Orphans: A Short Story by William Hammett

[The following was originally published in the Rose & Thorn Journal in 2007 and is based on my personal experience in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.]  

The indifferent gray clouds had rolled away twelve hours earlier, leaving a blinding, blue, unreachable sky in their place.  I paddled slowly through the toxic soup, dipping the splintered oar soundlessly so as not to create even the smallest splash if possible.  Oil, gasoline, and a thousand chemicals normally kept under kitchen sinks created rainbow slicks on the floodwaters, horrible impressionist paintings lumped together on a canvas a hundred miles wide.  Katrina was gone now, but she had marched through Louisiana like a scorned woman, kicking in doors and uprooting trees with her high-pitched, demonic howls.

The steep pitch of roofs was evident everywhere, the homes they covered submerged in the smooth, new lake.  V-shaped gables jutted above the water like small black army tents.  Most were uninhabited, but a few arms waved lethargically from broken attic windows.  Occasionally, a man or woman could be seen sitting on the apex of a roof, balanced precariously as the sun beat mercilessly on the gritty tar and fiberglass shingles.

I kept my small wooden fishing boat, able to hold two more people, away from any signs of human life.  There were hundreds of stranded individuals, some clinging tenaciously to weeping willow branches, attempting to stay a few feet above the waters of Lake Pontchartrain, waters that had filled the gaudy, drunk, forsaken Crescent City as soon as the weathered, decaying levees had been breached.  But who would be saved and who would die from weakness, starvation, or dehydration?  I’d already seen a small pleasure boat attacked by a desperate family that had jumped from a third-story window of a suburban apartment building.  The six family members had ruthlessly thrown the three occupants of the boat overboard, swamping the craft in the process.  Flailing arms created wavelets as curses broke a silence palpable as the death that hung over the inundated city.

I drew my conclusion early on: salvation would be an arbitrary matter, and only God, assuming he still watched over the urban hell before me, would be able to judge whether my actions were righteous or cruel.  It was that simple.

My boat bumped into a corpse as I backed away from a row of homes where a dozen people, having chopped through roofs with axes to escape their windowless attics, urgently waved shirts to attract my attention.  The old black woman in the water had been dead at least thirty-six hours judging from the bloated condition of the corpse.  Her belly had already split open, her eyes rolled back in their sockets, lifeless white orbs staring at the sky.  I pushed the body away and twisted the paddle between the palms of my hands, as if starting a campfire, in order to shake the maggots from the broadest part of the wood.

I was moving into Chalmette—the ninth ward—where Katrina had slammed houses and businesses until they stood at a forty-five degree angle, like a stadium crowd leaning to see if the fullback has made it over the goal line.  Some structures were crushed altogether—billboards, fences, street signs, and tool sheds.  Ahead, the roots of an oak stuck out like a claw, the two-hundred-year-old tree having been plucked from the sod and dropped on its side like a feeble giant.

I paddled around it, and that’s when I saw the head of the waif: a red-haired girl, no more than seven.  Her dirty face protruded from the top of a chimney.  She said nothing, only stared as my skiff quietly glided up to the bricks that constituted her temporary home.

“Climb in,” I said. 

She stared at me blankly, saying nothing.

“Are you alone?” 

She remained silent, which was just as good.  I instinctively knew the answer to my question.  Answers were everywhere, written in rubble and debris and nine feet of water.  Of course she was alone.

“Get in the boat,” I instructed as I stood, my arms extended.  “You’ll be safe.”

The orphan didn’t move, so I gently lifted her from the chimney and placed her on the narrow rectangular seat behind mine.  She clutched a stuffed, waterlogged animal that could have been a teddy bear, a monkey, or a dragon.  It, too, had died.

“We’re going someplace safe,” I told her.

One hundred yards farther on, I saw an old black man sitting cross-legged on a wooden palette that had obviously drifted through the doors of a warehouse.  He played a cheap Stella guitar, and his gravelly voice sang of a woman who had left him for a rich man in New York City.

“Need a ride?” I asked, not intending to be glib.  He was free to join the girl or float along and play the blues, for which he was more than qualified.

“I suspect I might,” he said.  “Not much of an audience left.”

“No,” I said.  “Not much.”

He handed me his guitar and carefully climbed into the boat, sitting next to the girl. 

Overhead, a Coast Guard helicopter sped northward, its plump orange and white body plainly visible in the midday sun.  I knew it was headed for a rescue station up ahead, though its distance might be two miles or a hundred.

I paddled faster, passing more than a dozen people pleading for me to stop and offer them transportation.  A dog barked as he swam toward the boat.  The black man pulled him over the edge, where he shook his wet fir, sending a spray of foul water over my adopted crew.  He wouldn’t threaten our survival.  A metal urn flew over my head and landed in the water ten feet to starboard, commentary from someone I was forced to pass up.

