Quick Answers

The point of your life isn't that it ends—it's that it even happened. You are made from 37 trillion cells. Your heart beats 100,000 times a day. Your eyes can distinguish between 7.5 million colours. If all the DNA in your body were uncoiled, it would stretch for ten billion miles. There's only one you in all the billions of people who have lived and will ever live on this planet. No one will ever replace you. So, you should tell the world you were here and about the life you've lived.

Think of how many things in the course of the Universe had to be just right to lead to your birth. If a caveman from 50,000 years ago ran right instead of left to get away from a sabre-toothed tiger, he might not have met the cavewoman who gave birth to your ancient grandmother. You made it. You are here. Discover why—and leave your legacy for others to learn about and add value to their lives.  

We all end up as the dash on a tombstone between our year of birth and our year of death. Understand what that dash will mean for you.

As people age, it becomes increasingly important for them to leave their legacy as a lasting imprint of their time. They want to understand what their life has meant and review all the different chapters that have made them who they are.

The vast majority of people will never be the subject of a book, documentary, or TED Talk. So, what happens to their life stories when they're gone? Well, some of it lives on in the next generation, but it fades quickly and is forgotten over time. Capturing someone's life in a Legacy Book or Legacy Article helps solidify and structure a life lived, enabling that person to benefit from a reflective and healing process. And in the end, you have something tangible to document their personal history as a gift to friends, children, grandchildren, and countless future generations.

Read about the benefits of life review here.

If writing your life story was easy, everybody would do it. The truth is, most people don't, and their legacies are lost over time. Those who attempt to write their life story often struggle with organizing memories and how to transition from one chapter of life to the next.

Many people believe that you have to be famous to write a book or an article about your life. Yet, the so-called normal life is more valuable to everyday people than the celebrity one because it's relatable.

Family members who are not professional writers may try to write a life story for a loved one. Sometimes this works, but there is usually too much emotional proximity to get the real story. People don't easily share the content of their lives with family members in an interview-style setting.

Seniors are in the best position to tell their life stories because they've lived whole lives. When people are younger, raising a family, building a career, generating wealth, worrying about day-to-day life—they don't have time to reflect on their lives. They're too busy living them. When people are in their golden years, they typically have more time to reflect, look back at their lives, examine their journey, and make sense of it all. In my experience, having interviewed hundreds of seniors about their lives, I have found this to be an enjoyable and rewarding experience for them.

I've written and edited autobiographies about younger people, whose motivations and rationales are different. Sometimes, they do this for career progression or to capture a significant milestone. But this is not a life review because they are still developing their lives.

Seniors, or older adults over 55, are not typically in this stage of life. They have lived most of their lives, and this process is about reviewing life, reflecting on their experiences, making sense of it, healing, understanding their life journey, and leaving a legacy. I personally believe that I can make a greater difference and have a more significant impact by working with seniors. Reaching senior status is an achievement because not everyone reaches this milestone. I want to celebrate this by extending the benefits of a longer life across countless generations.

Telling senior life stories is where most of my experience as a journalist resides, and ultimately, it is what I enjoy most. My life legacy is about helping seniors leave theirs.

You can submit the final manuscript to traditional publishers. However, the stark reality is that traditional publishing is highly competitive and hard to access. If you want to self-publish on platforms like KDP or IngramSpark, you will receive the print-ready PDF and cover files.

Senior Legacy Books is a ghostwriting service for seniors that uses a tested interview method. Memories work by association, and once you start talking and recalling certain things, this leads to a treasure chest of interconnected memories that you may not have thought about in years, or perhaps never.

Some of the best content is obtained when people are free to explore memories in a safe and comfortable conversation. My interview model enables and encourages you to freely tap into your memories, spanning decades, without obeying a timeline, sequence, or chronology of events. I will make sense of all of this afterwards by organizing and editing your answers into a narrative with sequential chapters that make a book about your life.

Only one 90-minute interview is required to create a Legacy Article.

See our Legacy Articles page for more information and pricing.

Interview sessions will be rewarding, poignant, joyful, and sometimes challenging and emotional. But above all, I guarantee that you will reflect upon your life in ways you haven't thought about in decades, or ever. Any life lived is a collection of ups and downs, victories and disappointments, and you can explore and examine them from the comfort of your home.

I handle your life story with the greatest care, respect, consideration, and integrity, and I listen patiently as you recount memories from your past. I guide you through your thoughts and memories to bring more depth and clarity to your recollections. This gentle coaching approach helps you tell your story in the most comfortable, relaxed way, designed to capture the best content for your Legacy Book or Legacy Article.

