Ghostwriting: Fiction - Will The Real Tom Clancy Please Stand Up?

MP SEASON 2 | GHOSTWRITERS

FICTION Will The Real Tom Clancy Please Stand Up

Bethanne Patrick:

Picture the inside of a Barnes and Noble … shelves and shelves of books, tables of new hardcovers , and texts of all shapes and sizes for you to browse through…There’s that lovely inside-of-a-bookstore hum, a combination of new titles getting shelved, shoppers looking for a new great read, and browsers turning pages.  

You know what to expect at any Barnes & Noble store, no matter where you are.

Now think about the books that might be in your hand while you browse the shelves. Have you ever thought that the books you’re buying might be a franchise, too?

Ok, now zero in on the trade paperback table at that bookstore… All of those titles with names you see everywhere, authors like James Patterson and Tom Clancy. Have you ever wondered how those writers are so productive? Well, a ghostwriter might have had a hand in that.

What happens when writers build a world that extends beyond the pages - into a commercial franchise that needs to put out more content than any one author ever could? Well, that’s where a ghost writer comes in. But what does the work of a fiction ghostwriter actually look like? How do they impact the series?

Welcome back to Missing Pages. I’m your host, literary critic and writer, Bethanne Patrick. This is the podcast where we examine some of the most surprising, industry-shaking controversies in the literary world and try to make sense of them. This is the SECOND episode in a TWO-part series on ANOTHER under-discussed topic in the publishing industry - ghostwriting! In our first episode, we covered ghostwriting in non-fiction books. 

In fiction, we assume the author who is getting all of the praise for being so creative and innovative, is the person who wrote the book. In reality, for many books out there, there is a sea of invisible writers making stories come to life on the page. This is especially true when it comes to franchise books. For instance, the various series under the Tom Clancy name: Today! We’ll actually be speaking to one of Clancy’s most prolific ghostwriters. 

With his help we’ll explore what it’s like for the authors whose names aren’t in bold print on the cover but keep a franchise running.

CHAPTER 1- The Dead Author’s Ghost

Charlie Rose Clip:
Tom Clancy one of the best-selling authors of our time he has virtually created the genre of the techno thriller his books have crossed over into film television even videogames.

CBS Sunday Morning Clip:

It's possible there's no case cold enough for intrepid detective nancy drew who's now 90 years young.

CBS Sunday Morning Clip:

The words writer's block aren't in Patterson's vocabulary with a team of co-writers he puts out the Alex Cross mysteries the Women's Murder Club Michael Bennett and Maximum Ride series. And his shelves are lined with dozens of other novels in progress.

Bethanne Patrick:

So I hate to break it to you, but if you didn’t know it already… books like the ones written by Tom Clancy and James Patterson, or children’s lit like Animorphs and the Babysitters Club, The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew were the products of ghost writers. 

But that doesn’t mean that every big name fiction star is using a ghostwriter. When you look at those trade paperback shelves…it’s not a one-size-fits-all model. Tom Clancy and James Patterson, yes. But what about writers like Danielle Steele and Nora Roberts? Both have spoken out publicly against using ghostwriters.

Nora Roberts said this: “I do not, never have, never will use ghostwriters. I’ve stated my opinion, many times, on the use of ghosts in fiction. My work is my work, start to finish. If my name is on the book, I wrote it.” 

Danielle Steel put this on her website: “WHO writes my BOOKS??? Are you kidding? Who do you think writes my books, as I hover over my typewriter for weeks at a time, working on a first draft, with unbrushed hair, in an ancient nightgown, with every inch of my body aching after typing 20 or 22 hours a day at a stretch. That’s who writes my books: Me.”

No elves, she says.

No elves, for Steel, but there are ghosts in fiction writing, and they aren’t always 

controversial. For instance, when the original author has transitioned to the afterlife. 

CBC Interview - Ian Fleming

Silenced last week was one of the busiest and most successful typewriters of recent years when Ian Fleming creator of James Bond died in England at the age of 56 following a heart attack Ian Fleming's name first appeared on the book stands in 1953 with the first of bonds' adventures Casino Royale which he had begun to write at the age of 44.

