Empowering Feedback, Storytelling
I use my storytelling skills, big picture vision, and extensive training to assist independent writers and publishing house clients in the early and polishing stages of crafting memoir, self-help, historical fiction, and other genres. I am a certified book coach, certified editor, and ghostwriter with a special interest in fostering all things healthy living.
As a certified book coach gifted in big picture analyses, I can make the early writing process more efficient--or help you hone your work at later stages. My guidance on mostly nonfiction books and book proposals is informed by 500-plus hours of training, and from providing guidance on all stages of content development for self-published authors and six publishers, including Counterpoint, MIT and Stanford’s presses. I also have a decade-plus of experience coaching university faculty about engaging ways to present their work.
Consider investing in the following coaching offerings:
-
The Road Map aka Book Planning — we work back and forth to nail down your book’s foundational elements. More than a dozen factors are considered, such as clarifying the (sub)genre, theme/main point, and character’s arc of change (in historical fiction and memoir, e.g., or the reader’s arc of change in self-help), using a series of exercises to define these key factors readers need to connect with your work. *A Road Map is required before story development coaching of memoir and other nonfiction book proposals. Or, see the Editing and Ghostwriting column for a review option with completed book proposals.
-
Revision Coaching — a review of the overarching things to tackle next in a completed manuscript, followed by coaching to revise pages.
-
Story Development Coaching — we work back and forth, chapter by chapter, to execute your initial vision, or to enhance a stalled out partial or completed manuscript; a 10% discount applies when bundled with another service.
Nonfiction
-
Big idea books, such as on diversity topics
-
Life science-related topics, including wildlife conservation, native landscaping, sustainable agriculture, climate change mitigation
-
Self-help, including with memoir elements, and memoir that does not center on depicting trauma details
-
Narrative nonfiction, including nature essays, social justice journalism
-
Broad spirituality, from mindfulness, to energy healing modalities, to progressive Christianity
Fiction
-
All service levels for historical fiction, except works that are primarily romance, fantasy, sci fi, horror, mystery, or domestic or other thrillers
-
General fiction — provide line editing (for voice, dialogue, and style), and, for clients who booked a previous service, copy editing (for grammar, word choices, spelling, punctuation, etc.)
A successful manuscript has many moving parts, making clarity and reader engagement challenging. As a certified editor, I provide an eagle eye for indie and traditionally published authors crafting early content. With book proposals, I also draw on coaching experience and 10-plus previous years of public relations writing, which helps with impactful language choices and more.
For ghostwriting, I have covered many nonfiction subjects, and won state and national feature awards. Mybackground includes extensive experience writing for lay magazines and non-profits such as The Nature Conservancy. I began ghostwriting for university leaders more than a decade ago, and can craft compelling content that embeds someone's passion on the page.
Consider investing in the following sentence-level offerings:
-
Structural Editing — often improves logic and accessibility by moving content between/within chapters, and by enhancing chapter titles and other reader guideposts. Single round of feedback includes call outs about content strengths and specific wording approaches to consider revising, such as addressing telling instead of showing details.
-
Book Proposal Review — broad feedback to strengthen aspects of this essential developmental tool for nonfiction/memoir, particularly for attracting agent/publisher interest. Package to develop proposal pitch to literary agents available for previous clients.
-
Line Editing — a follow-up step focused on voice, dialogue, and style that I have 90-plus hours of training in; commonly used in fiction, and by nonfiction writers seeking to improve tone or style, reduce wordiness, and/or address a book’s language level.
-
Ghostwriting — for memoir and nonfiction book proposals, and for nonfiction books (see Genre list for potential topics).