The Ghost Part of Ghostwriting

I have a secret to divulge: My cat Tazi does not actually pen the Ask Tazi! advice column here on Blogger. I do. Of course, if you were to read all the way down to the bottom of Ask Tazi! you would know that it was "ghostwritten" by "a human with a Bachelor of Arts in Communications", and this whole revelation would come as no surprise. Sorry to disappoint those who truly believed; but onto the next burning question: Are the letters real? Do people actually write to a cat to ask for advice? The answer to that question is...well, let's see if you can figure it out on your own!

As anyone who has read Stephen King's forward to his Bachman Books collection - which I am guessing includes me; his wife, the novelist Tabitha King; and....maybe his children? His editor? Okay, now I am grasping at straws, but the point is that in that introduction Mr. King makes a very important point: Every writer has their own personal style which, once you look for it, becomes quite obvious to the reader. Back when the Bachman books were first printed, people noticed similarities to Stephen King's writing; once the author was revealed to be King, people insisted that the writing styles were almost exact, and that the true authorship of the books had been obvious to them all along. I call bullshit, because ghostwriting leaves just that - a ghost of the writer's true style; an imprint if you will...but nothing more. At least, this is the case if the writer is aware that they write in a certain style and can therefore make a conscious effort to twist that style into an unrecognizable pretzel-like creation. Although this is not difficult to do, it is difficult to do well considering how difficult it is to write while concentrating on what comes subconsciously - in my case, my love of semi-colons; dashes; and ellipses. I swear that I have never met a clause that I did not like!

So...to answer the question of whether or not the letters in Ask Tazi! are real, completely fabricated, or what I like to call Lifetime Movie Network real (Inspired by real-life events! Based on a TRUE STORY!); I will leave that up to the readers...but in the meantime, feel free to write to Tazi-Kat - America's ONLY advice-giving cat - at tazikat@yahoo.com.