Bethanne Patrick:

The Bond series was originally written by an author named Ian Fleming, who died in 1964 and a few of those novels had a ghostwriter by the name of Raymond Benson.

Other examples include the Lord of the Rings and Dune, both fantasy series which were actually taken over by family. 

Expanded Books Interview - Brian Herbert

For 10 years after dad died, I decided not to write any Dune books and I wasn't going to continue the series and then when I met Kevin the two of us had this incredible enthusiasm and energy for the Dune universe. We were coming up with new concepts and I felt the energy that was needed to continue the series and we've done it for nine years.

Bethanne Patrick:

But that’s not always the case, for instance The Girl With the Dragon tattoo author Stieg Larsson died in 2004 after completing his trilogy and since then four additional books have come out within the Millennium series, written by unrelated to Larsson Swedish authors.

PBS NewsHour Interview

Written by Swedish journalist Stieg Larsson and published after his death in 2004, they were international bestsellers, with millions of fans following the brilliant hacker and outsider Lisbeth Salander. Two years ago, Larsson's estate tapped Swedish journalist and writer David Lagercrantz to continue the series.

Bethanne Patrick:

Larsson is far from the only one. Tom Clancy died in 2013, but books bearing his name come out every year. But here’s the catch with Clancy, other writers had been writing his books long before his death. Next we speak to one of Clancy’s ghosts.

Chapter 2 - Will the Real Tom Clancy Please Stand Up

Trailer - The Division

 All right, the store was empty. I heard that gunfire, Nick check your map see if there’s anything in the area

Bethanne Patrick:

That’s a trailer from the video game, The Division. It’s one of dozens of Tom Clancy related IP out in the world. Clancy the man died in 2013. But since he passed, dozens of movies, games and books based on his works have come out. It’s a well oiled machine using the world(s) he created as inspiration. And maybe more important than inspo, Clancy offers name recognition to an audience. Tom Clancy’s name is symbolic of a brand now like the McDonald’s M. But if Clancy is the brand, then someone else has to be manning the griddle and the fryer. 

Jeff Rovin: I don't crave attention, so it works out really well. I'm doing this under protest. If my wife hadn't tied me to the chair, I wouldn't be here. 

Bethanne Patrick:

That’s Jeff Rovin. He’s a New York Times bestselling author of fiction and nonfiction books. He’s also a seasoned ghostwriter.

Jeff Rovin: I've been doing this for 52 years almost, and uh, uh, you just churn out a lot of stuff in that time.

Bethanne: And Speaking of churning out a lot of stuff has. Anyone written more books than you have? 

Jeff Rovin: I know that, uh, Isaac Asimov, who I was privileged to know, uh, certainly did. He was, he was in the multiples of hundreds. I'm still under 200.

Bethanne Patrick:

Rovin has written more than one hundred and fifty books.

Bethanne: Now, how many of the Tom Clancy novels have you worked on so far?

Jeff Rovin: Oh, gosh. Uh, probably around 17 or 18. I started doing them in 1994.

Bethanne Patrick:

1994! Decades before Clancy’s death, Clancy was handing over his creations to writers like Rovin. Clancy was already a huge success as an author, having made a number of hits, he probably had all the money he needed to relax on a beach for the rest of his days, But audiences would buy anything with his name on it, so why turn the money fountain off? 

Jeff Rovin: The thing about Op-Center was it was the first ghost written Tom Clancy project and, I'd gotten a call from my editor and she said, we've got six weeks to do a hundred thousand word novel based on. TV miniseries script that you won't be allowed to read, so you're gonna have to make most of it up. And I said, sure.

Bethanne Patrick:Rovin had less than two months to start and finish a new novel. Not just any novel but an international geopolitical thriller. He wrote nearly 400 pages.

Jeff Rovin: And six weeks later, we were done, and sold 4 million copies.

Bethanne Patrick: Op Center came out in 1995, In the novel, readers meet Paul Hood. He’s the director of the eponymous Op-Center - a US intelligence agency tasked with managing an international crisis involving South Korea and Japan. It’s clever and fast-paced. Rovin’s words and Clancy’s name was a profitable match for everyone. 

Bethanne Patrick: The novel became a #1 New York Times bestseller. The same year it was released - it was adapted for the screen.

