So what am I suspicious of I hear you ask? I am suspicious that novels written by celebrity authors aren't quite what they seem. Is it a matter of the said celebrities writing a book and then taking it to publishers or is it a matter of somebody else writing the book and then publishers looking around for somebody to attribute the story to?
My suspicions came to the fore this week when BBC weather forecaster and generally all-round lovely person (not that I've ever met her but she always seems lovely) Carol Kirkwood announced that she had been approached by a well known publisher who suggested that she might like to write a novel.
Now this may come as a great disappointment to all those thousand of would-be authors who have written and, in many cases, self-published books after having them rejected by a whole host of publishers.
My suspicions have also been aroused by the number of celebrity writers finding places in the shelves of bookshops. Obviously I don't want to cast aspersions on the validity of these books but isn't it a little bit of a co-incidence that so many celebrities suddenly decide to take to the written word at roughly the same time.
I do have some experience of this kind of thing from my days working in Media relations for Norfolk Constabulary. We were contacted by a lady representing a top selling author (I won't give you her name but think of somebody who had a life on the ocean waves before becoming a novelist). This lady was researching information for the new book and needed to check some police procedures to ensure the author had them correctly. We had a chat with her and helped and then asked about what she was doing and it became very obvious that the author employed a number of researchers to check procedures and even write whole passages of a novel for her.
So it isn't a great step to move from that idea to the idea that at least some of a celebrity author's novel may have been Ghost written by somebody else. Or am I becoming just too cynical? Surely these celebrities with huge working schedules would struggle to find the time to pen a novel. But no they seem to be able to bring them out as easy as shelling peas.
I have written all my life, both professionally as a journalist and as an amateur enthusiast of the written word. I have tried to write a novel on numerous occasions. I start with what I think is a fantastic idea and plot and start writing in a wave of enthusiasm, only to quickly become disillusioned with what I have written and tearing it up.
Obviously these celebrities don't have this problem. They can dash 300 page books off at will. Or as I said before am I just a tad too cynical on this subject? Of course if I'm wrong I do these people a great disservice, but if I'm right (or should that be write?) I really think they should admit the amount of help they have received from unnamed ghost writers.
This is what one American website has to say on the subject:
"Though stars will usually claim in interviews that they penned their latest roman à clef themselves, this is actually exceedingly rare. This isn't all that surprising, considering that we routinely see celebrities who have trouble stringing together coherent sentences produce 300-page works of fiction."
Another site (this time UK) says: "Authors understand the attraction of star names: celebrities have built-in reach through TV and social media platforms. If even a fraction of their followers buy their book, they have a hit on their hands. And some authors are doing good business as ghostwriters, which can promote their own work, too."
I reckon this is how it works. A publisher approaches a celebrity name and suggests a novel. The celebrity then comes up with a few basic ideas which are then worked on and turned into a story by one or a team of ghostwriters. Now tell me I'm wrong.
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Our initial aim to walk the whole of the Norfolk Coastal path was to do it in logical stages, beginning each leg from where we finished the previous one. It isn't quite working out that way though.
Our first leg saw us start at Hunstanton and walk to Brancaster. For the second leg we aimed to start at Brancaster and walk about 10 miles to see where we ended up. Unfortunately we never got as far as Brancaster.
We caught the Coasthopper from Weybourne with the idea of getting off at Wells and getting the Coastliner to Brancaster. But it soon became obvious that we weren't going to make that connection at Wells. Firstly the bus was almost full. Everyone wore masks but there was a bit of a spat when one woman wouldn't allow a stranger to sit next to her. I could see both sides of this argument. The man in question had to stand when there was a seat but the woman was quite right to insist on her personal space with COVID restrictions still in place.
So we crawled through Cley (I still refer to this place as Cly and not Clay). I cannot understand how they allow vehicle parking in the already narrow main coastal road through there. Our bus at times had inches to spare, cars had to back up and the whole thing is a dangerous mess. I know people need to park outside their properties but surely safety should take priority. I would hate to drive a bus or van through there, it's a nightmare in a car.
We got to the next stop and there were about nine people waiting to get on. The driver was brilliant - he had a vote amongst those on board about whether we should allow the newcomers on or not. Everyone voted yes. Once again he asked if anyone was against letting them on. No-one said yes to that and so on they crowded. I bet most people on that bus had been double jabbed.
It did mean we missed the connection so we decided to walk about four miles from Wells to Stiffkey and it was quite a pleasant walk although there weren't any great views of the sea, the path was just too far away.
At Stiffkey we got the bus back to Weybourne. This time it was pretty empty and getting through Cley proved ok. So that's another (albeit short section) of the walk completed.
Hope you enjoy some of the photographs taken.