We were lucky to catch up with Will Saulsbery recently and have shared our conversation below.

Will, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?

You have to show up, everyday, clock-in and create. Ideas don’t fall from the sky randomly, they fall when you’re engrossed in a creative process. Starting 25 years ago writing songs for a fledgling band, to now publishing books in my name, and ghostwriting for others, the most important lesson is that greatness and success don’t happen to you, you have to work towards and earn them. I used to think the creative gods would smile on me “when the time is right.” What you need to know is this: the time is always right to create.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Publicly, my latest work is 50 Forgotten Cardinals: The short story of 50 lesser known and sometimes forgotten St. Louis Cardinals. It was a fantastic book to work on, I learned a lot and laughed even more. Bringing forgotten players back to the fore was a process worth enduring. The book has been in the top 25 on Amazon since its release almost a month ago!

Prior to that I released a collection of short stories entitled Death in the Midwest, all fiction to great reviews. In June of 2025 PGA professional Jay Delsing and I released his autobiography, You Wouldn’t Believe Me If I Told You: An Unforgettable Memoir of Golf, Grit, and a Blue-Collar Kid on the PGA Tour, which won runner-up for sports book of the year from the American Writing Awards.

As for my ghostwriting, I operate in the AI space for multiple clients, with a focus on agentics, digitization, and quantum computing. I work with them to take their knowledge, thoughts, and beliefs on AI and mold them into works that have been published in Time, Newsweek, Forbes, The Observer, Entrepreneur, TechCrunch, The Hill, Inc Arabia, and many other industry specific publications. I solve the issue of time, and the ability to draft, edit, and work with publishers. All I need is a a meeting once a month for 30-45 minutes and I can have enough material for 4-5 full fledged pieces.

All of the contact information and suite of services can be found at www.Ashtonbery.com

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

The books that have truly inspired me are The Right Call: What Sports Teach Us About Work and Life, by Sally Jenkins. I spent years as an athlete competing in basketball, OCRs, and Hyrox, and sports can teach you so much about decision making and how to just get stuff done. Then, there’s The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance by W. Timothy Gallwey. This teaches you how to handle defeat and persevere.

I also suggest getting a copy of The War of Art, Hemingway on Writing, and a must have if you want to be a writer is Play it as it Lays by Joan Didion. You will not be the same when you put that one down.

They all speak to in different ways the absolute killer that is inaction. You have to get up and go. As the great Jim Delsing once said, “Make a move, even if it’s wrong.”

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

Any person that says, “If I can do it, anyone can.” Don’t ever believe this. It belittles everything you’ll ever accomplish. No anyone did it, you did. What you create, accomplish, and put in the world was only done by you. If someone says “I could have done that,” they couldn’t. If they could, they would.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://ashtonbery.com/50-forgotten-cardinals/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/william-saulsbery/
• Twitter: https://x.com/WillSaulsbery
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@50-Forgotten-Cardinals

Image Credits

All courtesy of Will Saulsbery
accept You Wouldn’t Believe me if I Told You, Courtesy of Jay Delsing Golf and Will Saulsbery