Alanna Nash
Ghostwriter
talkshak@iglou.com
A Word From Alanna
Let me tell you a story. It used to be my secret.
When I was 24, I wrote a manuscript about an elderly woman who had overcome impossible odds to rise in triumph in her field. It was a dramatic, true story. I thought the world should know about it. I was sure that people would be bettered by it. I spent a year researching and writing it, and mailed my manuscript off to a top New York literary agency. Months later, it was returned.
I had been rejected. Rejected! My heart fell to the pavement. I sat on the front steps of the house and sobbed, my face in my hands. I had worked so hard! I believed every word! My very soul was bound up in this work. And I didn’t want to let my friend down. Her story needed to be told. I was ashamed.
But I shouldn’t have been. I simply was not yet far enough along in my development as a writer. I needed help. I wanted, though I did not seek, the services of a ghostwriter to help me with my selection process—what to put in, and what to leave out. To help me with structure. To allow me to think like an editor.
In the decades since, I have learned to do just that. Not only have I had six books published by the top companies in New York, but that very literary agency that rejected me as a young adult later agreed to represent me.
Believe me, then, when I say I know what it is like to struggle with a writing project. I know how much you ache to tell your story, or to see your words in print. I know it is more than vanity.
I can help you if you need any kind of editorial services or writing assistance, whether it’s for a non-fiction book, a novel, a speech, or an article. Most people are surprised to learn that many of the books by well-known persons in the news are actually the product of ghostwriters—people behind the scenes who never see their names on books, but who get the call because the credited “authors” can’t write their stories on their own or haven’t the time to do it.
To me, ghostwriting is a magnificent opportunity to step into the skin of another person and “become” him or her for the time we spend together. I learn how to think like him, talk like him, and share many aspects of his life. Then I commit that life to paper. And feel enriched for having had that marvelous experience.
I hope you will want to work with me. I know that something wonderful will come of it. And along the way, perhaps you’ll share your secrets, too.
- Alanna Nash
Biography
Alanna Nash is an award-winning journalist, writer, and biographer. She is the author of six books for major American publishers, including The Colonel: The Extraordinary Story Of Colonel Tom Parker And Elvis Presley (Simon & Schuster), which won the 2004 Belmont Award for the best book in music, Golden Girl: The Story Of Jessica Savitch (E.P. Dutton), which suggested Touchstone Pictures’ feature film "Up Close and Personal," starring Robert Redford and Michelle Pfeiffer, and Behind Closed Doors: Talking with the Legends of Country Music (Alfred A. Knopf), which England’s “Country Music Round-up” reviewed as a "tremendous piece of work…Interviewing is an art, a very special skill gifted to but a few. One of the very best is Alanna Nash."
In her 30-year career, Nash has written about a variety of topics from music to magic to true crime for such publications as "Reader's Digest," "People," "Esquire," "TV Guide," "The New York Times," "Wired," "Playboy," "Entertainment Weekly," "Good Housekeeping," and "USA Weekend." She has profiled politicians (Vice President Al Gore) and policemen, music stars (Dolly Parton) and movie legends (Joan Crawford), and chronicled family dramas from the dissolution of dynasties to organ transplants to murders. She was the first journalist to see Elvis Presley in his casket, and the last to interview Christopher Reeve about his heroic fight for stem cell research. Nash has appeared on "The Fox Report " with Shepard Smith, Fox News' "On the Record with Greta Van Susteren," MSNBC's "Deborah Norville Tonight," several CNN news programs, and also in documentaries for A & E "Biography," Lifetime Television, and CMT.
A graduate of Stephens College, Columbia, Mo., and The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, New York, N.Y., she is the winner of the 2004 Country Music Association Media Achievement Award, and was named National Member of the Year from the Society of Professional Journalists. She lives in Louisville, Ky.
Quotes
"Alanna Nash is one of the rare writers who really combines a sense of authority with the critical quality of soulfulness. Anyone reading her work can immediately tell she has a deep knowledge of her subject matter, but she doesn't lord that expertise over the reader; instead, she brings real heart into her writing, always inviting us further in."
- Chris Willman, Entertainment Weekly
Praise for The Colonel: The Extraordinary Story of Colonel Tom Parker and Elvis Presley
“Perhaps the most thoroughly researched music book ever written”
- The London Observer
"Addictively readable. . . . A riveting rock and roll mystery."
- People Magazine
"Ranks alongside Fred Goodman's The Mansion on the Hill and
Frederic Dannen's Hitmen as a classic of music industry reporting."
- Billboard Magazine