The Busy Body by Kemper Donovan EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Kemper Donovan
- Language: English
- Genre: Traditional Detective Mysteries
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
I tell other people’s stories for a living.
You can call me a ghostwriter, though usually I just say I “freelance,”
which is vague and boring enough to put an end to strangers’ polite
inquiries. Among friends I call myself a “lady Cyrano,” which is meant to
be self-deprecating. (I have an unusually large nose.)
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That’s a lie, actually. Not about my unusually large nose, but about my
supposed friends. I have lots of acquaintances, and colleagues, and
associates—an assortment of people who pepper my existence so that if you
saw me from the outside, you’d think my life was perfectly full. There are
times it seems full even to me. But the truth is I don’t have any friends. Not
the kind I always pictured having: friends so close, they’re family.
Oh—I don’t have a family, either. We decided years ago it would be best
if we stopped talking. I’m not telling you this to make you feel sorry for me.
I’m telling you because I want—I have—to be honest. It’s the only way this
is going to work.
Ghostwriting is not about honesty. It’s about strategy. A good ghostwriter
will manipulate a story for purposes of maximum engagement. And I am a
very good ghostwriter. My specialty is memoir. I tell the inspirational life
stories of outrageously successful people: actors, athletes, politicians.
Assholes, in other words (though I guess that’s just one word). I make the
assholes likeable and interesting. Like a sculptor, I carve out something
beautiful from the rough-hewn block of their existence, and then polish it
till it sparkles. You may think of me as a professional bullshit artist, but I
love what I do. Ghostwriting has been around since there were stories to
tell. I’ve always been a snoop where other people are concerned, and I
discovered in my late twenties I have a knack for spinning tales about them,
and for making these tales sing.
But I refuse to strategize or manipulate here. This isn’t about some
celebrity overcoming the odds, and there’s no need for me to sell you
anything. Because somehow, I managed to get myself wrapped up in an
honest-to-goodness murder mystery. And for once?
The story’s all mine.
It started with a phone call.
This wasn’t the way things usually started. My agent, Rhonda, almost
always e-mails me, knowing I prefer to keep my interactions limited to the
written sphere whenever possible. (If I could send her handwritten notes on
creamy stationery sealed with wax, I would, though at this point e-mail is
pretty much the equivalent of a feather quill and ink pot, anyway.) If a
phone call were absolutely necessary, she’d schedule it ahead of time. And
yet here she was, calling me unannounced.
One of the few happy outcomes of the so-called Digital Revolution is
that no one is expected to answer their phone anymore. So I stared at her
name on my screen, allowing the vibrations to run up my arm while noting
how smudged the glass was—almost greasy. Apparently I needed to wash
my face more. I was still waiting for a voice mail when her text came
through.
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