Samples of Alice's ghost writing

Excerpt from a memoir co-written by ASTMcVeigh:

For several years while I was young, Mother was entranced by astrology— even magic—consulting “experts” and assembling a large and impressive repertoire of books in several languages. I never discovered what Josef's opinion was of such things—though I suspect it must have been negative—as one day I discovered her in the garden, burning all her magical and astrological topics on a makeshift bonfire.

As I watched (it was the spirals of smoke on the breeze which principally entranced me) I stroked our cat, an elegant and languid—and self-regarding—tabby. My mother turned and saw us, and, as she did so, the cat hissed, every hair on his arched back standing on end. Startled, I let him flee, and he sprang back into the house like a mad thing. I couldn’t help laughing, having never seen him behave like that before, but then Mother came up to me, white to the nostrils.

“I was only watching!” I said, immediately defensive, but she had no criticism in mind. Indeed, she seemed hardly to see me: she was looking at the doorway through which the cat had sprung.

“The jinn,” she whispered, almost to herself.
“Pardon?”

There was a sudden, almost exalted look in her eyes; for a moment my mother (always beautiful) glowed almost angelically.

“You don’t understand, little one; it is a sign. The truth is that animals are permitted to see things hidden from our mortal sight. The cat saw the jinn, the evil spirits, fleeing from the books on the waves of air. . I must tell Josef! You are to watch the fire, and to spray it down if it flares again. I won’t be long.”

I watched her stretch herself towards the doorway, as weightless in her silvery skirt as any jinn. And then, as ordered, I watched the fire burn itself out, until the soft spirals had long since lost any enchantment . . . And still, Mother did not come home. The fire died completely, and still she didn’t come.


Excerpt from an article published by Verbatim, by Alice McVeigh, on 'Terms used by Classical Musicians'

And yet great orchestral conductors can still be held is high esteem. There is a joke that a viola player in a famous orchestra comes home one night to find his house razed to the ground. A neighbour tells him, ‘I’m sorry to be the one to break it to you, but the conductor came here with a meat cleaver, killed your family and burned your house to the ground. Upon which the violist says, in complete disbelief, ‘You’re kidding. The conductor came to my house?’

The very term ‘orchestra’ comes from the area of the hall where what was originally known as the ‘band’ played. The principal violin-player’s being called the concertmaster (in Europe, the ‘leader’) dates back to the baroque-period pre-conductor age when he led the concert from the front of the first violins. Nowadays their role is much reduced, something many leaders have still not come to terms with. The other co-principals, associate principals, assistant principals and sub-principals within his (and, indeed, other’s sections, whether first violins, second violins, violas, cellos or basses) sometimes call to mind the cellist joke: ‘How many cellists does it take to change a light-bulb?’ (Answer: ‘Ten. One to change the bulb and nine to think they could have changed it rather better.’)

Section players in the strings who have not attained even the heady rank of sub-principal are simply known as ‘rank and bile,’ which is a corruption of the middle and late 20th-century term ‘rank and file,’ which came originally from the military. They are also occasionally colloquially known as ‘pondlife,’ as in ‘Right, we’ve finished rehearsing the chamber number. Have the pondlife shown up yet?’ A ‘wrecker’ is somebody, usually in the string sections, who routinely either comes in too early or hangs on to a note too late, as in, ‘He’s a wrecker, and always has been, but his heart’s in the right place.’


Excerpt from J.G.’s grandfather’s memoir of Sudan in the 1920s
ghost written by ASTMcVeigh

I also remember a vivid encounter one day in April 1929, as I was in a forest on one of my monthly rounds. It was the last night of our journey and I awoke early and informed the sergeant in my company of my intention to go alone to a nearby village in order to finish some business there. I gave him instructions to follow me, together with the men, assuming that I would probably have completed my duties by the time the rest arrived, and that we could proceed together to Wao before sunset. My horse and I trotted along a very narrow path through dense forest in the direction of the village, my mule behind (unloaded because it was a very unruly animal, which I kept only because I was paid for its feeding).

After only a few miles, my horse suddenly stopped, as did the mule: then they stared plunging forward as fast as they could—before just as startlingly stopping and rushing madly in the other direction! Before reaching the place when they had stopped at first, they again shivered to a halt, my horse bucked frantically, and then leaped off in the other direction again! I tried hard to stop him, but it was of no use and I began to worry lest I fall off, as I was unaccustomed to such fast galloping. (I held so tightly to the horse that one would have thought that we were only one creature!) On the third round of this wild and unruly behaviour I began to fear for the presence of some animal of prey hiding among the trees. I got out my whistle and blew it hard to alert my followers, while pulling out my revolver, in case it would be needed. I was so frightened that my hair stood on end; my felt hat was no more resting on my head but seemed out on the tips of my hair! I was almost certain that some leopard was lurking somewhere ready to pounce on me. All those thoughts crossed my mind as I was on horseback, attempting to stay on top of my horse.

