Rx for your writing, Advice from book doctors.
By Charles R. Davis
From the cover story printed in The Writer, February 2002

Moira Maus interviewed six editors before finally choosing Loretta Hudson to help her with a novel.

"I spent a month agonizing over who I should hire," Maus says. "Two of the editors I simply couldn't afford and the other three didn't strike me as people I wanted to work with. Loretta's services were reasonable and she immediately struck a chord with me -- she was the only editor that said preserving the writer's voice was important and that looking at grammatical errors, etc., is just a fraction of the editing process.

"Loretta broke the news to me that my manuscript was too flawed to ever be published ... and suggested I work on improving my skills by writing short stories." Maus took that advice and soon two of her short stories were published and another won a scholarship for her to attend the Santa Barbara Writers' Conference.

"Choosing Loretta is the second-best break of my writing career," Maus says. "The critique was more than I expected -- through it I literally learned how to be a writer." Maus has since signed with the Elaine Koster Literary Agency.

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A partial list of clients and their published work:

• M.G. Kincaid, The Last Victim In Glenn Ross (Pocket Books, Fall 2003) and its sequel  Last Seen In Aberdeen (Fall 2004)
• Susan Rowan Masters, Night Journey to Vicksburg (Silver Moon Press, Spring 2003)
• Laurie Banton, Get Out of Town (no longer in print)
• Georgia Ka'apuni McMillen, School for Hawaiian Girls (1st Books Library, Winter 2001) -- this novel is currently in the hands of the Wallace Literary Agency in New York, as is Georgia's second novel The Thief Comes Home. I expect to hear both of them have been sold very soon.
• Penelope Grenoble O'Malley, Malibu Diary: Notes from an Urban Refugee (University of Nevada Press)
• Khanh Ha, The Leper Colony (Xlibris Corporation, Spring 2000)