Three hours later, the gray water grew shallow as I saw a hundred men and women planted on high ground, little fence posts forming an irregular line of survival.  The black man continued to sing his down-and-out blues as we approached a section of levee that had somehow withstood the twenty-foot tidal surge.  A woman in an orange life vest—unmistakably Coast Guard—helped the girl and the old man from the boat.  The dog jumped out and ran down the levee, disappearing in the odd assortment of survivors, their faces as blank and unfeeling as the girl’s.

Gently, I backed the skiff away from the levee.

“Don’t do it, mister!” the woman in the orange vest warned me.  “It’s not safe out there!”

No, it wasn’t safe, but life hadn’t had anything to do with safety since the cyclonic white clouds had swirled across the Gulf of Mexico two days earlier.  In less than a minute, I was twenty-five yards from the levee.  The woman turned away, uninterested in the actions of a fool like me.

Strains from the black man’s cheap guitar floated over the water while the little girl raised her hand and waved goodbye, her arm as limp as the appendages of her stuffed animal.

It was morning of the first day, and God had breathed over the abyss.  Dry land had yet to completely take form, and salvation was years in the future.  A new testament between the Creator and his people could not be imagined as I once again threaded my way through cypress trees and people waiting to be born.

~William Hammett

Copyright William Hammett 2007, 2026

Index of Articles

William Hammett Profile and BIO

William Hammett is a professional ghostwriter and editor with more than twenty-five years of full-time experience working across fiction and nonfiction. His work includes memoir, literary and genre fiction, and complex nonfiction, often involving sensitive material, high-stakes subject matter, or long-form projects requiring discretion and structural rigor.

He has collaborated with published authors, novelists, public figures, and professionals across a wide range of fields, and much of his work involves expanding or sustaining established writing projects and narrative fiction franchises. His practice emphasizes ethical collaboration, confidentiality (NDA plus contractual), and narrative intelligence rather than formulaic production.

He is adept at utilizing a client’s narrative voice or desired style, adapting the correct tone and rhythm to match the needs of a given project. He is a literary ghostwriter with multiple advanced university degrees and received academic training in editing, textual analysis, and literary criticism. With intimate knowledge of publishing and the literary marketplace, Hammett offers verified testimonials from past clients and has an extensive online collection of fiction and nonfiction writing samples (forty-two) on his website.

In addition to ghostwriting and editorial work, Hammett publishes fiction under his own name. His novel John Lennon and the Mercy Street Café (2007) has been taught in university courses on magical realism, and his short fiction and poetry have appeared in over two hundred respected literary journals. Recent titles include Street Magic, The Ghost of Richard Brautigan, Rimsky Rises (YA), and Circling Goes the Wind (middle reader). All are available commercially on Amazon.

He forwards work in installments and conducts a final revision of all projects. He is skilled in working with source materials and partial manuscripts as well as with AI-generated rough drafts.  Fee structure is unique in that clients pay for professional time used rather than flat fees. In fiction, his preferred genres are science fiction, fantasy, horror, thriller, detective, mystery, romance, literary, and juvenile.

Queries from literary agents, editors, and serious collaborators are welcome. Hammett works selectively and values projects where craft, credibility, and long-form thinking matter more than speed or volume. Further information about scope and subject areas is available on his website.

Index of Articles

Ray Bradbury's ZEN IN THE ART OF WRITING

Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury is the best book on writing I have ever read.

The advice Bradbury gives? Sit down and start typing. If you don't have an idea, just tap the keys at random. Sooner or later, you will form words, sentences, and paragraphs.

Get in the flow, the zone. Eventually, you will have written a short story or a novel. It's simple, but it works.

Writer's block doesn't have to happen. Engage the gears in your brain, and good things will happen.

All the time. Really.

Cousin Dashiell Hammett

Samuel Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961) was a writer of hardboiled mysteries and produced works such as The Maltese Falcon, The Thin Man, The Dain Curse, The Glass Key, The Continental Op, and Red Harvest.

 

Dash, as he was known by his lover and friend Lillian Hellman, influenced writers such as Raymond Chandler and Erle Stanley Gardner, creator of the Perry Mason series. The modern detective genre wouldn’t exist without Dashiell Hammett.

 

He had a short, clipped prose style that would influence the spare sentence structure of Ernest Hemingway.

 

After digging through archives, I discovered he was my second cousin. And that’s pretty cool.

Index of Articles

Lovingkindness: The Most Beautiful Word in the English Language

This is a really short post because the word says it all.

