It was not easy to convince Night Stalker Gregory “Gravy” Coker to write his book. In the throes of my attempt to talk him into it, I quickly bought into a proposal of his — to ghostwrite the book for him.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah… piece of cake, Coke — I’ll ghost it for ya, now let’s get to work!”

Two things:

Firstly, Ghostwriting a book is kind of like… writing a book; it is every bit as tedious! I just did not think that through in the beginning, but that was no longer a part of the matter because I said I would do it and now I had to do it. Maybe as long as nobody spilled the beans about how tedious ghostwriting would be I might have not ever figured it out. But oh… I figured it out.

Secondly, when you tell a brother like Greg to get to work, you better take cover because scunion is gonna fly and there will be blood and sonic booms. The next thing I knew chapters were flying at me every single day, and sometimes two at a time.

It occurred to me that, while not on purpose, Greg had maneuvered me into the asshole position. Yes, I was the asshole who was holding up his book’s progress. The pent-up Chief’s stories were clawing to get out. I had danced all around Greg and now it was time for me to pay the band. I put my own book-writing to the side — at two chapters from completion — to concentrate on fielding Coke’s magnum opus. It was the right thing to do.

I can have a draft chapter for my own book done in a single no-kidding hour. Some of Coke’s chapters kept me tied up for four-five hours or more. Coke’s chapters on average are about 3,000-6,000 words each; mine average about 1,500 words. A self-inflicted curse of mine is that I can accept some slop in my own work, but I have to go wide-open when the work is for someone else.

So the Chief got to pouring it on, pouring it on as Private Blythe did in Band of Brothers when the Jerries were attacking across the meadow — POUR IT ON, CHIEF, LET ‘EM HAVE IT — POUR IT ON!