I started to pray fervently. Then, as the horse and the mule stopped midway between the two points, ready for a fresh panic, I suddenly stared, seeing a leopard in front of me, blocking the path along which I was traveling. The moment I saw this, I stopped blowing my whistle and returned my gun into my pocket in order not to lose control over my nerves and start shooting, possibly inciting the animal to attack. I tried to keep my eyes from it although I could not help looking at it from time to time—only to see it held in its place. What I felt in those terrible moments is hardly to be told, except that I acquired energy out of my very weakness to such a degree that I wildly imagined that, should the ferocious animal attack me, I could seize it and fight back (of course this was but imagination, caused my strong emotion!) I remained in this condition for about ten minutes while the horse and the mule were in a state of alert, ready to stampede again at any moment. The ten minutes seemed to me to be ten hours, yet when I finally dared to look in the direction of the ghastly apparition it was no longer there.


Excerpt from a martial arts psychology book ghost written by ASTMcVeigh:

I saw a flash of silver as he went for the gun behind the small of his back. My gun already drawn, I instantly ducked behind cover. As he was stuck out in the open, I had a clear line of fire. He was maybe thirty years old, with dark, deep-sunken eyes—he looked every bit the violent criminal he was. Yet we had him cornered; I had him cornered. We locked eyes while the adrenalin surged inside my body. Ten feet away was a fugitive felon with a gun in his hand thinking about using it on me.

“Drop it,” I told him, very quietly, without for one second ceasing to bear my gaze into his eyes.

Out drawn, and out positioned, there wasn’t that much for him to think about. Either he wanted to live or he wanted to die, that’s really all he had to decide. The eyes said it all. At last he dropped his eyes: his hand started shaking; he lowered the weapon. My elation was fantastic. We had him at last, Antonio Padrino, the murderous drug lord himself!

Looking back I wondered where the control and concentration had come from that had kept the hair trigger on my government 9mm from engaging and sending five or six black talon law enforcement rounds straight into their target. But I knew in my soul that it was my training as a Mental Warrior.

I’ve had several career paths, including the FBI, that were truly warrior in spirit. And each time I followed one of these paths, I noticed one thing to be consistently true: the Mental Warrior training gave me the poise, confidence, and control to win the battle at hand.


Excerpt from a memoir ghost written by Alice McVeigh about growing up in Saddam Hussein's Iraq:

They say that anyone feels young until his mother dies.

In the early morning of March 28, 2005, I was getting ready for work as usual when the phone rang. I guessed at once that it was Ahmed, as he usually calls at about that time.

It was indeed Ahmed, but his voice was strangely stiff and strange. Without any preparation he said, “Mahmoud, our mother has passed away. Be strong!”

I could say nothing. My throat began to ache with tears, my eyes to swim. So, it had truly been the last goodbye! He carried on: “She had a heart attack last night, and died on the way to hospital. I was there; I was with her. The last words she spoke were, ‘Mahmoud, Ahmed, Mahmoud’ and then she was gone.”

I was a stone: my lips were glued; my heart had a weight like iron pressing down on it. I don’t remember what happened in the rest of that phone call.

When I hung up I was in the basement alone, crying in my soul, crying in my heart, my body shaking from my head to my toes . . . Not just because she was gone, but because she had lived so hard a life! Her father had died before she was born; her mother had remarried and left her to the care of an uncle. Even her country had refused her a passport! When she had attracted the attention of my father he was perhaps not the best choice (not that I blame him; he too had troubles). Then I left her too and, despite my best efforts, her life was still so difficult: still there were family worries, security worries, personal worries, her hearing loss, the wars, the constant fear for her children and for their children too. There had been so few happy days, so few moments when she could laugh with us and be truly light-hearted! I had used to hope that I was a comfort to my mother—I knew that she was proud of me—but the crazy dreams I had dreamed of my coming in to liberate her in a US tank had never happened. To the end of her life she had been shackled: by wars and rulers who had never had the grace to give her a vote or a passport, by love of her children and her grandchildren which had made even such joys as there had been feel so fragile and precarious. And yet she gave and gave!—she never finished giving! Always she was giving: to children and grandchildren, to my father and to me!—There was never a person put on earth who asked less, or gave more. And how she had loved me. Her last word on this ungrateful earth: Mahmoud.

My wife wandered downstairs and asked who had called. When she saw how I was shaking she put her arms around me and cried with me. That was how I knew that I would heal someday, though not then, not yet.

Later that morning I phoned Baghdad and heard the story again, what people were saying about her, where she would be buried (near to her birthplace), how my father was coping. I found out that Ahmed had waited a day before calling me, thinking and fretting and worrying about how to tell me; Ahmed is such a very feeling person!

Of course, I was especially worried about Khola. Within about a month she had lost two of the most important people in her life, her husband and her mother, the first shot in a drive-by shooting and the second having a heart attack. I asked Ahmed how I could possibly reach her, and he suggested that I call her sister-in-law. At first she was trying to be collected, but it did not take a couple of words before she burst into tears on the phone. I told her: “I will be responsible for you and your children; they are like my children now. Don’t ever worry about how you’re going to raise them.”

Had I been in her place, I’m sure I would have lost my mind, but Ahmed and my youngest sister Azhar looked after her (Azhar and her mother-in-law moved into her house in order to help the children, as well).

As for my mother, I know that I will see her once more, in a place where no aid will be needed for hearing, and no passport needed to travel, where no borders exist and no country can become your prison (your crime being that you were born there). As I write this I know she is listening; she can hear my voice again.

This I believe.