A Ghost Writers Blog

All over the Internet, blogs celebrate Wordless Wednesday by posting images instead of writing.  As a writers blog, we must protest.  And what better way to protest than to post an image of what just might be the longest headline in a mainstream newspaper?

The version above was shared by Amy Vernon, and is pretty long and humorous.  But after it was captured and shared it on social media, the headline was altered, adding a word and replacing three words with longer ones, making the following headline even longer…

Can long headlines work?  I would say this is an example of when they can. A long, startling headline with plenty of words.

These pictures might not be worth a thousand words, but for Wordless Wednesday they’ll do.

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It is always exciting when one of our client books gets media coverage, but when both the client and our writer are mentioned at the same time, it is an extra special event. That is just what happened a couple weeks ago in the Canton Repository.

The article is about H.P. Stephenson’s new work of fiction, in which he gave our writer Kathryn Tedrick co-authorship (usually our authors remain ghost writers).  Appropriately enough, this book straddles the realms of science fiction and fantasy, Kathryn’s two specialty genres.

It’s the third item in this round-up article. Here is what it says:

Akron author Kathryn Tedrick, along with co-author H.P. Stephenson, has put a new modern twist on a popular subject — vampires — while “returning to the roots of sci-fi,” says the publisher of “War of the Staffs: Quest for the Staff of Adaman.”

The novel is the first book in the proposed “War of the Staffs” trilogy about “a myriad of mythical creatures.”

“ ‘War of the Staffs’ is a fresh new series for all those who love dragons, wizards, elves, dwarves, and mayhem,” said Tedrick in publicity material for the book.

Tedrick, who writes articles for magazines and websites, also has ghost written several books.

Sorry, but this will be just a little humorous.  I am a self help author, among other things, and I think I received a backhanded complement recently, which I just blogged about at my happiness blog.

Just because I feel like it, I will reproduce that blog post, “Happiness books versus real books“, here:

Lloyd Garver of the Norwich Bulletin is obviously not a big fan of happiness books, but at least he refers to mine as… ”Some of these popular happy books include, ‘Climb your Stairway to Heaven: The 9 Habits of Maximum Happiness’“.

The problem with Mr. Garver is probably not so much his grumpiness, but his poor sense of direction.  See what else he says, “The reason you can’t find the kind of book you’re looking for is that all the self-help books about how to be happy fill up the shelves. Ironically, this makes some of us quite unhappy.”

Fortunately for us and for the sake of clarity, he does specify what kind of book you’re looking for.  A real book.  Hey, those are his words, not mine.

If books about happiness and self-help are not what he is looking for, why is he looking in the self-help section?  I have to assume he is simply lost, because obviously he won’t find any real books there.  Either that, or he is a very grumpy man with a great sense of theatrics (not to mention irony).  And nothing makes a grumpy person grumpier than a happy person saying to him, “Smile!”  (Yes, grumpy people really, really hate happy photographers!)

If the bookstores would kindly provide visitors with maps when they enter the store, people who don’t want to be happy can avoid accidentally finding themselves surrounded by all those threatening smiley faces.  And they can get on with the business of finding “real books”, which apparently bookstores don’t seem to stock anymore.

That oughta solve the problem.

Hmm…I wonder what he would think of a happiness blog.