The word is lyrical, beautiful, soothing, and rolls off the tongue.

It’s technical definition? The word naturally connotes a combination of love and kindness, but there is a synergy between the two concepts when they’re joined into “lovingkindness.” It represents a totality of compassion, mercy, kindness, love, forgiveness, and understanding.

 

To me, it’s almost mystical in meaning. Suffice it to say that if the world practiced lovingkindness, we would all be living in paradise by tomorrow.

 

It’s the only mantra anyone ever needs.

~William Hammett

Index of Articles

The Buddha's Tour Dates Have Been Canceled

Here's a bit of flash fiction, also called micro-fiction, that is 750 words or less. Or you can call it a short short story.

The Buddha's tour dates were cancelled, and ticket-holders have been refunded their money.  Sometimes the Buddha doesn't have much to say.  Often, he plays life close to the vest, sitting serenely like a potato trying to figure out its tuberous karma.  The Katmandu Gazette reports that he hasn't opened his eyes in several days.

His roadies have dismantled the Bodhi tree and the pagoda.  The tour hasn't been rescheduled, and some say that the cancellation is because the Buddha is consulting a gastroenterologist in Buffalo.  This is only speculation, and sources close to the Buddha have emphatically denied that his chakras are blocked.  Rolling Stone has written that the Buddha recently suffered a nervous breakdown after learning he'd fathered a love child.  The truth remains elusive, which is what you'd expect in such a situation.

Personally, I don't have a dog in the fight.  If truth is subjective, the tour was over a long time ago.  We can stare at kumquats.

~William Hammett

Index of Articles

Lucid Dreaming: The Pathway to Creativity

Paul Simon dreamed his latest album, titled Seven Psalms, into existence. It’s a great piece of music.

He had a dream during the pandemic in which a voice told him that his next project would be called Seven Psalms. He got up every night for ten months and wrote down words and music that came to him between 3:30 a.m. and 5 a.m. Simon’s dreams were normal, not lucid, but lucid dreams are even more exciting.

 

Robert Louis Stevenson usually got his ideas from dream incubation. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is the best-known example.

 

Lucid dreaming is the next step in learning from dreams.

 

Lucid dreaming happens when you become aware you’re dreaming, and that’s when the dreamscape becomes as real as waking reality. It’s an altered state that is within everyone’s grasp.

 

If you want to know what you should be writing or harvest characters or ideas from your subconscious, use lucid dreaming. In lucid dreams, you can interact with situations and people and have perfect control over the dream.

 

Try out a plot, ask what the next chapter should be, or allow the dream to show you possibilities you hadn’t thought of.

 

Explore. You are, after all, a writer. It’s what we do.

~William Hammett

Index of Articles

The Relationship Between Music and Writing

 Listening to music is one the ways that I tune my brain into the creative centers of my cerebral cortex. I especially like to listen to classical music—symphonies, string quartets, and trios are the most helpful—since there are so many things going on at once. (This why so few people listen to classical music. It’s demanding and calls for attention unless one turns it on as background music.) The main melody interacts with several other melodies at any given time, and both give way to the melodies of the next movement.

There is also a complex interplay between the various instruments. In a string quartet, for example, there are two violins, a viola, and a cello. They sometimes work with each, while at other times they “play off of each other”—supporting each other, if you will—and yet they all end up in the same place in the end. From diversity comes harmony and a unified theme.

 

When writing a novel, an author must juggle subplots and orchestrate (pardon the pun) the interactions of the many characters. And then there are the issues of foreshadowing, flashbacks, planting red herrings, description, narrative style. Everything must support the novel as a whole and come together in just the right fashion.

 

Music and art of any kind go hand in hand. That certainly holds true for music and writing. To write a novel is to compose a score.

 

Of course, I can get inspired by listening to the Beatles simply because their music makes me happy.

 

~William Hammett

Index of Articles

The Memory of You, 1976

It is from an earlier chapter
written decades ago, a page
penned before Jimmy Carter and Nixon’s ghost
briefly took the stage.

It was all real, not an idle diversion
or sabbatical from the courses I’d run.
No, young nymph, you were my dear,
and I trust you knew my love

was palm to palm and always near
wherever we took our sport:
the Quarter, the lake, some dark tavern
or theater in which our fingers were laced and lapped,

if you catch my drift.
You always knew my inner gears,
the turning of unspoken words,
some fleeting thought not yet formed by lips

otherwise engaged in moist red dances
or afternoon gin and tonic sips.
And I knew your eddies and currents as well.
Not everyone can cast such a synchronistic spell.

We could have talked in pidgin for hours
and always known the warp and woof,
known what was yours and mine,
but mostly ours.

