Write On 
Lack of time or even lack of writing ability doesn’t have to prevent you from being an author. If you have a story to tell, about your life or your company’s history, a ghostwriting service such as Scottsdale Multimedia can help you put the words on the page—for posterity or to promote your business or your political career. "Whether you’re a politician or a company CEO, having a book that tells your story in your voice and in context makes all the sense in the world," says John Bingham, Scottsdale Multimedia’s vice president of author development. (The company refers to its clients as authors.)

Bingham describes how his company has a system in place to ensure that the final text reads as though the author wrote it. "More than one writer begins each project," he says, "and then we evaluate their work to see which writer does the best job of capturing the author’s voice. And that’s the writer who gets the assignment."

Bingham says that a typical biography usually requires about 48 hours of taped interviews, conducted at the Scottsdale offices or at the author’s home, and that a 250-page final manuscript usually will be ready to go to a publisher, agent, or printer two months after the interviews are completed. The cost of the service is usually about $100 a page. That price does not include the costs of designing and printing the book.

Racing Days of Yore
Mark Mason can send you back in time—fast. Mason is the owner of New England Boat & Motor, a custom boatbuilder and restorer in Laconia, N.H., that is offering three reproductions of 1920s-era mahogany racing boats. "They were known as gentlemen racers," says Mason, who has owned four original boats from this period. "They’re really elegant speedboats."

Each of the racing boats—Impshi, Hornet, and Palm Beach Days—is priced at $395,000. They are 27 feet long with 6-foot beams. Powered by a 548 cu in General Motors V-8, Palm Beach Days cruises at 50 mph and reaches a top speed of more than 70 mph, just as the original Palm Beach Days did.

John L. Hacker, the preeminent American naval architect of the early 20th century, designed the original in 1923, for a Palm Beach resident who raced it in competitions all over the country and used it as a runabout back at his own yacht club.

A Good Bet
The latest addition to the Mars Made line of made-to-order game tables is Mars Poker, which features polished concrete legs and an aluminum frame. You can order the playing surface in cloth, plated aluminum, or etched glass. The table is available in two sizes: for four to six players or for six to eight players. The starting price is $13,900.

The company, which is based in Boston and was founded in 2007 by a pair of product development professionals with a love of furniture design, also makes billiard tables, foosball tables, and dartboard cabinets, and it plans to introduce a bubble hockey table this year. The billiard tables, like the poker tables, can feature polished concrete legs and aluminum frames. Mars Made also offers an all-metal billiard table design. The foosball tables feature powder-coated steel sides.