A FEW OF MY MANY MEMORABLE CAREER EXPERIENCES …

 

I have been honored to serve and to work with and for many riveting clients, in genres that run the gamut—narrative nonfiction, memoirs, novels, and screen adaptations. I am humbled and astounded by the experiences I have been blessed to enjoy during my unforeseeable ghostwriting career…

    • I’ve had dinners cooked for me by a legendary retired FBI Special Agent and his former FBI agent wife in their beachside house (they could’ve hosted a top chef show).
    • Spent time interviewing a nation’s President in his home (and his chief of staff later served as best man at my wedding).
    • Ate lunch in the sprawling hillside home of an NFL star/action movie star/reality TV star with his pretty, intense wife.
    • Lived for a week in the 9,000 square-feet guest house of a “larger than life” TV Producer-Director who lived up the hill in his 25,000 square-feet home with a stunning view of the ocean and a basement movie theater that sat 30.
    • Shared meals with tech CEOs and movie producers at restaurants so elite there’s no name out front.
    • Got married in the mansion of an African tribal chief and oil multimillionaire.
    • Ate sandwiches in the kitchen of a major video game company exec (whose wife was a member of the longest-performing, international, all-girl music group and co-host of a hit American variety TV series), with him and a producer of several blockbuster movies.
    • Sat face-to-face in a nerve-wracking, day-long interview in a hotel suite with a former Imperial Wizard of the KKK.
    • Snacked on chickpea falafel balls in a hookah bar in the West Bank, playing Basra into the night with cooks, Internet entrepreneurs, and furniture makers.
    • Treaded with white Bengal tigers on set in eastern Australia.
    • Spent a year working with two Army/Delta Command Master Sergeants on their TV series scripts (and Deltas never talk about…).
    • Pub crawled Manhattan with a banking heir and his cop pal (who, of course, parked only at No Standing signs and badged us in everywhere after hours—and whose brother is a former Pac 12 and NBA coach).
    • Walked where Jesus first publicly revealed his deity (at Jacob’s Well in Nablus, to a Samaritan woman).
    • Interviewed an AWOL Iraqi army officer just months before the second US invasion of Iraq who, in a harrowing escape through Asia, made it to Los Angeles (then vanished into America two weeks after our troops entered Baghdad).
    • Had sushi and saké with a low-key San Francisco double unicorn in a restaurant you can’t leave without a tab over half a grand, then walked back to his office to sign our contract.
    • Stood on the mountaintop in the West Bank where Moses gave God’s Ten Commandments to the Jewish nation.
    • Served as a creative advisor to a CEO of one of the three largest investment banks on the planet.
    • Brought a then-unknown Australian actress to America who sat on the plane, head in my lap, barfing all the way to Los Angeles, and went on to star in two of the biggest US network TV hits of the early 2000s.
    • Drank ouzo with Greek writers at the water’s edge on the island of Hydra from late afternoon till the cherry sunrise matched our eyes and it was time to start writing again.
    • Have been interviewed by renowned national and international TV, radio, and print reporters.
    • Guided an Israeli cybersecurity expert in the protocols of self-presentation in the analog world (and was rewarded with two boxes of her aunt’s addictive homemade sugar cookies).
    • Had a tad too many margaritas at a back corner table with the writer of two iconic modern American movies who wanted to write a screenplay about me (like I said, too many margaritas), and later produced a competition reality TV series pilot and hired him as a host on the show (read about the show on IMDB here and watch it here).
    • And finally, I haven’t written a book about it yet, but I was the lead singer-songwriter of a Los Angeles rock band called The Bricks!, which toured the southwest US, released one album, and had a blast playing local clubs such as The Whisky, The Troubadour, The Roxy, and many other Hollywood venues from ’85 to ’90 (see album cover here).
    • At last, in my spare time, I invented and patented a new energy creation and distribution device called ChargeBar …one year before PowerShare was patented (see the video, ad, and deck here).

…The list of my career experiences goes on and on. And it all started in those burned-out South Los Angeles streets, navigating a deadly riot with major gang leaders, camera in one hand and Mossberg pump in the other (see a video demo of the book here).

Yet, one of my most memorable experiences of them all was the week I spent interviewing children who were suffering from a bizarre medical mystery, a genetic disorder called ataxia-teleangiectasia, which slowly steals all physical function from their body until they die—usually well before they finish their teens. The unnatural wisdom and insight of these innocent young kids made me feel I was truly in the presence of angels unawares.

 

Thank you for taking the time to read a few snippets of some of my more memorable career encounters. Incredibly, I didn’t plan any of these amazing experiences in advance–which makes me all the more grateful and humbled to have been invited into the lives of so many incredible people over the years. (And there are so many others I’ve met and am meeting to this day who have equally enriched my life.)

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