Ghostwriter
Joe Polizzi
You’ve lived a life worth telling.
Let’s make sure it’s told right.
Whether your life story has been shaped by challenge, adventure, love or loss, there comes a time when you want to set it down. Not just for yourself, but for those who matter most.
You might want your grandchildren to know who you really were. Or perhaps there are moments you’ve carried for years, and now feels like the time to let them breathe on the page.
You may also want to honour those who shaped you, to give voice to the people who lifted you, challenged you, or changed your life. To make sure they’re never forgotten.
If you want to turn your life into a book, I’ll help you do it with complete discretion and in a tone that sounds like you. You can keep it as a digital manuscript or have it professionally printed and published - your choice.
If you can talk about your life, I can turn it into a story worth reading
You don’t need to know how to write.
You don’t need to know where to begin.
You only need the willingness to speak.
You bring the memories and I’ll do the rest
What follows is a calm, step-by-step process that makes it easy to bring your story to life. Clearly, honestly and in your own voice.
You’re not alone if…
You’ve always meant to write your story, but life got in the way
You’re not a writer, or have no desire to become one
You wonder if your story is too much, or not enough
You’re worried about privacy, or what people might think
You need someone you can trust with painful or private truths
I don’t just write your story. I make the telling feel safe, respectful and surprisingly easy. Many clients have said our interview sessions felt like therapy: reflective, energising and cathartic.
My credentials in brief - and what you can expect
30+ years of storytelling as an award-winning journalist and ghostwriter.
Author (under pseudonym) - Hazel Crane, Queen of Diamonds: Testimony from Beyond the Grave
Author - If Today Be Sweet.
Past clients include public figures, private families, trauma survivors.
One project at a time. Near-unlimited access.
Never formulaic. Always voice-first.
What you’ll walk away with
A beautifully written manuscript in your voice
The option to publish, gift, or keep private
The relief of having your story told – clearly, professionally, and with dignity
Why clients choose me
People come to me for many reasons, but they all want the same thing. To feel heard. To be understood. And to trust the person who is helping them tell their story.
Clients trust me because I offer:
Iron-clad confidentiality through a binding NDA
Precision from decades of journalism - every fact checked, every word earned
Calm, human connection - no pressure, no performance, just steady presence
Empathy grounded in experience - including personal loss, exile and the trauma of starting over
Proven results - every client who has commissioned a short-form piece has gone on to request a full-length book
What the process actually looks like
Telling your story can feel like a big step. My job is to make each part of the journey feel simple, steady and under your control.
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We begin with a short video call. No scripts, no forms, just a chance to talk face-to-face and explore what you’re thinking about.
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If you’d like to test the waters first, you can start with a Mini Memoir. This is a short piece of between 2,000 and 10,000 words that captures a key moment, chapter or experience. If you later move ahead with a full book, part or all of the cost is credited toward that.
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Together, we decide whether your book will be a full-length autobiography of around 80,000 words, a mid-length memoir focused on a specific theme or time, or something shorter. You don’t need to decide this alone. I’ll guide you through the options and help you find the shape that feels right, in a way that feels steady and supportive.
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Once we’ve settled on the scope, I provide a clear, simple agreement that outlines what’s included. This includes a confidentiality clause that protects your privacy at every stage. There are no hidden fees, and nothing begins without your full understanding and approval.
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Each week, we meet by video call for an hour or two. The audio is recorded so nothing gets lost, and you can stay fully present in the telling.
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I write chapter by chapter and share drafts with you in a private Google Doc. You can make changes, ask questions, or simply enjoy watching your manuscript grow.
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You decide what stays in, what is revised and what remains private. Nothing is published, printed or shared without your permission. You can choose to release your book under your own name; under a pseudonym if you want it to appear to be written about you rather than by you; or even under the name of a loved one if you wish to give them credit.
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If you want your story turned into a printed book or digital edition, I can help with layout, design and uploading to the platform of your choice via discreet third party professionals.
Formats to fit your story
You get to choose how your story is told.
It can be written in the first person, in your own voice. For example:
I was born in the back of a car during a thunderstorm, and my mother always said it explained everything that came after.
Or it can be written in the third person, with a more biographical tone. For example:
Hazel Crane made untold millions by daring to challenge the system.
In this case, it can be written under a pseudonym. Or you can also choose to credit the writing to someone else. Some clients ask for their story to be told in the name of a family member.
We’ll discuss what approach feels right for you. There’ll be no pressure - this is your life, your story. I’ll guide you through unfamiliar territory, but you always get the final say.