Yes. However, keep in mind that having someone else present during interviews can change the way you express yourself and how you respond to questions. You may consciously or unconsciously edit yourself for the sake of the other person. For the best results, this process is best suited to an interviewer-interviewee approach.

You are the author of your book and the subject of your article. I am the writer. As such, I work for you. My editing suggestions come from my experience, and I'll explain each one if needed. But ultimately, the decision about the content of your book or article is yours to make, and you have the final say. Always.

During the interview process, memories and thoughts will act as a bridge to others, so it is important not to actively edit yourself in your responses. Memories can sometimes come out raw and disjointed, which is a normal part of the process. If you mention something you don't want in the Legacy Book or Legacy Article, please let me know at the time. You can also change your mind and ask me to remove the content from your book manuscript or article draft.

If you've already started writing your life story and feel stuck, I may be able to use what you have written as a foundation for your Legacy Book or Legacy Article.

The photos should reflect key moments in your life as they appear in your Legacy Book or Legacy Article. For instance, your early life with parents and siblings, school years, postsecondary education, marriage and children, career, notable travel experiences, and so on should be presented in chronological order, leading up to the present day.

If your photos are old and low quality, I may be able to restore them using software.

Senior Legacy Books mirror the style and quality of a celebrity autobiography or memoir. As a general rule, these books do not contain copies of letters and other documents throughout. I take the content of these documents and weave it into the narrative of your Legacy Book. This is a seamless process that I've done many times before. I can use your diary entries, emails, letters, and other documents to supplement our interviews. I'll also use your photos as the basis for conversation.

I write books about and for seniors over 55 because that is where most of my experience as a journalist lies. It's what I enjoy doing the most and where I can make the biggest impact.

Senior Legacy Books are designed to be the kind of memoir or autobiography you would see on a bookstore shelf. Many other services offer something different, which I would describe as more photo books with accompanying text.

Some services use a combination of people—an account manager, interviewer, ghostwriter, editor—to work on your project. They sometimes utilize a bank of hundreds of writers to achieve a global reach. I want to be as close to your Legacy Book as possible, so I oversee the whole process as a white-glove service from start to finish.

Other models drip-feed customers a series of emailed questions to complete and submit. The common feedback I see in online forums is that this feels like homework. My primary focus isn't to force you to do homework on your own, but to offer an enjoyable, rewarding life review experience. Together, we can create something that neither of us could create on our own. You share your thoughts and memories, and I'll uncover the relationship between seemingly unrelated events and weave them into a Legacy Book or Legacy Article about your life.

Your Legacy Book will be bookstore quality, featuring a gloss cover design, typeset pages, black-and-white photo pages with captions, a back-cover synopsis, and your name on the front cover as the credited author. Most private autobiography and memoir writing services produce books that resemble coffee table photo albums with words in them. Senior Legacy Books creates the types of celebrity autobiographies and memoirs you would find in a bricks-and-mortar bookstore.

Unless otherwise requested, we convert all internal photos to black and white to make printing your book cheaper.

For the front cover, you can choose photography or illustration in a variety of colours. I will offer suggestions on the book cover design and will have this ready for you to review before it's finalized. Your finished book will be approx. 150 pages.

If you don't already have a title for your book, I will suggest several options with stylized fonts.

See a book sample.

Your Legacy Article will resemble a celebrity-style article published in a mainstream, glossy magazine like The Atlantic, The Walrus, and The New Yorker.

Choose from 7 article templates in landscape and portrait, all with colour photos and captions.

You can see framed examples and read PDF versions on our Legacy Articles page.

You will also receive the PDF eBook and book cover design file, so you can print it yourself through KDP, Amazon, Blurb, or any other print-on-demand provider. The ordering process is easy and quick, and you can order as many books as you want.

Explore printing and self-publishing with Amazon’s KDP:

https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G201834180

https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/

IngramSpark:

https://www.ingramspark.com/book-printing

Blurb:

https://www.blurb.ca/hardcover-and-paperback-books

Some AI platforms use robot software to simulate the same process, using stock questions and a generic formula to create a book narrative.

AI edits and manicures your natural speech to auto "correct" it for exact grammar and punctuation rules. That's not what a Senior Legacy Book is about. It's about capturing your voice, personality, and the unique turn of phrase in how you speak. Correcting your communication to textbook English misrepresents who you are.

