The Easiest Way to Preserve Your Parents’ Life Stories

Reluctant storytellers are Mel's specialty. Mel starts with easy, comfortable topics and lets your loved one set the pace, with no pressure and no prying. Most narrators are surprised by how much they enjoy the calls, and many come to look forward to them each week.

Yes, and many families do. Whoever sets the memoir up is the champion, and the person telling the stories is the narrator, so a grandchild can start a memoir for a grandmother or grandfather exactly the same way an adult child starts one for a parent. Anyone you choose can read and listen to the chapters as they are written.

It is built as one. You buy it, you set the direction, and your parent or grandparent is the narrator whose only job is to answer the phone, so it asks nothing of the person receiving it. Because the interviews run over months rather than an afternoon, it keeps arriving long after a birthday, Mother's Day or Father's Day has passed.

Tell Mel does the interviewing and the writing, so nothing is left for your parent or for you to write. Mel conducts the conversation by telephone, and each call is then written into an edited memoir chapter in your parent's own voice and words, not a raw transcript and not a list of questions and answers. The original audio is always kept alongside the writing.

A professional ghostwriting service typically costs a few thousand dollars and delivers one finished book after several months of scheduled sessions. Tell Mel starts at $39/year, produces chapters after the first call, and keeps going for as long as your parent wants to talk. The honest trade-off is that a human ghostwriter brings a writer's craft to a single book, while Mel gives you far more interview time, far sooner, for much less.

Yes. Tell Mel is a phone interview service for parents and grandparents, and what it produces is oral history: a recorded life story in their own voice, transcribed and written into chapters you can read. The difference from a traditional oral history project is that Mel does the interviewing by phone call on an ongoing basis rather than in a single sitting, so the memoir keeps growing for as long as they want to talk.

Yes. During your onboarding call you can tell Mel exactly what to avoid and what to focus on. You can also coach Mel's style: some families ask for gentle and patient, others for 'be straight with him, he likes humor.' Mel follows your lead.

Mel conducts interviews in English, Spanish, French, German, Hindi, Russian, Portuguese, Japanese, Italian, and Dutch, and can deliver written chapters in both their language and English, so every generation of your family can read their story.

No. They need a telephone that rings, and a landline is completely fine. There is no app to install, no account to create, no password, no email required, and no video call to join. Answering the phone is the entire thing they have to do.

Yes. Mel places calls to parents and grandparents in 26 countries and interviews in 10 languages, so the conversations happen whether or not you can be in the room. Chapters can be delivered in their language and in English, which matters when relatives in different countries want to read the same story.

No stories are lost. Mel leaves a friendly voicemail and tries again, and you can reschedule calls to whatever day and time works best. Missed calls never use up your interview time.

A typical story call runs 20 to 30 minutes and becomes a full written chapter. Membership includes 2 interview hours a year and most families add more; 12 hours is roughly 25 to 30 weekly conversations, which is how most families capture a lifetime of stories over several months.

Only your family. You choose who receives the chapters, and the stories belong to you. They're never shared or published anywhere else.