I wrote a much longer poem,
a message in a bottle
with all the whys and wherefores
on a parchment in palimpsest,

a metaphysical conceit
that unlocked all locked doors,
but what purpose would be served?
Since you could not wait for time and tide forever,

it is fitting that all righteousness be observed.
I occasionally sit in an abbey nave,
quite alone, counting saints.
St. Peter says my eye to you should not now roam.

St. Jude whispers that you, with grace,
have found a shining hearth and home.
I am glad, and tell him so,
for I could wish no less

than spinning wheels and looms
for one whose tapestry was so rich
and held the promise of gold
in each and every stitch.

My lost horizon will always have a bookmark
to hold the page, the months that passed that year,
but your couplet deserved a fitting rhyme
when my meter stumbled and lost its cadence for a time.

Just know this, my ever-cherished love and friend:
you were indeed a rainbow coming around the bend
in my once upon a time. No less.
No less.

How to Hire a Ghostwriter

Download a free copy of my book HOW TO HIRE A GHOSTWRITER from my website at William Hammett -- Independent Ghostwriter. This book is a "must read" for anyone looking for a professional ghostwriter since the profession has no oversight or regulation. Don't trust your book to amateurs, moonlighters, or the inexperienced ghosts on the marketplaces where people post brief resumes filled with grammatical errors.

Also beware of ghostwriting companies, which subcontract their work to inexperienced writers across the country (contrary to their claims that their writers are on-staff or work in-house). I personally know most of the writers working for companies, and they're not centrally located or employees of these corporate entities.

You should also be aware that most ghostwriting companies recruit writers and categorize them as "student or apprentice" ghostwriters. Some companies are even establishing ghostwriting schools and academies in order to get more subcontractors to do their work. These rookies have no writing credits and have never written a full-length book or engaged in ghostwriting for money.

Companies show glowing testimonials for bestselling authors, but this is a case of bait and switch. A few  clients who can pay $75K to $150K may get a top writer, but the other 95% of their customers get a writer with few if any credits and no publications under his or her own name. Also, companies now advertise that they are known and respected by agents, editors, and publishers, but this simply isn't the case.

In HOW TO HIRE A GHOSTWRITER, you'll learn who the ghostwriters and companies really are--the ones advertising online. You'll learn the marketing strategies of ghostwriters and companies, their business models, and their POD and promotional package deals that are ineffective and designed to take your money while capitalizing on your ignorance of ghostwriting and publishing.

You'll also learn about my own background, how to more intelligently target your ghost, write a query email, how the ghostwriting process works, what you need to know before emailing prospective ghostwriters, and learn what your publishing options are. Do your due diligence. Don't spend thousands of dollars on a bad writer. Educate yourself and learn how to select a writer who is the right fit for your book. You'll only get one chance, so learn how to hire a ghostwriter.

I've been one of the country's leading ghostwriters for the past twenty years, and I know the profession from the inside. Thanks for stopping by.

~William Hammett

Looking for a Ghostwriter on Google? You're Wasting Your Money

If you're searching for a ghostwriter and are looking on Google, you're looking at paid ads put up by ghostwriting companies, freelancers, or ghostwriting marketplaces like fiverr, Upwork, and Odesk.

Ghostwriting has no oversight or regulation, and only 4% of people claiming to be ghostwriters are qualified to write a book. The websites you see in a Google search are filled with grammatical errors, even those with slick sites like the ghostwriting companies. Ghostwriting companies all call themselves "industry leaders." It's a lie. They subcontract work to freelancers all over the country, and these, according to one sales rep from a company I talked with recently, are "student and apprentice ghostwriters." Some companies have as many as 200-300 inexperienced writers who will write for low wages because they are moonlighters or unemployed and are desperate for money. They can's write.

How do I know this? Because I know who the ghostwriters are and have spoken with them. I have called the companies as a "mystery shopper" and discovered their secret, dishonest business models. I know the business from the inside.

Some companies claim that their writers are "on staff" and "in house." This is a lie. Again, I know their writers, and they are spread across all fifty states and other countries. And their writers produce some of the worst prose ever written.

As for the marketplaces, I've read thousands of resumes posted on these sites for years. I have never read a single one that was free of a major grammatical error and didn't have awkward phrasing in the one-paragraph pitch. These are the worst ghostwriters in the world.

As for most independent ghostwriters, their writing is pretty awful and filled with basic errors committed by grammar and high school students. And they know almost nothing about publishing. The reason that all of these people advertise is because the internet allows them to do so, and when people see their websites, they assume that they are legitimate or that Google somehow screens the sites for honesty and fair business practices. Google has no interest in anything except making money. Only 2% of those on Google are professionally trained writers who are qualified to be ghostwriters. But if you can't spot grammatical errors and know nothing of the publishing industry, you're not going to be able to select a competent writer.

