About Me

I was five years old when I took every word I knew how to spell, wrote them in botchy red pen across sheets of paper in the best narrative order I could manage, then scotch-taped the paper together to make my first (paperback?) story. A chase-story thriller I called "The Men and Me." It was a nail-biter, I promise.

I've been doing some version of that ever since.

My early creative years weren't a phase, they were a formation. Someone recently told me (I don’t remember who) that I "composted" my influences—I like that. The idea that I didn't leave any of it behind. That what grows now grew out of that fertile soil I’ve been tilling for awhile. Every layer of my creative evolution is still present in my work.

That's not incidental to how I edit. It is the whole point.

I've been in dark fictional spaces for most of my life. I know the terrain. I know when the prose is standing outside the experience instead of inside it. When a myth doesn't feel inevitable but inserted. When trauma is being pretty and decorative instead of being felt deep down in the “sub-cockles.” When your historical setting is more like a cake topper than real a world.

The editorial work I do now grew out of a question I've spent my whole writing life trying to wrestle: what is this story actually trying to become? And how does it get there without losing itself in the process?

That's what I'm interested in. Not trend. Not formula. Not the version of your manuscript that would be easier to sell. I want the version that is fully, stubbornly itself.

Most stories aren't broken. They’re managed. Buried under a version of themselves that learned how to behave—careful sentences, defensive choices, scenes that exist to explain something rather than reveal it. You can feel it when you're writing. The power thinning, the punch hesitating. The sense that something sharper is trying to exist and keeps getting edited out before it has the chance.

That's usually where I come in.

I'm warm, a little feral (Gen X, guilty as charged), and I will absolutely tell you when something rings false in your manuscript. I don't soften feedback to protect your feelings—but delivering hard truths badly is a waste of both our time. A writer who feels attacked can't think. Trust me, I'm the first writer hiding under the desk when someone critiques my work. I will deliver the hard truths. Just not like Gordon Ramsay. That's not a warning. It's a promise.

I work with writers who are serious about the work. Who wouldn't be here if they thought it was perfect. You know there’s a version of your manuscript that would be easier to finish. And then there’s the version that feels right. The one that’s fully, stubbornly itself.

Those are not the same.

I’m here to help you with the second one.

Welcome to Grace Editorial. You’re in the right place.