Talking to AI about your life story is very different from talking to a real person with empathy, journalistic experience, and emotional intelligence. I react to your mood and emotion, and know where and how to lead you to mine the best responses. 

I listen carefully and direct the conversation with follow-up questions on the fly to expand and deepen your answers. My process is based on instinct and real-world journalistic experience, gained from interviewing hundreds of seniors. AI cannot replace a human interaction where you feel comfortable sharing your memories, thoughts, and decisions. Another concern is that no one truly knows what AI will do with your information after you've shared it. 

How each person speaks and communicates represents who they are. I take great care to capture the unique essence and characteristics of how a person talks and the cadence of their speech. Nobody talks in grammatically manicured sentences—or even complete sentences, for that matter—and rarely speaks in a way that transitions smoothly from one thought to another. Quite often, we jump to related or unrelated thoughts and memories midway through a sentence.

We all use words and phrases specific to where and when we grew up, our education, our jobs, and numerous other factors. I use my experience and judgment to make informed, creative decisions, organize words, and edit content so the narrative accurately represents the author while also enhancing that representation. When someone reads your Legacy Book, it should feel like you're talking directly to them, even if you've never met them.

I transcribe interviews and organize the content into a logical, natural, engaging narrative that flows seamlessly from one chapter to the next, forming a complete Legacy Book. I listen carefully during interviews because it's not just about what someone says but how they say it. I reorder thoughts and ideas on the page for impact and balance. I have years of experience in this field and have worked with hundreds of people. You can review my bio page to gain a sense of my expertise in this area.

If you would like to do all the interviews close together, the process to a first draft will be faster. Generally, time to completion from the first draft depends on your feedback and any revision requests.

You can expect to receive your printed Legacy Book in a few months, depending on your interview schedule and your feedback. Ultimately, your Legacy Book will take as long or as short as you need. I aim to get a first draft completed within one month of the final interview.

Absolutely. After I complete all the interviews and any other necessary research, I will produce a first draft for you to review and comment on. If you prefer to listen to the draft, Microsoft Word and Adobe Reader both have features that let you read the content aloud at a pace you set, with the option to pause and replay. Both applications, along with others, let you write notes and feedback directly on the documents.

You can also ask a friend or family member to read the book to you. However, because the Legacy Book is written in your own voice, it is better to read it yourself if you're able.

There are several ways to do this. You can write notes directly on the document, type your feedback in a separate document and email it to me, or provide your input verbally during a phone call or video call. Feedback and editing requests have to come from the author of the book in most circumstances.

The payment scale consists of three instalments: a deposit, after the first draft is submitted, and upon submission of the final draft. If you no longer wish to continue before the first draft is submitted, you do not need to make any further payments. If you change your mind before the interview process has begun, I will refund your deposit.

I do everything I can to keep my prices as low as possible. I intend to help as many people as possible leave their legacy while they can. The return on your investment is that you will have reviewed your life and created a Legacy Book or Legacy Article to leave as a lasting legacy. Think of this as an additional part of your children’s inheritance.

See Book Packages or Legacy Articles pages for pricing.

There is no "buy now" button to purchase a Senior Legacy Book. I want to talk with you first to make sure you understand what you're getting and that this product and service meet your expectations. I would like to do this before you make any financial commitment. I'm willing to invest my time for free to do this. I also want to understand your story and how I can help structure it into a Legacy Book. All of this should happen before any financial transaction.

I record all interview sessions and transcribe them to develop content for your Legacy Book or Legacy Article. I do not routinely delete your information.

If you want your information deleted at the end of the project, you can request this in writing.

You own the full copyright in all cases and circumstances after full payment.

You can. However, Senior Legacy Books does not specialize in this because you would need to record an audiobook in a sound studio to get broadcast-quality audio. If you're not too concerned about audio quality, you can use online resources to record yourself reading your Legacy Book and output an audio file. Please be aware that recording an audiobook typically involves multiple takes and requires subsequent audio editing.

As part of your book package with Senior Legacy Books, you will receive an audio file containing an hour of interview footage. Many years after losing a loved one, people often say that they can't remember their voice or how they would laugh. I added this extra service to address that, and I select the best parts of your interviews to offer as a simple audio file you can copy and share with friends and family.

Senior Legacy Books and Legacy Articles are written in English only. You can, of course, arrange to have it translated yourself. If you'd like to do this and have the work reformatted in an additional language, please request it.

If you refer someone to Senior Legacy Books, and they commit to our service, you will receive a 5% discount or reimbursement if you've paid in full.