Alissa McGowan
Owner, Editrix Extraordinaire, Book Midwife
Hello and welcome! I'm Alissa, self-professed geek and written word addict. I was hooked from the day my grandma first taught me to read, and my love affair with language has blossomed into two degrees in English literature and a career in editing and writing (see my Curriculum Vitae for a full professional history). It also doesn't hurt that I'm a detail-oriented perfectionist.
I love what I do, and I'm passionate about helping writers like you produce work of the highest possible quality. Reading has been such an influential part of my life, and being part of the process of bringing your words to other book lovers is the most fulfilling career I can imagine.
Although I love to read pretty much anything, my specialties are fantasy, lesbian fiction, YA and middle-grade fiction, sci-fi, chick lit, romance, self-help, memoirs, and academic monographs.
I handle intake, project management, and editing (developmental, substantive, and/or copy, depending on the manuscript).
My other passions include travel, black-and-white 35mm film photography, creative writing (I am currently finishing up a second term as President of the Chattanooga Writers' Guild), animal welfare, skydiving, hosting murder mystery dinner parties, spoiling my "nephew" (first cousin once removed, technically speaking), gaming (I belong to a weekly board game group and play Traveller once a month), and all other things geeky.
A child of divorce, I grew up between Illinois and California, and then spent a decade in Los Angeles before moving to Chattanooga, Tennessee, with my awesome cat Miles O'Brien Benjamin Sisko (Benny for short; bonus points if you know who he's named after!) in 2013. I dream of traveling the world, but so far I've only been to Greece (Vonitsa, Lefkada, Delphi, Athens, a few small islands close to the mainland, and Lesvos!), Belize (Blackman Eddy Village, Spanish Landing, San Ignacio, Isabella Bank and surrounding communities, Belize City, and Caye Caulker), Guatemala (Tikal), Canada (Victoria, BC), and Mexico (Tijuana). The last two were before you even needed a passport within North America, though, so it hardly counts.
I love what I do, and I'm passionate about helping writers like you produce work of the highest possible quality. Reading has been such an influential part of my life, and being part of the process of bringing your words to other book lovers is the most fulfilling career I can imagine.
Although I love to read pretty much anything, my specialties are fantasy, lesbian fiction, YA and middle-grade fiction, sci-fi, chick lit, romance, self-help, memoirs, and academic monographs.
I handle intake, project management, and editing (developmental, substantive, and/or copy, depending on the manuscript).
My other passions include travel, black-and-white 35mm film photography, creative writing (I am currently finishing up a second term as President of the Chattanooga Writers' Guild), animal welfare, skydiving, hosting murder mystery dinner parties, spoiling my "nephew" (first cousin once removed, technically speaking), gaming (I belong to a weekly board game group and play Traveller once a month), and all other things geeky.
A child of divorce, I grew up between Illinois and California, and then spent a decade in Los Angeles before moving to Chattanooga, Tennessee, with my awesome cat Miles O'Brien Benjamin Sisko (Benny for short; bonus points if you know who he's named after!) in 2013. I dream of traveling the world, but so far I've only been to Greece (Vonitsa, Lefkada, Delphi, Athens, a few small islands close to the mainland, and Lesvos!), Belize (Blackman Eddy Village, Spanish Landing, San Ignacio, Isabella Bank and surrounding communities, Belize City, and Caye Caulker), Guatemala (Tikal), Canada (Victoria, BC), and Mexico (Tijuana). The last two were before you even needed a passport within North America, though, so it hardly counts.