But I really want to bring my characters and story to life? I have what I feel is a strong book idea mostly due to the characters and their abilities. It would be a fantasy book that is pretty unique and exciting. The problem is I'm not a writer at all. I didn't go to college and I've never even read that much fiction. What I do have is a vivid imagination. I looked up some ghost writers for my project but the 2 companies I found (Penn & Arbor) were described as dishonest scammers on this site.
Basically my question is this. Should I just try to write the damn thing myself even though I have no writing ability whatsoever?
There are people here that will encourage you and say you should go ahead and write it, everybody has to start somewhere and all that. I would actually say that, too, except that you say you don't read much fiction.
In my experience, if you're not a reader, you're not going to make much of a writer.
College education doesn't matter for most fiction writers -- reading is what matters.
Without being a reader, how are you going to know if your ideas and characters have been done to death? How are you going to know anything about books at all.
Every human I've ever met, if pushed, will reveal a vivid, often awe-inspiring imagination. Almost everybody can imagine interesting characters and fantastical situations. Welcome to the human race.
Writers are something else. They take those same awesome characters and ideas and use craft to make them come alive. They understand story and words.
Maybe you can find someone who doesn't have any ideas of their own but has great writing skills. Then you two could pair up. The only problem is, in my experience, every single writer with great skills at crafting stories, has about a million ideas of their own, all just as good (if not better, at least to them), then yours.
I want to say: Go away.
But instead I'll say: start reading fiction. Read like it's nourishment and you're starving to death. Maybe one day you'll write something, maybe not. But meanwhile a whole new world will have opened up to you.