|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Stephen’s Writing Credentials Stephen has written five books and over 100
magazine articles for a variety of magazines. He has interviewed more than
350 people for his work as an author, magazine writer, and award-winning
podcaster. As a contributing editor for Space and Time Magazine, he has also
been a regular contributor for Robot
Magazine, Humanity Plus Magazine, Grim Couture Magazine, and Port Iris magazine; and he spent three
years as a columnist and contributing editor for Jim Baen’s Universe Magazine. His nonfiction books include A Brief History of Predicting the Future
as well as Indistinguishable from
Magic: Predictions of Revolutionary Future Science. His novels include Bones Burnt Black, Plague at Redhook
and Skinbrain. He has spoken to over 150 audiences at the
many conventions to which he has been invited. Since 2005, he has produced over 400
episodes of his weekly podcast, The
Future And You, which explores, through interviews, panel discussions,
and commentary, all the ways the future will be different from today. He is also an essayist, artist, game
designer, and is on the advisory board of The Lifeboat Foundation. Stephen’s Interviewing Credentials In
the 2010 movie The Ghostwriter, the
actor, Pierce Brosnan (playing a former British Prime Minister) asked Ewan
McGregor (playing his ghostwriter) how the ghostwriting process works. Ewan
McGregor explained it very simply, “I interview you. I turn your answers into
prose. Here and there I’ll add linking passages, imitating your voice.” For
those books in which the client will be the main source of its content
(memoirs, autobiographies and about half of all nonfiction books, such as
business and self-help), that is an accurate, if highly condensed, summary of
the process. It also points out three of a ghostwriter’s most vital skills:
interviewing, writing, and imitating the client’s “voice” in the form of word
choice and sentence structure typed onto a page. The
first skill is interviewing. Stephen
won a Parsec Award in 2006 for the quality of his interviews. -- Interviews
are used at the beginning of the process to learn exactly what the client
would like the book to contain; as well as its tone, voice, layout,
organization, and emphasis. For
some books, all the information the finished book will contain exists only
inside the mind of the client. In these cases long interviews, spread over
days or weeks, totaling twenty hours or more, are used to capture that
information so that it can be transformed into the client’s book. Exploring
the content of a mind to find the golden nuggets is a specialized skill. If
done poorly, the book will suffer; but if done well, the quality will show
through. For
other books, however, only part of the information will be from the mind of
the client. The rest will be provided by researching many outside sources. In
these cases, interviews may total as little as three to five hours and focus
as much on collecting the client’s knowledge as letting the ghostwriter know
what topics to research, and what to emphasize about the information that
will be gathered. Thanks
to Stephen’s years of experience in conducting interviews, he has developed
the skills needed to make this a comfortable and conversational experience. Here
is a partial list of the more than 350 people Stephen has interviewed. (No list will ever be
made public of those people for whom Stephen has ghostwritten.) Celebrities Senator
John McCain - 2008 presidential candidate Lisa
Loring - actress ("Wednesday" in the 1960s TV series The Addams
Family) Ken
Weatherwax - actor ("Pugsley" in the 1960s TV series The Addams
Family) Jordan Marder - actor (American History X, Virtuosity, L.A.
Confidential, and Clive Barker's Lord of Illusions; as well as The Drew Carey
Show, JAG, The Equalizer, and The X-Files) Erin Gray
– actress (“Kate Summers” in the sitcom Silver Spoons and “Colonel Wilma
Deering” in the TV series Buck Rogers in the 25th Century) Betsy
Palmer - actress (“Mrs. Voorhees” in the 1980 horror film Friday the 13th) Michael
Berryman - actor (37 films and 15 TV shows; the star of Wes Craven's original
version of the horror film The Hills Have Eyes) Bodie Olmos - actor (TV series Battlestar
Galactica) Gary
Jones - actor (Stargate SG-1) Aria
Giovanni - actress and model Robin
Curtis - actress (“Lt. Saavik” in the movies Star
Trek III and Star Trek IV) Lydia
Cornell - actress (Ted Knight's daughter, “Sara Rush,” on the sitcom Too
Close for Comfort) Aimee
Sweet - actress and model Grant Baciocco - comedian, comedy writer, and co-creator of The
Radio Adventures of Doctor Floyd Shannon
Presley - on-air radio personality at WBVR,
"The Beaver." Kelly
Lockhart - former radio DJ in Atlanta, Key Largo, and Chattanooga; and
award-winning writer Linda
Tran - actress and model Hattie Hayridge -
actress and stand-up comedian (“Computer” in the British TV series Red Dwarf) Jerry Rector - actor (Star Trek, NYPD Blue, and
Sliders) Business Executives &
Professionals Dr. Ben
Goertzel - AI scientist, author, futurist, CEO of Novamente, and Director of
Research at the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence Dr. Peter
Norvig - AI scientist, textbook author, and
Director of Research at Google David
Pascal - marketing consultant specializing in “social marketing” John Buckman - CEO of the recording label Magnatune John R.
