Rod O'Sullivan, Sean with McQueen Both My Houses : From Politics to Priesthood (Used, Good condition, Hardcover)

 My first role as a ghost was for Sean O’Sullivan. At twenty, elected an MP in 1972, he was the youngest parliamentarian at the time. He won again in 1974 and then, in 1977, resigned his seat to become a priest. In 1985, he asked me to be his ghostwriter. I had written other books, but this was my first as a ghost, or in this case, the Holy Ghost. I called Ron Graham, who had ghosted the successful 1984 autobiography of Jean Chretien, Straight from the Heart. Graham’s recipe: thirty-five hours of interviews yields a 1,000-word transcript, enough for a 300-page manuscript. I followed the formula and recorded O’Sullivan’s recollections, including poignant descriptions of his recent diagnosis with leukaemia. I sat down on May 1, 1986, and by working eighteen-hour days, wrote a 100,000-word first draft in a month. I’ve written many books since, but that month was the most fun I’ve ever had writing. Both my Houses: From Politics to Priesthood, was published that fall.
I’ve done two other ghosting jobs since: Thumper, about Donald S. Macdonald, and The Duke of Kent, about Darcy McKeough. I was a “with” in both cases. The key to such memoirs is to submerge yourself and capture the voice of the subject. You want their best friend to read it and say, “That sounds like him.”