Op-Center Trailer

Harry Hamlin, Wilford Brimley, Deidre Hall, Carl Weathers, Kim Cattrall, Lindsay Frost, Ken Howard, Rod Steiger, Tom Clancy's Ops-Center. Sunday on NBC

Bethanne Patrick: Rovin was off to the races. He wrote the next eleven Op Center books, authoring 12 in total, and contributing to a handful of others in the franchise.

For almost a decade there was a new Op Center book coming out about once a year, and then some.

Jeff Rovin: The Tom Clancy novels have a certain kind of plotting that I introduced into op center that was different from what he had done before. It was much more of that fast-paced cliffhanger chapter style that was really popularized by David Morrell, who wrote First Blood and, other novels of, that sort. By Alistair MacLean before him in Guns of Navarone and Where Eagles Dare.

Bethanne Patrick: By now, there are more than twenty books in the New York Times best selling series.

The plots continued to detail thrilling adventures in military intrigue, terrorism and assassination.

Jeff Rovin: It's that breakneck pace and twists and turns. And so that's really what I zeroed in on with the Tom Clancy stuff.

Bethanne Patrick: Rovin was taking over a series for a built-in audience but he was given pretty much free reign and despite all of Clancy’s success he made the books more accessible. 

Jeff Rovin: I cut back on the acronyms and a lot of the hardware played up the soap opera, tried to broaden the audience at the publisher's request. It was successful. So that became the op center formula.

Bethanne Patrick: When it came to generating new ideas for the next books, Rovin says he had a lot of room to roam, creatively.

Jeff Rovin: There was very little oversight. And what oversight there was not from a literary standpoint so I had very little to go o. It was just me and the editor. And frankly, to this day, it still is

Bethanne: How far. Can you take an original idea that you have when you are ghost writing fiction? It sounds as if you actually can run with something as long as you have the publisher slash editors approval. 

Jeff Rovin: You're absolutely right. And that's what I did with, uh, certainly with the last. Four or five op centers. Um, I didn't ask anybody. I, I ran the ideas past the editor. I changed the, uh, the cast of characters considerably.

Uh, I wanted to draw on my own martial arts background and, uh, I wanted to introduce, um, uh, different ethnicities. Uh, this was before the whole diversity and inclusion thing. Mm-hmm. Uh, uh, erupted, uh, only because I felt that it gave me more interest. Uh, playgrounds to work with and, uh, different, different cultural backgrounds.

And, uh, that was, that was, and certainly different age groups cuz uh, newer recruits with 60 something veterans, uh, was really kind of interesting to do

Bethanne: Do you have any connection to the actual Tom Clancy? Did you ever meet him? 

Jeff Rovin: I spoke with him on the phone once for about two minutes and, uh, met him in his hotel room with a couple other people for about three minutes. And that was the totality of our, um, our contact.

Bethanne Patrick: Op Center is just one in a handful of Tom Clancy series and universe spinoffs, with franchise titles like Net Force and Power Play. Of course there’s also series that are ghostwritten, like Jack Ryan, which also has its own tv series.

The Late Show Clip

Stephen: HEY, LOOK AT THIS. LOOK AT THAT. WE'RE HERE WITH THE STAR OF "JACK RYAN." JOHN KRASINSKI.

Bethanne Patrick:

With all of this in mind where does the actual creator of the series, Tom Clancy, end…. and the ideas of someone like Jeff Rovin, the ghost writer begin?

Jeff Rovin: I was on a talk show and the host asked me if Tom Clancy was looking over my shoulder when I write these. With no awareness of the fact that Clancy had been dead for years. So I'm not sure how much readers actually understand that this is an all new idea and all new execution. Tom Clancy didn't sketch out ideas on a yellow pad and then tuck them away for future generations. It just doesn't work like that.

Bethanne Patrick: So in many ways the series really became Rovin’s and yet, a very attentive reader probably thought that Clancy was experimenting with form, or perhaps even evolving as a writer. What a reader wouldn’t have known is that Clancy the man was no longer tiring out his fingers and straining his neck hunched over a keyboard.  

Jeff Rovin: The first four did not have an author. It was Tom Clancy apostrophe ‘s’-  possessory title, and it said, created by Tom Clancy and Steve Pieczenik, who was an undersecretary of state who befriended Tom Clancy at some point.