Douglas - editor at scifipedia (a division of the SciFi Channel) and World Fantasy Convention board member
since the 1980s Dr.
Young-sook Park 박영숙 - South Korean diplomat, chair of the United Nation's
Millennium Project in South Korea, and President of the South Korean Foster
Care Association David Orban - futurist, speaker, writer, and business executive Rudi
Hoffman - cryonics insurance provider and cryonics financial planner Paul
Fischer - IT professional Robert
Hooker - IT professional and consultant Julie Grimaldi - president of Police Futurists International Dr.
Giulio Prisco - futurist, scientist, corporate
consultant, and former Executive Director of the World Transhumanist
Association Stefano Vaj - author, futurist, transhumanism activist, and
lawyer based in Milan, Italy Brian
Wang - futurist, writer, and speaker Philippe
Van Nedervelde - spokesperson for the Lifeboat
Foundation and Executive Director for the Foresight Nanotech Institute in
Europe Michael Anissimov - futurist, transhumanism activist, and board
member of the World Transhumanist Association George Dvorsky - outspoken activist for futurism and
transhumanism, and executive editor of Betterhumans Mike Treder - executive
director of CRN: The Center for Responsible Nanotechnology Thomas
Gideon - digital media rights activist and host of The Command Line podcast Ricki
Dean - School Nutrition Manager of Columbia County Georgia, USA Lionel
Vogt - transhumanist and futurist, best known for his TV appearances with his
battling robots Scientists & Academics Dr.
Travis S. Taylor - scientist with NASA and DOD, author and discoverer of two
exoplanets Dr. Nick Bostrom - Oxford professor, author, philosopher, and
co-founder of the World Transhumanist Association Les
Johnson - author, lecturer, and NASA executive Dr.
Adrian Bowyer - professor of engineering and inventor of the RepRap machine,
a 3D printer Chris
Phoenix - author, scientist, co-founder and Director of Research for Center
for Responsible Nanotechnology Dr. David
Pearce - author, professor, activist, philosopher, and co-founder of the
World Transhumanist Association Nathan P.
Butler - author and professional educator Dr.
Aubrey de Grey - medical gerontologist working to promote medical longevity Dr.
Grover Swartslander - physicist and professor Dr. Greg Matloff - astronomer, author, and professor Dr. Bob Boan - author and scientist working with DOD and NASA Artists Richard
H. Green - artist for Walt Disney Studios (Who Framed Roger Rabbit &
Beauty and the Beast) Cheralyn Lambeth - Muppet creator and costumer from Jim
Henson Productions David
Mattingly - award-winning painter, illustrator, and book cover artist Scott
Stewart - artist of children’s books, comics, and coloring books Steve
Bennett - artist of manga, anime, and webcomics S.L.
Gallant - commercial and comic book artist Kurt
Miller - book cover artist Sam Flegal - artist David
Cherry - book cover artist Mike and
Paul Beilazyc - artists, costumers, and entrepreneurs Editors & Agents Lucienne Diver - literary agent in New York Peter Stampfel - submissions editor at DAW
Books and musician Hildy Silverman - publisher of Space and Time
Magazine, and contributing editor of Achieving Families Magazine Tom Atwood
- editor-in-chief of Robot Magazine R. U.
Sirius - editor-in-chief of H+ magazine Paula Goodlett - managing editor of Jim Baen's
Universe Magazine Tony V.
Baughman - reporter for The Aiken Standard newspaper Walt Boyes - marketing director of Jim Baen's
Universe Magazine Bruce Gehweiler - publisher at Marietta Publishing
|
