Editing has been my passport to high adventure--it was because of my editing background that I was able to spend five years living in Asia (and getting paid for it) before joining Writer's Lifeline.

It seems that editing has always been in my blood. I worked on my first book, a textbook, when I was an undergraduate French major at UCLA and my professor--a wonderful teacher and role model named Yvone Lenard--asked me to help her. Over the years, even as I was completing my MA and Ph.D. in sociology from UCLA while moving from Los Angeles to upstate New York to Amherst, Massachusetts, people kept asking me for help with their books. One day I realized I was better suited to writing and one-on-one coaching than teaching (I've always been shy about speaking in front of groups) and abandoned academics for journalism.

After several years as a news reporter and feature writer at the Springfield Daily News in Massachusetts, I packed two suitcases and got on a plane for Beijing, China, where I'd been invited to work editing English translations of Chinese books and magazine articles. I spent three years there editing a weekly news magazine and training Chinese reporters in journalism. I then moved to Hong Kong, where I worked at the South China Morning Post, one of the soon-to-become-part-of China-again former colony's English-language dailies. After returning to the US, I moved back to my hometown of Los Angeles and found my way to Writer's Lifeline.

Editing is endlessly fascinating for me because I'm drawn to both the big-picture elements of structure, theme, and characterization and the tiny details of grammar, usage, and punctuation. I have a wide range of interests and have worked on literally dozens of novels (including helping to land Steve Alten's Meg!) as well as nonfiction books ranging from aviation, business, and Buddhism to speculative essays. For me, editing is like being a channel. My role is to help writers direct and refine their creative energies so they can express their vision and live out their deepest dreams.

In addition to my journalism and editing credits, I'm also co-author of The Ideal Entrepreneurial Business for You (John Wiley & Sons Inc., 1995).