Beyond the Book: Background information when reading Suspect

Beyond the Book

This article relates to Suspect

About the author: Michael Robotham is a former journalist and the ghostwriter of at least fourteen autobiographies of prominent figures in the military, arts, sport and science worlds, including Lulu, Ricky Tomlinson, Geri Halliwell, Rolf Harris and Tracy Edwards (which, dependent on the subject have been published in various English speaking countries, but never in the USA). He lives in Sydney, Australia with his wife and three daughters.  Suspect is his first novel (published in the UK in 2004, and USA in 2005); a second novel, Lost, was published in the UK in May 2005.

Is ghostwriting good experience for becoming a novelist? According to Robotham the answer is absolutely yes.  As he puts it, 'the point in ghostwriting, the point in which it works, is when you capture the voice of your subject so completely that you are inside their head, you think the way they think, you can write the way they would write if they could write that way.... I created this character and captured his voice and then it became like writing his autobiography. I was writing his life story and he was real in my head.'

Filed under

This "beyond the book article" relates to Suspect. It originally ran in March 2005 and has been updated for the December 2005 paperback edition. Go to magazine.