Bethanne Patrick: The first edition of Op Center read like this: “Tom Clancy’s Op-Center” created by Tom Clancy and Steve Pieczenik.

No mention of Jeff Rovin’s name.

Jeff Rovin: There were some concerns at the publisher that buyers were being misled that this was written by Tom Clancy. And then they had to go back and put it on reprints of those early books because there was concern about the public being misled to thinking that Tom Clancy was writing it. I'm not even sure he was reading them.

Bethanne Patrick: If you look at the new Op-Center books today, Rovin’s name does appear on the cover as a writer.

Tom Clancy is credited as a creator.

Jeff Rovin: They bit the bullet and said, let's just put in small type that it wasn't, and that, uh, this guy was the one who did it. 

Bethanne Patrick: Be it small type or not on the cover, that’s not what motivates Rovin.

Jeff Rovin: you do it because you're challenged by it and cuz you think you can bring something to the table and uh, uh, you know, if you're, if you're, if you're gonna worry about living in the shadow of, uh, of somebody else, then you're in the wrong business

Bethanne Patrick: If you’re a writer who’s motivated by craft and don’t want to do book tours or answer questions constantly from people like me then penning a series worth millions of dollars is a pretty cool gig that should be taken seriously regardless of credit.

Jeff Rovin: If you are an author of any repute and any self-respect, you're gonna find a way to make that interesting. And that's part of your job. And if you're not doing that, then you're cheating the reader and you don't deserve to continue having that set of electric trains to play with. 

Rovin really upended a lot of the assumptions I had about ghost writing fiction. I expected that Rovin would have had to prove to Clancy or the publishers that he’s adhering to the expectations of the fan base. I’d have expected outlines and plot formulas bestowed by the author or the publishing company. But for Rovin that's far from the case. 

Jeff Rovin: I never work from an outline because I figure if, if I can surprise myself and paint myself in a corner, uh, then getting out of it is something the reader will also enjoy. I have the advantage of being able to go back and plant stuff that I'm gonna be able to need in that corner. The reader may not notice those, and so you've gotta remember that they're paying good money for these things and deserve to have the fun ride that they're expecting. 

Bethanne Patrick: It’s all in service to the reader. But speaking of the reader…

Bethanne: Do you think readers know that? There are ghost writers working on these, you know, Robert Ludlum, Tom Clancy, you know, kinds of series. 

Jeff Rovin: Iit says so on the cover, but I don't know if that really registers and if so, how? I really don't think people think that deeply about it. There's this old bromide, about, oh, you know, so-and-so died and left a desk full  of ideas. That never happened. We just kept making up new ideas, which is fine. As long as they're in the spirit of what that author was.

Bethanne Patrick: Audiences have expectations when it comes to a series or an author they know and trust. The Rovin’s of the world can really make it their own but they need to be cautious to not stray too far away from expectations. After all, a whole franchise is at stake.

CHAPTER 3 - The Franchising of Fiction

Here’s a choice quote from our reading: [Tom] Clancy did for military pop-lit what Starbucks did for the preparation of caffeinated beverages: he launched a sprawling, massively profitable industrial enterprise …. That it tastes yummy going down more than suffices to keep customers coming back.

That’s where we are going next dear listeners. What happens when big time authors like Agatha Christie, Tom Clancy and James Patterson really just become a monetizable brand?

To really think through the consequences I had to have a chat across the pond.

Andrew Crofts: Right now I am quite near Oxford in England. In a tiny little village in a cottage, doing the whole writer thing, you know?

Bethanne: I love it, I love it. I have to ask you, especially knowing your background. Is Andrew Crofts your real name?

Andrew Crofts: Yes it is. It is. I just let it hang there and people can, people can wonder, but yeah. 

Crofts is a best selling ghostwriter, and his books have sold millions of copies in his decades-long career. The man knows the industry 

Andrew Crofts: That the easy bits about writing of writing, it's the, is a, you know, asking questions and then writing stories.

The hard bit is the marketing. And that goes for publishers as well. Marketing books is really, really hard because a book is a, you know, if you're, if your marketing bake beans, it's not that hard once you've got got up and going, cuz the same baked beans are in the same tin and they're on the same shelf and everybody's gotta eat every day.

