What’s it like to be a ghost? Read Sarah Tomlinson’s debut novel and find out.
We’re not talking about the kind said to haunt houses. Tomlinson’s ghost is the publishing industry’s workhorse – a ghostwriter, the unnamed, well-paid but often hidden scribes hired to do the real writing for those celebrity memoirs or the blockbusters credited to business moguls.
It’s a world Tomlinson knows intimately: This L.A.-based writer is a well-known “ghost” in publishing circles, having ghostwritten or co-written 21 books, including the New York Times bestseller “Fast Girl,” with Suzy Favor Hamilton, and four other New York Times bestsellers for which she was uncredited. Tomlinson began her career as a journalist and became a popular music critic and columnist for outlets like Spin, Billboard and the Los Angeles Times (hence her social media handle, @duchessofrock).
In her debut novel, “The Last Days of The Midnight Ramblers,” Tomlinson blends her years of experience as a ghost and a music journalist to create a tense drama about a desperate ghostwriter named Mari hired to pen the memoir of a rock ‘n roll courtesan who had a front-row seat to life with The Midnight Ramblers, a mythic, epic rock band in the style of the Rolling Stones, The Beatles and The Who. The death of the band’s charismatic leader Mal has only added to their legend. In trying to balance keeping her ghostwriting gig while also digging into the mystery of Mal’s death, Mari falls into a twisted world of fame and power, where nothing is really what it seems.