Susan Hughes - Editor

I'm a freelance editor with a BA in English Literature and 30 years of experience as an educator. I use my writing, editing, and teaching skills to guide indie authors through their manuscripts with a firm but friendly approach and a double dose of humor.

I've edited a variety of fiction and nonfiction works, including pre-submission op-ed pieces for publication in The Huffington Post and Fox News Latino, poetry, novels, short stories, and scripts for TV pilot proposals . I also provide contract editing work for the College and Career Readiness Department at Fort Bend ISD in Sugar Land, Texas.

Endorsements

"Susan is a consummate professional, her work is always on time and she is a pleasure to work with. More importantly, her eye for editorial nuance to make a piece of writing pop with meaning is unmatched."Charles, P. GarciaCEO ALPFA National

"Susan takes good writers and makes them great writers.Susan came to me highly recommended by a very particular writer. I can see why, from the start, her professionalism was fantastic. We started with one piece which she edited beautifully. The publication then requested that it be cut in half. I wouldn’t have known where to start and with a full day of work ahead of me, there was no way for me to meet the deadline. Susan turned around a beautiful edit in half an hour. My second piece was submitted for publication prior to editing, again, a tight deadline was at issue. It was not picked up. Susan edited it, I re-submitted and the piece was published that day.Throughout the process, Susan anticipated my concerns, answering them with informative and thorough responses. Easy to work with? You bet! She’s also a media pro who helps to promote the published work. I look forward to a long and productive working relationship with Susan. "Jill CarpenterManaging Director, Decision Calculus Associates

"It gives me great pleasure to write this testimonial for Susan Hughes. I have always been a little skeptical of what an editor brings to the table, thinking that perhaps they were mere “blue penners” looking for the errant solecism. Boy did Susan prove me wrong! Of course she caught the grammatical and stylistic faux pas: the overused comma, the misplaced apostrophe, the stylistic redundancies, etc. But more than that, she helped with the logic, the pacing, and tone of my work, in the process improving the end product tremendously. For too long I have thought that writers must be islands unto themselves, that they, and they alone, were responsible for what made it onto the page. In working with Susan I have come to realize that creating the works we can be proud of truly takes a “village.” Make sure that Susan is one of your close neighbors!"Mark Schroeder Co-Founder/Partner at FindMyAudienceAward-winning author, lecturer, and software designer

"I'm very pleased with Susan's work on my first novel, COUNTERACT. I had a critique done about a year and a half ago, and while that straightened out some early problems and pushed my manuscript along, it was really Susan who gave the manuscript the polish it needed to gain the attention of publishers.Within a month of receiving Susan's edit, I sent the manuscript out again (I'd been rejected close to 100 times) and within six weeks had five publishers express interest in the book. Two of the ones that lost out made a point of asking me to submit to them again, and one even offered to write an advance review of the book and post it on her blog to promote the book. COUNTERACT is due out in the fall of 2014, and I sent the sequel to Susan before I submitted it to my publisher. I don't have to. My contract with my publisher says the subsequent volumes in the series may be submitted for consideration in first draft form, but to me using Susan at this point is not an option. She took my writing to a new level. I did a much better first draft of the sequel because of what I learned from working with her."Tracy LawsonAuthor

"Susan Hughes is a highly qualified editor who thrives where many editors fail that is at establishing an honest and open author/editor relationship. Working with Susan on my first story has been a great experience, and I can’t imagine my story without her professional touch. I will continue to work with her on my novel series and any other future projects."David Denham IIIAuthor