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Douglas Debelak

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Born

in Beaver Falls, The United States

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http://www.douglasdebelak.com/

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Fiction, Speculative, Contemporary

Member Since

December 2016

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I would much prefer to have my biography written by someone else and, therefore, presented objectively in the third person. But, until I can afford to hire a publicist or persuade a friend, whom I trust to be honest, preferably more honest than myself, we are both stuck with me and my clearly subjective and highly biased effort. Given this, I believe the most authentic approach is to own up and proceed in the first person.

I don’t remember being born, nor do I trust what appear to be my earliest childhood memories, nor, at times, even memories from events that took place only moments ago. So, I can only conclude that what I am about to present will be as fictional as anything else I’ve written. Then again, hasn’t everything ever written been I would much prefer to have my biography written by someone else and, therefore, presented objectively in the third person. But, until I can afford to hire a publicist or persuade a friend, whom I trust to be honest, preferably more honest than myself, we are both stuck with me and my clearly subjective and highly biased effort. Given this, I believe the most authentic approach is to own up and proceed in the first person.

I don’t remember being born, nor do I trust what appear to be my earliest childhood memories, nor, at times, even memories from events that took place only moments ago. So, I can only conclude that what I am about to present will be as fictional as anything else I’ve written. Then again, hasn’t everything ever written been filtered through one’s imagination, if only to seek out the words and phrases to express best what we believe to be true? Or hope we can convince you to believe it is true.

Not my first memory, of that I am fairly certain, perhaps not a memory at all, but a clear recollection nonetheless, was the subject of sex seeming to be such a taboo topic in our household that I became so fixated on learning what was behind such a whispered about behind closed doors, dark, secret, sin-ridden mystery that its eventual discovery alone would surely send me directly to hell. I’m not sure I’ve ever escaped that sense of forbiddenness, nor, clearly, even at my advanced age, the fixation.

Another event I don’t remember, but according to my mother, I must have been a natural-born storyteller even as a child, since I persuaded the rest of my kindergarten class that I could tell a better story than the teacher. I apologize for not remembering whether I ever told the story I promised, let alone recall what that might have been. I suspect I intended to make it up, since that is what I do.

The teacher, being new and flustered by such a brazen challenge to her authority, told my mother that she didn’t know how to handle such behavior. To her horror, being strongly opposed to corporal punishment, she witnessed my mother promptly demonstrate what she called “butt shock therapy.” Whatever the teacher’s beliefs, I bet that I never disrupted her class again, whether or not I believed I had a better story to tell.

I repeated first grade, thanks to my inability to pay attention in school, whether from boredom or having more interesting stories floating through my imagination than those I promised my kindergarten classmates. Even though I was a year older than my classmates, I remained smaller than most and wore glasses, making me a natural target for bullies. Add having a mouth that, as I was to discover, would have been far more clever had I learned to keep it shut, since, together with being smaller and wearing glasses, it was not a good combination for navigating grade school unscathed, with the unsurprising consequence of regularly suffering one of my classmates’ version of “butt shock therapy.”

Like other bored-to-death, imaginative children, I spent more time daydreaming than paying attention in class. However, for some unknown reason, while not deluding myself about my undersized prospects in professional sports, I also read an entire set of encyclopedias, cover to cover, front to back, in alphabetical order, as well as many of the other books in our home. The Old Man and the Sea half a dozen times before I was twelve, and I can’t begin to calculate how many other titles, but a decent enough swathe through the classics, that, despite my best efforts to make no effort, I didn’t emerge from grade school utterly illiterate and uneducated; a fact which also didn’t go unnoticed by my mother or other adults in my life, who continued to remind me how if I’d only apply myself, I could be anything I wanted to be. More on that later.

Fast forward through junior and senior high school; to keep this brief, I graduated, if barely. After which, with a red-flag combination of poor grades and high standardi ...more

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Average rating: 4.48 · 61 ratings · 42 reviews · 8 distinct works

	The Involuntary Ghostwriter (The Ghostwriter Series #1) Out-of-date. 4.40 avg rating — 30 ratings — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Ghostwriter's Wife (The Ghostwriter Series #2) Out-of-date edition. 4.55 avg rating — 20 ratings — published 2017 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Ghostwriter's Legacy: The Ghostwriter Series - Book Three Out-of-date edition. 4.44 avg rating — 9 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Involuntary Ghostwriter: The Ghostwriter Series - Book One it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 1 rating	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Ghostwriter's Wife: The Ghostwriter Series - Book Two it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 1 rating	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Ghostwriter's Legacy: The Ghostwriter Series - Book Three 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Ghostwriter's Words: The Ghostwriter's Series - Book Four (The Ghostwriter Series 4) 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — published 2025	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Words: An Autobiography: The Ghostwriter's Series - Central Narrative Books 1 thru 3 (The Ghostwriter Series Book 5) 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Douglas Debelak's Blog

Ghostwriter Series

What is The Ghostwriter Series about?

I found myself trying to answer that question dozens of times over the weekend as people stopped by the Dark Ink Press booth at the Boston Book Festival.

The Ghostwriter Series is a fabric woven from a thousand questions, but at its heart, it grew from my effort to get my mind around a song I heard on the radio, which has resonated through my thoughts for over Read more of this blog post »

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Published on October 30, 2017 09:01

Series by Douglas Debelak

The Ghostwriter Series (2 books)
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Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil

by V.E. Schwab

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by Lisabet Sarai (Goodreads Author)

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Whispers of Ink and Starlight

by Garrett Curbow (Goodreads Author)

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Apr 08, 2017 09:19AM

Hi Doug, I'm Author Dawn Diva. Thanks for adding me as a friend. Please checkout my series Homies, Lovers and Friends books 1 & 2...5 star reads. I also have paperback books available. Contact me at Dawn Devah on FB or authoressdawndiva@gmail.com.Thanks

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