I talk with people every week who tell me that they are interviewing several online ghostwriters. The problem is that everybody they interview is unqualified as a writer and ignorant of the publishing industry. No one they interview is remotely qualified to write a book. Millions of dollars are wasted every year since online ghostwriting is a scam industry except for the extremely small number of ghosts who are actually trained to write and edit, who know publishing, and who have a stellar track record.

But here is where the problem lies: people searching for a ghostwriter are always looking for a bestseller for the cheapest price they can find. But great ghostwriters don't work for low or "affordable" rates. People ignorant of writing and publishing invariably end up with bad work, and the irony is that they may not even know just how bad of a manuscript they've received because they can't spot the errors. The bottom line is "Gimme something cheap."

Most people want traditional publishing, but they don't understand how to get an agent or that getting an agent is next to imposible. They know nothing of small, regional, and independent presses, and they know little about Print-On-Demand. I have always tried to educate people on my website about the above issues, but people have been taken in by ghostwriting companies, thinking that a corporate image, as well as the hype and lies on company websites, means that they're about to become part of mainstream New York City publishing. This is as ridiculous as it is sad. Ghostwriting companies are nothing more than glorified POD companies.

And if you see glowing testimonials on company websites, it's because the companies use bait and switch techniques. They will give a very small number of celebrities or CEOs a good writer for a price of $75,000 to $150,000. This is to lure people into thinking that they are major players in the publishing industry. But the truth is that most clients pay small fees to inexperienced writers--subcontractors--all over the country.

If you don't educate yourself about ghostwriting and publishing, you're going to choose a bad writer. And almost everyone is bad because online ghostwriting is a business model, not a craft or an art. I am amazed at how few pages people read on my website, pages that alert people to these hard facts. They want a cheap book, and that's what they get: cheap.

Caveat emptor. Buyer beware.

Dan Brown's ORIGIN

Dan Brown's new novel, Origin, is causing people to debate this very successful author yet again. The first question people ask is, "Is Dan Brown a good writer?" The answer from most is a resounding, "No." His style is quite simple and written at grade-school level. A prose stylist he is not, a point that a majority of literary critics agree on.

Many say that Brown just keeps writing the same book over and over again. Robert Langdon, who we know little about after five novels, trades female companions and goes on great adventures to save the world in one or two days, maybe three. He does so with his encyclopedic knowledge of history, symbols, and ancient culture since he is, after all, a symbologist. Are his books formulaic? Yes, without a doubt, but that can be said about a lot of successful series of genre fiction. One must ask, however, how many times can an author keep going to the same well?

One of the things I find aggravating about Dan Brown's novels is that he seems hell-bent on disproving God in the vein of the New Atheism. Science can't prove God, so God doesn't exist. Well, that's just BS. God is defined as a supernatural being, and science, therefore, cannot be expected to find a supernatural being using the tools of natural science. Let me say that again. The natural cannot prove the supernatural. It's Philosophy 101. So I find some of Brown's novels, or sections therein, to be a bit tedious. Yawn. Give it up, Dan.

I've noticed that about fifty percent of reviews for Origin on Amazon are not glowing, shall we say, and point to the above issues--and many more. So what makes people keep coming back for more? He seems to be a novelist people love to hate--and hate to love.

I was amused by one review that stated, "Dan Brown's books have become long, tiresome reference books chock-full of history that become downright boring." Point well-taken. And excuse us, Robert Langon, if we don't all know the history of every monument in Italy or haven't read every arcane text written three thousand years ago. You really are quite insufferable and elitist sometimes.

Dan Brown's novels are as poorly edited as they are poorly written. And I've never read any of his novels in which I couldn't find dozens of major grammatical errors. But the publisher hears those sales ring up and, well, you get my point.

Whatever Brown's faults may be, he is a master at narrative pacing, which caught everyone's attention in The Da Vinci Code. People then went back and read Digital Fortress and Deception Point, and Brown became a household name. Don't get me wrong. I enjoy reading Dan Brown, although I skipped Inferno and will wait for Origin to hit the remainder bin at B&N.

It occurs to me that I'm almost finished this post and haven't really talked about Origin. I've gone on too many tangents. Well, so do Dan Brown and Robert Langdon.

The phenomenon of Dan Brown shows that publishing is about making money, as well it should be. But the truth is that if anyone other than Brown submitted these novels, they would be rejected. Once you get fame and fortune, the old saying goes, you can publish your laundry list. I'm sure Robert Langdon could find meaningful clues to saving the world in such a list. If you rearrange the letters in "laundry detergent," you might get words like "dry," "deter," "gent," "laud," "great," "ten," and many others. I could combine them and find meaning for the combinations if I tried hard enough, but no one would me a twenty million dollar advance. Go figure.

