Ghost Writing

It's been slow in the publishing world. That's an understatement. So my agent, who is very good at his job and cares for his writers, gave me a great chance to write a series for a well-placed London firm who had outlines for a line of police mysteries, based on an American police detective. I've never tried this before, but it sounded fun. And lucrative. So I said sure, made contact with the firm and was sent the outline.
     Because I'm sure some other writer has taken up the flag and created this series, I'll obfuscate. Trust me, what I tell you won't narrow it down enough to make it stand out. Enough to say it was the story of a detective forced to leave a big city for a little city. A town, really. He had a shrewish wife and an uncontrollable daughter, plus a sickly mother living with them. He'd gotten in trouble in the ‘big' city by mixing it up with a newspaper writer. Now, he's offered a new chance.
     The first thing he does is mix it up with a newspaper writer in the ‘little' town.
     Then, murders begin in this little town - murders that seem linked. In the outline I was given, the CSI team arrived on each scene and puzzled over it. Small towns have no CSI teams. They're lucky if they have a paramedic or coroner who pays attention.
     Then, the U.K. writer of the outline committed several errors that would never pass in American police stories. I'll only give one, since that was when I began writing my own story and not following the outline.
     In other words, losing the chance to write the series was all my fault.
     In this one action sequence in the outline, the detective arrives on the scene of a possible crime, sends his old and senile, just-waiting-to-retire partner next door to interview neighbors, then, alone, breaks down the front door.
     (This is where I say, but don't explain, that once I had to break down a door. It took over five minutes and my shoulder and wrist were damaged for almost a month)
     Once inside, the detective looks around, sees no one, so he exits,  runs around the house and breaks down the back door.
     Here was my dilemma. I should've contacted the London firm and explained how moronic this was. How out of place in American police action and, I'm sure, in English as well.
     I should've followed protocol and just maybe I'd be sitting pretty right now. Maybe I'd have a new car.
     The problem is I'm not cut out to write someone else's story. I never will be. That wasn't my agent's fault, nor was it the fault of the London firm. They had a simple outline for me to follow, and all I had to do was follow it.
     But I couldn't. The person(s) who wrote this outline, and were destined to write the sequels, had no clue  how to tell an American story. They had no knowledge of police procedures, of the feel of small American towns (another subject, but trust me) or even American family relationships. I never want to insult a reader by giving him or her something that isn't true, and this is where I come back to my same little horn. You'd think I love tooting it. But I don't really, I'm just driven as a reader or a writer to find logic in fiction.
     I could've written it, I could've been a pretender. I really didn't mind. I think I could have turned it into a hell of a series. But that's not what they were asking for. I love to write. I want to be successful at it, and I want people to enjoy the stories I tell. But I'll keep carving this little trail, because that's where my heart is.
     I'm preparing the sequel to A Thousand Bridges for release on Kindle and the rest soon. It's called The Foothills of Heaven. I hope someone, lots of someones will read it. I have more, including a brand new MacDonald Clay book in the works. But I doubt I'll pop up here and there ghosting for someone else. I found out that wasn't for me.