Not sure which format suits you best?
That’s something we can explore together during our first conversation.
Memoir
A memoir can be anything from 40,000 to 80,000 words and focuses on a particular time, theme or experience. It doesn’t tell your entire life story. Instead, it captures meaning from a specific chapter - such as a period of transformation, survival, love, loss or legacy.
Autobiography
An autobiography tells the full story of your life. It usually runs closer to 80,000 words and follows a clear, structured path from your early years through to the present. It can include personal moments, professional history, relationships, values and lessons learned.
Mini memoir or feature biography
These shorter pieces range from 2,000 to 10,000 words. They are ideal for tributes, milestone gifts, media kits or family keepsakes. They capture the essence of a life or a single moment with clarity, insight and precision. These can also serve as a first step before committing to a full-length book.
Your story. Your name. Your rights. Always.
When we work together, your privacy is fully protected from the beginning.
What a ghostwriter does
As your ghostwriter, I help you tell your story in your voice. I stay entirely in the background. The finished book belongs to you. My name does not appear anywhere. No one will ever know I was involved unless you choose to tell them.
Total confidentiality from day one
At the very start of our work together, I sign a legally binding Non-Disclosure Agreement. This means that everything you share with me stays private. Nothing you say, write or reveal will ever be repeated or disclosed.
You own everything
Once your final payment is made, I formally sign over full copyright and intellectual property rights to you. The story is yours in every sense. You can keep it private, share it with family, publish it, or turn it into something more.
All royalties are yours
If you decide to publish your story and it earns royalties from book sales, film rights or television adaptations, all income goes directly to you. I do not retain any claim or credit. I do not receive a percentage. There are no hidden conditions.
It will be as If I was never there
You remain the sole author in the eyes of the world. The story is yours to tell, to share and to shape however you choose.
A glimpse into the work
Every story is different. Some are shared publicly. Others remain private. Here are three I can speak about, each handled with care and intention.
Hazel Crane in her native Belfast, three years before her murder in South Africa - a killing linked to organised crime figures in Israel.
Hazel Crane: A life of risk and resolve
Queen of Diamonds: Testimony from Beyond the Grave is the biography of Hazel Crane, an extraordinary woman whose life unfolded at the centre of organised crime, international smuggling and political shadow networks. She made powerful enemies and was murdered before the book could be published. It was written in the third person and released under a pseudonym to protect myself and my family from the very real risk of reprisals.
With time, the risk associated with the project has diminished, and I can now acknowledge my role as the author having never signed away that right.
All proceeds from the book were donated to women’s charities in South Africa.
I do, however, regret stepping away after handing the manuscript to the publishers, Spearhead. I was ultimately dissatisfied with the design and promotion of the book. I have never made that mistake again and now remain fully attentive to every detail of a book’s publication. You live and learn.
The story was later optioned by Robson Green’s Coastal Productions for development as a limited television series, and I was brought on as a consultant. In the end, complex legal considerations meant the project could not move forward. Still, it was another valuable experience that has shaped the way I support my clients today.
Bill Boyes: A life behind the lens
Award-winning television producer Bill Boyes spent over 25 years working on both sides of the Atlantic, with credits including Traffic, Wire in the Blood, Carrie’s War, and Some Kind of Life.
He collaborated with major names in film and television and played a key role in shaping stories that reached global audiences, including productions that went on to receive Emmy and BAFTA nominations.
I wrote both a feature biography and a mini memoir for Bill - two distinct, short-form pieces that captured his professional journey and personal reflections.
The biography provided a feature-style overview of his career, while the memoir focused on a vivid chapter from his life: an unforgettable encounter with modern-day pirates in the Philippines while researching for a film project.
Bill’s story was filled with rich material. From interviewing combatants during the Northern Ireland conflict to drinking with diamond smugglers in South Africa, his experiences lent themselves perfectly to a blend of biography and narrative.
It was a pleasure to help shape Bill’s voice on the page, and a reminder that some of the most compelling stories are lived behind the camera.
Jenny Zlattner: A survivor’s voice
The Gate is the first-person autobiography of Jenny Zlattner, who fled Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia as a child. From the age of twelve, she had kept handwritten diaries that traced not only her dramatic physical escape, but the long emotional journey that followed; through loss, survival, rebuilding and the quiet dignity of family life in later years.
Her story is filled with haunting and intimate detail. Childhood friendships fractured by antisemitism. Family torn apart by war. And later, moments of unexpected joy and resilience.
