Got a story that you know has something but it isn’t quite working and you can’t figure out what? Book a 1-1 Editorial Meeting and we’ll meet on Zoom for 45 minutes to discuss your story/stories and your craft. You’ll get personal developmental advice, written notes and a recording of the meeting to refer to again.
Send a single story or stories (max 2,000 words in total) and receive in-depth developmental advice to help you take it to the next level. What you’ll learn you can also apply to all the stories you write.
Cost: £75
Why work with me?
As an indie publisher at my creative venture, Retreat West, which I started in 2012, from 2018-2023 I published 24 books. These were novels, memoirs, short fiction collections and anthologies. Retreat West Books won the 2020 Most Innovative Publisher Prize at the Saboteur Awards (shortlisted 2019) and many of the books I published were commended, listed and won awards too. In 2022, I launched the literary magazine, WestWord.
I have been designing and teaching online creative writing courses, and live workshops, for many years and I’ve worked as an editor on hundreds of manuscripts. I’m passionate about helping writers get to the heart of their characters to create memorable narrators that really come alive for the reader. I also help writers who hate plotting to create story outlines that still allow them the freedom to discover as they write.
I’m also a writer myself and the author of two novels, As If I Were A River (2016), and Remember Tomorrow (2019), and a novella-in-flash, Pressure Drop (2024). My short stories have been widely published in journals and anthologies, listed and placed in many international prizes and were nominated for Best Small Fictions 2023. I write The Mindful Writer and The Tao of Storytelling too.
So I bring experience of both sides of the publishing world to you and your words, as well as many years of experience and a real passion for writing stories of all kinds.