Arra
Book Coach and
Developmental Editor
My mom used to read Harry Potter at bedtime when I was little. We would snuggle up together and she would pull me into a world that I could only enter in my wildest dreams. I was mesmerized. At seven, I read my first 'grown-up' book: The Five People You Meet in Heaven, and then I was hooked on the craft of story. I wrote, read, wrote, and read some more — but it was all for fun. I didn't even realize that I was a writer until I was twenty! I wrote every day and won a few contests, but I thought that writing was just something that I 'did,’ like breathing.
Now, I do what I love professionally. I can be found bouncing from my hometown in New Orleans to Knoxville, editing and reading everywhere I go. I love dark fiction, fantasy, horror, and adventure. Anything that has to do with lunacy and the underbelly of the human condition is sure to capture me. I've been a ghostwriter, editor, and book coach on multiple projects, but my proudest professional achievement is the first time that my writer grew into the writer that he was always meant to be. It’s difficult to articulate the sensation of watching someone realize that they’ve done something amazing, but it’s a beautiful thing, and it touches you on a soul-deep level. It is my personal goal to watch every single one of my writers have this moment, and to be right there with them when it happens.
I specialize in pulling raw emotion and talent from the mind to the page, helping writers get down exactly what they meant to say, and making those stories breathe. Story structure and development are my domains, and I rule them with both compassion and focus. You won’t find an editor or a coach who is just as dedicated to your story as you are.
My Favourite Reads:
Bounds of Redemption Series — M. D. Ireman
Stormlight Archive Series — Brandon Sanderson
Living Dead Girl — Elizabeth Scott
A Song of Ice and Fire Series — George R.R. Martin
The Hobbit & The Lord of the Rings — J.R.R. Tolkien
Interview With a Vampire — Anne Rice
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark — Alvin Schwartz
Brave New World — Aldous Huxley
Abarat — Clive Barker
Lamb — Christopher Moore
American Psycho — Bret Easton Ellis
JD
Prose Coach, Ghostwriter
and UK Copyeditor
Some human 'beans' cower before writing and reading, as some 'frightsome' beast, and others luxuriate in its 'splendiferous' light. For me, it has always been the latter. Roald Dahl was my introduction to the manner in which language and literature could be molded and shaped into something that set eyes widening and spirits a-flight with ingenius imaginings. With all my heart, I wanted to be Matilda; absorbing books and cleverness with all that she had, until magic and mayhem could be released from her fingertips.
Nowadays, even as maturity sets in, my dreams are no less ambitious! Only, I now understand the means of magic that Dahl found: writing. Where I cannot bend reality to my will, I can always capture dreams, reinvent experiences and immerse myself in the worlds created by others. I read with a voracious appetite that leaves no bookstore unmolested and have been a collaborative writer and student of literature for over fifteen years. In that time, I have developed a firm belief in the following theorem: Story-telling is a passion. Writing is a discipline. Everyone holds the first and the second can be taught. If wished for, anyone can write a story. Sometimes, you just need a little help from an oompa loompa or two...
My Favourite Reads:
Pale Fire — Vladimir Nabokov
To Kill a Mockingbird — Harper Lee
Sabriel — Garth Nix
Sora wa Akai Kawa no Hotori — Shinohara Chie
The Black Magician Trilogy — Trudi Canavan
Wuthering Heights — Emily Bronte
American Psycho — Bret Easton Ellis
Twelfth Night — William Shakespeare
Tarzan of the Apes — Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Wheel of Time Series — Robert Jordan
The Black Dagger Brotherhood — J.R. Ward
Ai no Kusabi — Yoshihara Rieko
North and South — Elizabeth Gaskell
A Handmaid's Tale — Margaret Atwood
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(504) 656 - 6944
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