I was honoured to help Jenny shape those time-worn pages into a book that her family could hold, read and pass down. I took on this project without seeking profit. It was done as a favour to her son, but more than that, I was deeply moved by Jenny’s courage and voice. It remains one of the most profound privileges of my career to help preserve her memories for future generations.
Other recent works (under NDA)
Additional ghostwritten works (under iron-clad Non Disclosure Agreements) include:
An elite military veteran - public autobiography & (to date, private) memoir (2019/20)
The wife of a former Ulster Loyalist hitman – a private memoir (2021)
A Sicilian nobleman – a private autobiography (2022)
An award-winning landscape gardener – public memoir, published as print on demand and digital (2024)
My story: A life in journalism
After the 1988 Zimbabwe National Journalism Awards - That’s me, second from left, with colleagues and friends
Before I began ghostwriting full-time, I spent over three decades telling real-life stories as a journalist - starting at the age of sixteen.
My first bylines appeared in The Sunday News, the weekly newspaper in my hometown in Zimbabwe. I was still at school, and learning to ask questions with a notebook in hand. One of my early mentors was Lawrence Chikuwira, the paper’s long-serving editor and a man of quiet resolve. He stood firmly for editorial independence at a time when doing so came with real risk. His example stayed with me.
In my late teens, I joined The Financial Gazette - the only independent newspaper operating in Zimbabwe at the time. It was a courageous paper reporting the truth in the face of a hostile regime.
I was detained, beaten and tortured twice in the line of work. Eventually, I made the painful decision to leave the country for the sake of my young family.
In Northern Ireland, I began again - first as a freelance reporter, and later as a full-time production journalist with Mirror Group Newspapers. I spent seven years with national tabloid The Sunday People, and went on to contribute in one form or another to several other papers in the following decade, including The Irish Independent, The Slough Observer, Swindon Advertiser, Oxford Mail and Wiltshire Gazette & Herald.
Over the years, I have written thousands of stories about real people. My work has been recognised with national awards for investigative reporting and feature writing. But the greatest reward has always been the trust of those who allowed me to tell their stories.
I bring that same care, clarity and respect to every memoir and biography I write.
Writing Samples
A few brief excerpts from past projects, included here with permission or shared in honour of those no longer with us. You can also download longer samples as PDFs if you would like to read more.
Hazel Crane, Queen of Diamonds: Testimony from Beyond the Grave
Hazel Crane made untold millions by daring to challenge the system.
She clawed her way up from the grim streets of Belfast to a glittering mansion in designer Johannesburg.
She brought the chauvinist barons of business and organised crime to their knees.
She broke the law, single-handedly outwitting and humiliating whole teams of top cops.
She manipulated the courtship of powerful men, profiting from their greed and leaving them broken and confused in her wake.
But she made bitter enemies of dangerous men. They began by murdering people close to her. Then, on the morning of Monday November 10, 2003, they gunned down Hazel in cold blood.
But even in death, she was never going to be silenced.
This book is her legacy. Her indomitable spirit lives on in its pages…
Hazel Crane aged 12, and as she was not long before her murder by Israeli mobsters
Jenny Zlattner, The Gate
"I ran to Anuta's, having forgotten that she was with her friends. All three of them stood at her tall gate and, as I drew near, a handful of sand hit me. They were behaving disgracefully. ‘DIRTY JEW! GET! JEW! BLOODY SWINE! GO TO PALESTINE! JEW! JEW! WE DON'T WANT YOU HERE!’ The three of them chased me all the way to my house, throwing sand at me whilst I ran from them.
“I did not know why. What had happened to my good friend Anuta? How could she behave so horribly to me? I arrived home covered with grit, my red and white polka dress and hair ribbon spoiled. I was crying – sick at heart from what Anuta had done. I could not forget it. What was ‘Palestine’? A sickness? A hell? A heaven? Why did they want to send me to Palestine? What for?
“Over and over I thought about the incident – I could not get it out of my mind."
Feature biography: Bill Boyes
With a background in investigative journalism, TV producer Bill Boyes understands the importance of getting to the business end of a story in the quickest possible time.
“You’ve got to be able to boil a story down to two lines. The first 15 seconds of your pitch. It could be the most important quarter minute of your life,” he says.