So nobody has to buy a book and every book is different. So each book has to be marketed separately. So you've got to have a [00:39:00] handle. 

So if somebody comes in who is already of interest to the general public because, um, they're famous for winning a. Big Brother or they, they're an actor who, whatever the reason, or, you know, well, they're Paris Hilton or it doesn't matter what the reason is, there's some name recognition. Then you, you are over that first hurdle.

You've, I immediately got a product that people are familiar with, like the baked beans or the Ford Motor car or whatever. Um, and then you've just gotta make the product as good as possible.

Bethanne Patrick: By this comparison…maybe Tom Clancy is the Ford of books and James Patterson is…baked beans? 

Andrew Crofts: Every publisher wants an author to do more than one book, cuz they go to all that trouble to create one book. And if it's successful, they need another to say buy the same author as and, and they can build up data or how to market it and so on.

Bethanne Patrick: There are millions of copies of James Patterson’s books out there in the world. Vanity Fair magazine called him the “planet’s best-selling author.”

Andrew Crofts: From the point of view, people like James Patterson, you've got, you've got brands that some, I mean some authors do manage to establish brands in their own right over a very, very long period by writing very similar books over and over and over again. Whether that's Harry Potter or James Patterson or [00:40:51] Ian Fleming, all these people, they create characters and so on. Once that exists, you then have got a name. People know they like a James Patterson book and it, and they're [00:41:00] all printed in a certain way and the big print and type and so on. Um, but there's a limit to how many books Patterson can churn out.

Bethanne Patrick: And that’s where a ghostwriter comes in.

Andrew Crofts: Patterson and Walter Smith and people like that, they were, are, or were. Established brands. They can't go on churning them out, but they can come up with the ideas. I mean, James Patterson is a, is an ideas man. He ran an advertising agency, agency for years. You know, he's so, he can sit down and he can tell a, somebody like me the plot of the book that he's come up with.

Bethanne Patrick: He can generate an outline and hand it over to a writer who knows the voice. And can capture readers no matter what. It’s long been established that Patterson is using collaborators. And readers keep buying his books by the millions. So why does franchised fiction have such staying power?

Andrew Crofts: People like to read the same story over and over and over again with different, slightly different characters and so on. But it's basically the, it's comfort reading, a thrillers romance, pony children's books. So, no, they just need, the name just needs to be recognizable.

Bethanne Patrick: Like visiting a McDonald’s in a foreign country.

Andrew Crofts: Nancy Drew, you know exactly what you're going to get. James Patterson, you know exactly what you're going to get. 

Bethanne Patrick: And, who doesn’t like comfort food? Ghostwriters or collaborators provide us with cleaner and more exciting prose in memoir, more user friendly recipes and compelling anecdotes in cookbooks, and in fiction, they give readers more of what they love, while keeping shyer writers fed.

Historically, ghostwriting has been a shadowy job based on antiquated ideas of authenticity but listener I hope you don’t think less of James Patterson, Paris Hilton or pick your celebrity chef, and instead appreciate the craft and celebration of collaborative work. 

Missing Pages is a Podglomerate Original, Produced, mixed, and mastered by Chris Boniello with additional production and editing by Jordan Aaron.

This episode was produced and written by Claire Tighe.

Fact checking by Douglas Weissman

Marketing by Joni Deutsch, Madison Richards, Morgan Swift, Vannessa Ullman, and Annabella Pena. 

Art by Tom Grillo. 

Produced and Hosted by me, Bethanne Patrick. 

Original music composed and performed by Hashem Assadullahi, additional music provided by Epidemic Sound. 

Executive Produced by Jeff Umbro and the Podglomerate.

Special thanks to Dan Christo, Matt Keeley, Katelyn Bogucki, Grant Irving, Madeleine Morel, Jeff Rovin, Victoria Bundonis, and Andrew Crofts

You can learn more about Missing Pages at thepodglomerate.com, on twitter at miss pages pod and on Instagram at missing pages pod, or you can email us at missing pages at the podglomerate dot com. If you liked what you heard today, please let your friends and family know and suggest an episode for them to listen to.