Jerry Payne

Jerry Payne has been writing in some form or another most of his life, never dreaming as a little boy in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania that he’d one day be able to make a living from it.

After graduating with a degree in business from Penn State, he made his way down to Tampa, Florida, beginning a successful career in sales and marketing. Ultimately, he founded a web development company where he discovered just as much demand for good web copy as good web design. From there, he became an ace copywriter until one fateful day in 2008 when a client asked him to help write a book. He found the process extremely creative and gratifying. Since then, he has committed himself to a career as a book ghostwriter and his copywriting days are behind him.

Books of all types followed and he has penned more than forty of them. Very early on, he began to develop a keen interest in memoir and that interest led quickly to a specialization. Largely self-taught, Payne has become a student of the game, studying at length history’s greatest literature and greatest memoirs, in particular.

After having completed more than two dozen memoirs for a wide-range of clients, he decided to share his knowledge with Writing Memoir: The Practical Guide to Writing and Publishing the Story of Your Life (Faydelis Press, 2016, 126 pp.). Since then he has written an updated second edition, (Faydelis Press, 2020, 196 pp) full of new information.

Payne lives in St. Petersburg, Florida, where he conducts workshops on memoir, tends to his clients’ books, and cruises the bay on Pilar, his beloved sailboat.