world and leave my client up in the air?  So I handed the client over to one of my interns and started pricing funerals.

I won’t keep you in suspense–I didn’t die. In fact, with the help of my beautiful sister-by-love, Bera Dordoni, N.D. (Bastis Foundation), I began the long journey back to perfect and total health. But it was an eye-opening experience and I realized I had to write a book. And so I did.

And I rewrote it.

And rewrote it.

And so and so forth and scooby dooby do.

The final edition of said book, Secrets of a Ghostwriter: World’s First Step-by-Step Guide to the Theory, Skills, and Politics of Ghostwriting, is at long last complete and exhaustively emended by five wonderful, nit-picky editors. And Ghostwriter Certification Training has evolved from a 5-week to a 7-week to a 14-week and soon to be 16-week program that details exactly what the job is, how to do the job, how to find aspiring authors to do the job for, and how to convert those authors into contracted clients.

Which may be the actual reason why I continue to teach GCT. After putting in all this time and effort to develop what Cora Foerstner called “the seminal text” on the subject and honing the program to the point that I’m confident it’s turning out skilled, competent ghostwriters, how can I stop?

But I warn you now: in fall, the price is going up. Because yeah–I don’t make enough money at this right now!

Certification training gives you an edge not only in the marketplace, but in doing the actual job of ghostwriting. It takes you out of the league of “just another writer” and elevates you to top-professional status.

Scads of people call themselves ghostwriters today, but the sad truth is many are not prepared to deal with their clients’ Pride of Authorship or stream-of-consciousness structuring or sequence-of-events plotting. They don’t know how to establish their authority and command $35,000 or more per project. They don’t understand the psychology of doing an A&R or the differences between the author’s process and the ghostwriter’s process.

Certified Ghostwriters know all this and lots, lots more. If you or someone you know is struggling to make a living as a freelance writer, Ghostwriter Certification Training may be the best way to launch a prosperous 2010!

Want more information? Go to http://claudiasuzanne.com/gct

Click Here to take survey

Thank you very much. – Claudia Suzanne

As with any conference, there was no way to absorb all the fantastic information being offered FOR FREE by the myriad presenters. But unlike costly in-person conferences, you could drop in on any workshop at any time to catch up with what was going on, post a question, or throw in your own two cents.

The MUSE Online Writers Conference is Lea Schizas’ brainchild, and she runs it almost single-handedly and, again, for FREE.

If you want to take advantage of one of the greatest Internet writer opportunities, sign up now for next year’s conference at http://ca.groups.yahoo.com/group/2010MuseConferenceRegistration/.
Trust me, you won’t regret it. This conference is FANTASTIC!!

My Podcast Alley feed! {pca-b9df6f07322dd154c6c3d9c239daacf4}

You’ll learn:

• What Ghostwriting Is — and Isn’t
  
• For Writers: Why Ghost instead of Co-Author?
• For Aspiring Authors: Why Use a Ghostwriter?
  
• Common Traits Most Ghosts Share
• Want Ghosting Clients? Here’s the Secret!
  

Wednesday, July 29, 2009 ~ 3:30 PM EDT

FREE!!

Click Here To Register

Sponsored by National Association of Independent Writers and Editors