Meet Your Book Coach
Hi, I'm Heather!
I'm glad your here. Because if you're here, that means you're a writer looking to make your craft even better, and I have mad respect for you and your journey.
Now let me take a minute to introduce myself. I'm a writer like you, but, along with that badge of honor, I'm also a book coach and developmental editor. And I love helping writers of diversity-focused speculative fiction develop build deep and resonant worlds (and characters) that captivate readers from page one (and maybe change the world).
In fact, I can't think of a more meaningful way to spend my time than helping writers harness fantasy, science fiction, and dystopia as a vehicle to explore our own world and our own reality.
Credentials
- Author Accelerator Certified Book Coach. Not only am I a certified coach, but I'm in community with an entire group of other excellent certified coaches, and we are constantly learning from each other and perfecting our craft.
- 10 years experience working with writers. When I say I've seen it all... I mean it. And that means I also know exactly how to help you fix any problems that are currently plaguing your manuscript.
- 15 years of teaching experience. Yep, that's right... I know how to develop a course and help writers understand craft. This is my jam.
- Certified copyeditor. Though I do not offer copyediting services directly, my copyediting know-how helps me spot the details and sentence level work that really helps improve any manuscript I work with so there are far fewer mistakes to navigate at the end.
- Los Angels Review of Books Fellow. As a LARB fellow I learned SO MUCH about the publishing world. From how editors edit to what literary agents are thirsty for, I learned it all!
- Writing mentors: Lisa Cron, Jennie Nash, Ben Frahm. Enough said, right? These folks are among the best story experts around, and I've had the privilege of learning from them.
Books I Wish I had Coached
There are a lot of great speculative fiction novels roaming around out there on bookshelves.
Some good, some bad, some just the "beach reads" of the genre.
But the ones I truly love are those that leave me thinking about why people behave the way they do, the nature of reality, how politics shape our view of the world, the evolution of social justice, the power of government, the need for freedom and equality, The treatment of minority groups, climate change, the inevitably of war, and other huge topics.
Here are a few of my favorites:
- Babel by R.F. Kuang
- The Broken Earth Trilogy by N.K. Jemisin
- When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill
- The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow
- Under the Whispering Door by T.J. Klune
- The Road by Cormac McCarthy
- The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
- Red Rising Series by Pierce Brown
- Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
- So, so many more!