One of these days, I'm going to self-publish my laundry list just for the hell of it. Really.

~William Hammett

Poetry Collection: Day and Night

I'm pleased to announce that Word Wrangler Press will publish my collection of poems titled Day and Night in 2018. I've been away from poetry for a while, but this will be a nice change of pace although I will still be ghostwriting and publishing fiction under my own name.

I have previously published poetry in literary journals such as American Poets & Poetry, The Rockford Review, Lynx, Poem, The Lyric, Pegasus, Twilight Ending, Mojo Risin', Creative Juices, Tight, Angelflesh, The Black Buzzard Review, and others.

Not very many people read poetry, classic or modern, and that's a pity since the form is as old as writing. The number of people who read poetry is about the same as those who listen to classical music, which is about five percent of the population.

Reading poetry, of course, is more challenging than reading a modern novel, especially genre fiction. The syntax is challenging, and that is especially true of modern poetry from T.S. Eliot on, where the compression of language makes scanning lines difficult. In some cases, modern poetry has no syntax at all and is highly experimental. But is reading such poetry any different than listening to a symphony or complex string quartet? Not really.

The rewards of reading poetry or listening to classical music are great. Anything worthwhile requires a little effort. Or a lot.

Thanks for stopping by.

~William Hammett

My Cousin Dashiell Hammett

After many years of researching my family tree, I have learned definitively that legendary mystery writer Dashiell Hammett (The Maltese Falcon, The Thin Man, The Dain Curse, Red Harvest, and others) is my cousin.  Hammett, or "Dash" as he was known, is the fourth generation grandson of my fifth generation paternal grandfather.  That makes him my fifth cousin once removed.  While I can't therefore say that we were ever drinking buddies, I'm proud to share a little DNA with a man whose books are still in print and whose novels were made into very successful films.

Samuel Dashiell Hammett was born in 1894 and died in 1961.  The New York Times said that he was "The dean of the . . . hard-boiled school of detective fiction."  Later, Time magazine said that his novel Red Harvest was one of the top 100 novels published in America between 1923 and 2005.  Famed mystery writer Raymond Chandler said that "Hammett was the ace performer.  He was spare, frugal, hard-boiled, but he did over and over again what only the best writers can ever do at all.  He wrote scenes that seemed to have never been written before."

Hammett was a detective for The Pinkerton Detective Agency, which spurred him to write in the mystery genre.  In addition to writing bestselling novels and numerous short stories, he also worked in Hollywood as a screenwriter.

I look back over my life and have to smile when I recall that the first novel I read was a Perry Mason mystery when I was seven years old.  I was so taken with the genre that I wrote a three-page Perry Mason mystery and sent it to the author of the Mason series, Erle Stanley Gardner.  Gardner was kind enough to write back, encouraging me to keep writing.

I won't make the claim that I love to write because Dashiell Hammett is a cousin, although it's a nice thought during one of my Walter Mitty moments.  It does make me reflect, however, on how people are connected and what those connections mean.  It's said that everyone is seven steps from Kevin Bacon.  Turns out that I'm five steps from Dashiell Hammett on the Hammett family tree.  I'll take it!

~William Hammett

Contact wmhammett@aol.com 

Index of Articles

Hiring a Qualified Ghostwriter

There are many individuals who have sites on the internet, sites advertising their services as a ghostwriter.  Additionally, there are thousands of resumes posted on the sites of ghostwriting clearinghouses, such as elance, odesk, and upwork.  The problem is that many people who are seeking a ghostwriter because they don't have the necessary writing skills to write a book are blind to the poor phrasing and grammatical errors on these sites and in the clearinghouse resumes.

Also, many people don't know a great deal about the publishing industry or what qualifications a competent, professional ghostwriter should possess.  I invite people searching for a qualified ghostwriter to click the following link and read the many articles on William Hammett's How to Hire a Ghostwriter.  The site contains an index of all articles on the subject.  The index may be found at the bottom of each post and also in the right sidebar.

The articles cover a wide range of topics, such as how to query a ghostwriter, what credentials one should look for, how to spot unqualified writers, the pitfalls of hiring a ghostwriting company, and much more.  Always due your due diligence, but before you begin, learn the issues involved and what questions need to be asked.

William Hammett's How to Hire a Ghostwriter

Good luck!