Boyes would know. He’s pitched enough ideas in his time, and turned on enough green lights: He’s produced on both sides of the Atlantic in a career spanning 25 years and seen his shows garner Emmy and BAFTA nominations. He has worked with such luminaries as comic genius Spike Milligan, Oscar nominees Brenda Blethyn, Julie Walters, Kris Kristofferson and any number of other globally recognisable names…
Mini memoir (3rd person): Bill Boyes
It was like walking onto the famed Star Wars cantina set – except that this was a very real bar full of very real modern day pirates.
I had arrived in the Philippines that morning for a prearranged rendezvous with a friendly local cop. He was supposed to ‘make it possible’ for me to have a face-to-face with one of the most notorious seafaring scoundrels on the South China Seas. However, he had smilingly told me, the meeting was no longer possible – our pirate captain had been shot dead while trying to escape police custody the day before…
From the blog Here, After
Some time ago, I began a reflective blog called Here, After as a personal tribute to colleagues and friends from my early years as a reporter in Africa. These short pieces - mini memoirs, in a way - have helped me process the grief of their passing and honour the impact they had on my life.
Lawrence Chikuwira
So here I sit opposite the jiggling editor of a provincial newspaper in post-colonial Bulawayo, the industrial capital of Zimbabwe. Mr Chikuwira is not agitated because of me – I’m to learn that this is how he always is, he simply can’t sit still. He is, in fact, unfazed that I am a long-haired 16-year-old in a scruffy school uniform (preppy Christian Brothers’ College where I’m constantly taking hidings for that long hair and scruffy uniform). He is interested in hearing me out – it’s not every day a shabby white schoolboy waltzes in and asks for a job as a reporter on a predominantly black newspaper…
Tichaona Mkuku
Tich is small but perfectly formed, immaculate in tailor-made suit, Jacquard necktie, gleaming patent leather shoes. One of his favourite quotes is ‘the clothes maketh the man’. “People sometimes think I am arrogant. How can one be arrogant when one is so beautiful?”
He grins now at my reaction to his gift: A semi-automatic pistol in very good nick in spite of its age – this is a pre-World War II Tokarev, the TT-30 to be precise, still in use to this day in the Soviet, Chinese and Korean armies…
Tich Mkuku, RIP
Sidney Malunga
Sidney laughs and the whole world laughs with him – it’s infectious, a deep rumble, slow and satisfying. He’s doing it to reassure those in the car with him, after announcing before we got in that his life has been threatened again.
“These people,” he grins, “must realise that I am not afraid of death – it’s debt that kills me.”
His driver, Jacob, clicks his tongue in mock disgust and chuckles too. He tells me afterwards that if he is to die with anyone, he can’t think of a better person than Mr Sidney Malunga, MP…
Ready to explore whether this is for you?
No invasive forms to fill out. No hard sell. Just a quiet, respectful conversation to see what feels right for you.
If you’re ready to talk, I’m ready to listen.
FAQs
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You do. Once the final payment is made, all copyright and intellectual property rights are formally transferred to you. The story is entirely yours - to keep private, share with family, publish, or adapt for streaming, film or other media if you choose. Any royalties or income from books, screen rights or future adaptations belong solely to you. I retain no claim, credit or percentage.
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Yes, unless you choose otherwise. As your ghostwriter, I remain entirely in the background. My name will not appear anywhere unless you ask for it. You can publish under your own name, a pseudonym, or even credit a loved one if you wish.
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Completely. From day one, I sign a legally binding Non-Disclosure Agreement. Everything you share with me stays confidential. Nothing is published, printed or even mentioned beyond our work unless you give explicit permission.
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That’s more common than you might think. I bring deep empathy and careful listening to every project, especially those that involve loss, trauma or sensitive personal truths. We move at your pace, and you always decide what stays in the final version.
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Absolutely. Many clients begin with a Mini Memoir or Feature Biography - a short-form piece between 2,000 and 10,000 words that captures a moment, theme or chapter of your life. If you later move ahead with a full-length book, part or all of that fee is deducted from the total. To date, every client who’s commissioned a short piece has chosen to continue to a full-length manuscript.
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That almost never happens, but if it does I’ll work with you to get it right. You’ll receive chapters regularly as the manuscript develops, and you’ll have access to a private Google Doc where you can leave comments, ask questions or suggest changes. This is a collaborative process, and your satisfaction is essential.
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A full-length memoir or autobiography typically takes 4 to 6 months, depending on length, complexity and your availability for interviews. Shorter projects are often completed in anything from just a few days to a couple of weeks.
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That’s entirely your choice. Many clients create books purely for family or personal reasons. Some choose to publish later. Others never do. Whether your story is printed, shared or kept private, it remains fully yours.