Why should I trust you with this work?
Feedback From a Satisfied Memoir Editing Client
“Working with Sonny has been an absolute pleasure. She brought clarity, care, and professionalism to every stage of the editing process. Her thoughtful feedback helped me refine not only my memoir but also my voice as a writer. Sonny’s attention to detail, warmth, and insight made the entire experience both inspiring and enjoyable. I’m deeply grateful for her guidance and highly recommend her to any author seeking an editor who truly understands both craft and heart.”
Testimonial From a Debut Writer-Author
"HIRE SONNY! PERIOD! I am in the process of writing my first book. I needed much assistance from A-Z. I hired Sonny to help me as a Ghost Writer, and it has indeed turned into a beautiful working relationship. I trust her and believe she is the person who will help me bring my stories into people's households. Sonny was able to help tell my story in a way that could honestly relate to my target audience. I never felt judged or overtaken. She was careful to make sure it was my voice that was being translated in our sessions. What I appreciated the most was her care and compassion to get the story right.”
As a ghostwriter and editor specializing in memoir, true crime, creative nonfiction, and nonfiction books, I partner with clients seeking a trusted collaborator for book-length endeavors. Working with clients around the world, I’ve structured intricate narratives and developed stories that span countries, cultures, and generations.
I bring extensive experience supporting independent authors in developing content, drawing on many hours spent refining manuscripts and crafting narratives from interviews, transcripts, and outlines. My background in journalism has sharpened my ability to distill complex ideas and emotional truth in storytelling into clear, accessible language that resonates with readers.
Since November 2019, I’ve ghostwritten six published memoirs and nonfiction books as the principal ghostwriter and contributed to many others as an editor. Two clients for whom I served as principal and secondary ghostwriter secured traditional publishing deals for their manuscripts. I’ve had the privilege of collaborating with diverse authors, from a retired First Grade Detective and Detective Lieutenant, Founders, CEOs, a Time Person of the Year, educators, an accredited coach, and everyday folks with powerful stories.
What have you written?
With more than five years of writing and editing for my book clients, our manuscripts have encompassed a wide range of subjects from addiction, ADHD, autism, cancer, the criminal justice system, democracy, depression, faith, forensic science, gangs, grief, homicide, immigration, infectious disease, integration and segregation, neurodivergence, organized crime, poverty, PTSD, racism, sexual abuse, special needs, suicide, war, and white-collar crime.
What else interests you?
On my manuscript wish list is the desire to write about artificial intelligence, gun control, constitutional rights, privacy laws, infertility, aging, adoption, love & marriage, polyamory, and being young and inarguably non-binary.
Where do we begin?
Some clients come to me with a book outline and story beats they’ve devised. Others arrive with a head full of stories and a sense of urgency. I work with clients drawing from sources as varied as federal and state archives, DNA databases, transcripts of hearings, medical records, investigative case content, academic research, and previously published writing as building blocks for a fruitful collaboration.
Whose memoirs would you want to be entrusted to ghostwrite?
Choreographer Lyle Beniga
Choreographer Shaun Evaristo
Actor Andrew Garfield
What memoir are you currently reading?
Heavy by Kiese Laymon
What was the memoir you read before that?
Biting the Hand by Julia Lee
Which memoirs resonate deeply with you?
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Hunger : A Memoir of (My) Bodyby Roxane Gay
What Christian memoir speaks plainly & poignantly to you?
A Thousand Resurrections by Maria Garriott
What memoir skillfully addresses church trauma & deconstructing Christianity?
God Is a Black Woman by Christena Cleveland, Ph.D.
What books have your clients asked you to read?
Assata by Assata Shakur
Becoming by Michelle Obama
Between The World And Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Called : My Journey to C.S. Lewis’s House & Back Again by Ryan Pemberton
Educated by Tara Westover
The Body Keeps the Score : Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel Van Der Kolk, M.D.
Untamed by Glennon Doyle
Barracoon : The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" by Zora Neal Hurston
White Fragility : Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo
WILL by Will Smith with Mark Manson
Around The Way Girl by Taraji P. Henson
The Beautiful Struggle : A Father, Two Sons and an Unlikely Road to Manhood by Ta-Nehisi Coates
The Watsons go to Birmingham—1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
A Terrible Thing To Waste: Environmental Racism and Its Assault on the American Mind by Harriet A. Washington
What else are you reading?
Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People by Nadia Bolz-Weber
And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic by Randy Shilts
Madly, Deeply by Alan Rickman