~William Hammett

Contact: wmhammett@aol.com

Getting the Words Right

I have to shake my head sometimes at the advertising done by some ghostwriters.  I recently stumbled upon the website of a pricey ghostwriter who will write your book for $65,000 to $75,000.  Okay, but she also says that she will write your "fictional novel" with professionalism.  Here's the rub: all novels are fiction.  Editors and agents usually don't take a second look at a query when an aspiring author pitches a "fictional novel."  Only someone totally unfamiliar with writing and publishing would pay such high prices to someone who doesn't know that "fictional novel" is a redundancy.  If a ghostwriter can't get the words right on his or her website, what's going to happen during the composition of a book.

And then there is the ghostwriting website I saw a few moments ago.  The ghostwriter said, "I'll write your novel, fiction or non-fiction, for $50,000."  First, non-fiction isn't hyphenated.  Second, and more importantly, a nonfiction book isn't a novel.  As mentioned above, a novel is a work of fiction.  I'm not going to pay someone $50,000 if he can't handle advertising copy and doesn't know the difference between fiction and nonfiction.

Both of the above ghostwriters omit hyphens dozens of times on their sites.  They talk about "full length books" and "book length manuscripts."  The words should be "full-length" and "book-length."

One ghostwriter wrote a sentence that read, "My vast writing experiences covers a wide range of topics, from travel to how-to."  The phrase "experiences covers" is a subject-verb agreement error worthy of a high school student."

The same ghostwriter says, "Always be careful when selecting a ghostwriter, if you choose the wrong one, you might regret the finished product."  "If you choose" begins a new sentence.  The ghostwriter has therefore produced another high school error: a comma splice.  Also, how does one "regret a product."  That's awkward phrasing.  One might regret "reading the finished product," but not the product itself.

And then there are the hundreds of ghostwriters who call themselves ghost writers.  "Ghostwriter" is one word, ladies and gentlemen.  "Ghost writer" as two words implies that the writer authors books on ghosts.

Always examine ghostwriting websites carefully, remembering that if you need or want a ghostwriter, you may not notice the kinds of errors I have listed above.  You need to get as much information as possible about the profession of ghostwriting and then do your due diligence for any ghostwriter you're considering.

It always pains me to say this, but online ghostwriting is, for the most part, a scam industry with unqualified people trying to get your money.  This is not to say that every ghostwriter has criminal intent, however.  Sad to say, some people don't know enough to know what they don't know.

~William Hammett

The Ghost of Richard Brautigan by William Hammett

I love the works of 1970s counterculture icon, port, and novelist, Richard Brautigan.  Brautigan (1935-1984) wrote short, quirky, surrealistic novels.  The best-known is his 1976 Trout Fishing in America.  Others include In Watermelon Sugar, A Confederate General from Big Sur, Sombrero Fallout, The Hawkline Monster, and So the Wind Won't Blow It All Away.

Over the years I've used many different prose styles and written in several genres.  I've always been partial to what literary agents call quirky fiction and really love the offbeat novels of Kurt Vonnegut, Tom Robbins, and yes, Richard Brautigan.  Several years ago I had a rather outrageous idea for a novel and decided to use Brautigan's short chapter format and incorporate Brautigan himself into the story.  Agents failed to sell it, but a small press eventually published an earlier, shorter version of the novel, called Salamander Illusions.  I'm happy that Word Wrangler Publishing has given the work a second chance under the new title of The Ghost of Richard Brautigan.

The ad blurb is as follows.

"Lamont Bistro, a writing teacher married to Bourbon Street exotic dancer Jaguar Montaigne, receives regular visits from the ghost of Richard Brautigan, novelist, poet, and counterculture icon of the 1970s.

In this short, quirky, fast-paced novel reminiscent of Brautigan's dark humor and satire, Brautigan challenges Bistro to write a novel about his sexy young wife, snake-handling evangelicals, a swamp monster, Babe Ruth, a gaudy theme park named Gatorworld, Mount Kilimanjaro, the Gulf War, a deity named Bob, and a planet diagnosed with Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

As Bistro writes, however, he wonders if he himself has become a character in a surrealistic novel by the late great Richard Brautigan."

The book is available through Amazon.  All books recently published will also be available through the Word Wrangler Publishing online store.  Click on the book cover in the right sidebar to be taken to the book at Amazon.

Thanks for stopping by!

~William Hammett

STREET MAGIC by William Hammett

My novel Street Magic is now on sale at Amazon's Kindle store.  You may see the cover and click to purchase the book in the right navigation column.  It is horror/suspense.

