The Longer Book Coach Bio
So yeah, I’ve told you I’m a story coach and writing instructor. I’m an editor, a multipublished author (bestselling, too, and not just on Amazon). I’ve told you I’ve helped numerous authors get published.
A bit more about my experience as a writer and editor:
By the age of seven, I knew books were it. At 17, I was a fierce journaler and poet, and had been appointed editor of the school newspaper. I went to uni, trained as a teacher, and taught in K-12, writing all the while. I wrote freelance for magazines, pitched a few lousy picture books and got rejected for all of them, stepped away from teaching to raise my boys, and wrote like a demon in the quiet hours.
In 2008 I went pro, landing a contract with the Royal BC Museum that enabled me to shift into writing full-time.
I published my first book in 2010 (Knifepoint, Orca Book Publishers) and followed it with 14 more (both fiction and nonfiction). I think Knifepoint is still my top-selling book, although Redline did get optioned for film.
As a speaker and teacher, I’ve shared the world of books and writing with all ages, from kindergarteners to high schoolers to college-level classes.
Over the decades as a freelancer, I wrote and edited a pretty wild variety of materials—from Coast Guard manuals and fashion websites to annual reports and articles about rolling papers. And bedbugs. And how to sucker people into buying those last-minute impulse items as they’re pulling out their card to tap. It was…edifying.
Freelancing was chaotic, hair-pulling work, and while it enabled me to provide for my children, it didn’t allow for a great deal of flow. I yearned for something more creative and heart-centered, but the paying work seemed to just carry me farther and farther away.
But you know, that universe knows what it’s doing.
Over time, the freelance work had added website development and content marketing into my folio. I couldn’t see at the time that the cosmos was schooling my ass in web UX (user experience) so I could gain a superior understanding of the reader experience. Web UX takes notes from video game UX. It’s all about keeping the user / player engaged, curious, moving, thinking, feeling.
A book is nothing if not a demanding exercise in designing a kickass UX.
In 2019, a publisher asked whether I would help one of his authors get their book written. The writer was deep in the weeds with content that had made for an impressive documentary on CBC and BBC, but they had no structural framework for writing a book. That was the first assignment that saw me coaching rather than editing.
In 2021, I took on another coaching assignment, helping one of my longtime clients capture their wisdom on the page.
By 2022, I’d decided I was all in on this pivot. I formalized my commitment by pursuing certification with Author Accelerator—a mark of distinction and competence in a complex, volatile industry. Today I hold certifications in each of fiction, nonfiction and memoir—one of just a handful such coaches worldwide.
I’m also a certified Big Leap coach, deeply trained in somatic and emotional processing, and steadied by years of philosophical study. I hold degrees in Education and Psychology, both of which help me teach, coach and understand my writers—and their readers.