I wrote the novel many years ago after reading Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes.  It's Bradbury's best, in my opinion, and unlike his other novels and short stories, it isn't really science fiction, although some might say it has that kind of flavor.  Regardless of the genre, I was amazed at the prose style Bradbury used.  Its sentence parameters are loose, and the style is highly lyrical, almost poetic.  The words flow effortlessly from beginning to end in Bradbury's classic tale of good against evil.  That's when it occurred to me to write Street Magic, my own humble effort to pen a lyrical tale of good against evil.

It was fun to write.  I let the first draft flow without any revision and then went back over it many times over the years adjusting various sentences.  There comes a time, however, when a writer has to give birth to his child, and so I decided, thanks to the good people at Word Wrangler Publishing, to put Street Magic out there, where it will now have a life of its own.  Like all parents, I hope that life will treat my offspring kindly, but we'll see.  There's a time to let go.

The book description is as follows:

The people of Pace, Indiana are jolted from their routine small-town lives when a street magician, Lark the Magnificent, begins staging one incredible show after another.  There is seemingly nothing that the man in an electric-blue suit can't do, from levitating above the sidewalk to making it snow on a sunny day.

But Joe Bailey, meek bachelor and town archivist, notices that things in Pace aren't quite right.  People are going missing, stores are closing, and some one--or some thing--is living in a row of abandoned homes on River Road.

In this homage to Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes, William Hammett has written a chilling tale in lyrical prose about the evil locked behind the doors of small-town America, an evil that Joe Bailey will have to combat with his own brand of street magic.

The book was published by Word Wrangler Publishing on March 24, 2015.  Thanks, Barbara, for all of your hard work on this one.

And thanks as always to my readers and friends for stopping by.

~William Hammett

contact wmhammett@aol.com

Complaints about Ghostwriting Companies: Twenty Things You Need to Know

The complaints against ghostwriting companies are out there if you do your due diligence.  In fact, ghostwriting companies are far more vested in being vanity publishers and marketers.  Ghostwriting is a way for them to bring in customers for these other services.

If you don't believe me, Google the name of the company you've seen advertising online and type the words "scam" or "ripoff" after the company name.  After you recover from shock, ask yourself if you really want to give them your money.

Here are some of the things you'll learn about these companies.

1) Many subcontract writing to inexperienced writers across the country.

2) Many companies abandon customers after they get paid.

3) The owners and CEOs of most of these companies have no background in publishing.

4) The companies have been sued several times and have complaints lodged against them with the Better Business Bureau.

5) Some work is outsourced to other countries.

6) The sales reps, owners, and department heads at some companies are often lawyers, not people in the publishing industry.

7) The contracts at many companies are detailed, and if you read the fine print, you'll learn that you have no recourse for work that is not performed or just plain botched.

8) Complaints against these companies exist on dozens of sites online (and the best place to begin is the trustworthy "AbsoluteWrite WaterCooler")

9) The editing at many companies betrays a lack of basic knowledge of grammar and punctuation.

10) Marketing and promotion are usually package deals that offer to send your finished book to reviewers who are not interested in your genre or category of book.  The press releases they send out are almost always ineffective.

11) The claims that they have handled bestselling books are usually false or based on a different definition of "bestseller."

12) One company features pictures of book covers on their websites even though it never handled the books.

13) Most mainstream publishers, as well as most reputable literary agents, have never heard of these companies, which claim to be industry leaders.

14) Sales reps know little of the publishing industry and frequently tell potential customers things such as "Successful books are rarely longer than 200 pages anymore."  The statement is totally false.

15) To keep their costs down, many of these companies try to restrict the length of a book, sometimes to 200 to 225 pages long.  The truth is that books are as long as they need to be.

16) Offering you coffee mugs, T shirts, posters, postcards, and other "stuff" with your book's name will probably not result in sales for your books, but this is another part of the "package deal."

17) Prices for creating cover art and eBook conversion are extremely high.

18) Most companies deal in volume, meaning that one-on-one contact is often limited.

19) Ghostwriting and self-publishing are simply business models that some entrepreneurs found lucrative. when POD became popular.

20) Many companies prey on customers' lack of knowledge about the publishing industry.

When searching for a quality ghostwriter, it's better to hire an independent writer who has training, experience, credentials, and knowledge about the publishing industry.  Let the buyer beware.

Join Me at My Goodreads Author Page

For information on books written under my own name, visit my Goodreads Author Page, which also has a blog and short bio.  More books will be listed in the next month (Street Magic and The Ghost of Richard Brautigan).   My most recent books, Circling Goes the Wind and Rimsky Rises may be purchased at the Amazon Kindle store.

You may find the above page at William Hammett's Goodreads Author Page. 

Approximately six more novels will be released this year as Word Wrangler Press continues to publish my backlog of out-of-print books.  Check back for more information and release dates.

~William Hammett

Contact: wmhammett@aol.com