Deanna Hoak

Folks seemed to get enough out of my take on copyediting that I thought I’d talk a little bit about proofreading. First, let’s define the terms, because what is called “proofreading” by folks outside the publishing industry is usually copyediting instead. The copyeditor works on the book at the manuscript stage, marking grammatical and spelling [...]

Is anyone on my f’list in the path of Katrina? I hope any of you from New Orleans are reading this from the safety of someplace else. I think it is literally criminal that they waited this long to evacuate. :-( It’s clearly going to hit somewhere. Here’s hoping it gets weakened by wind shear [...]

Courtesy of BookofJoe is the news of this blog search site, Ice Rocket, which is incredibly nifty. One of the things I like most about it is that it allows you to see all the blogs that have linked to yours!

So I guess I’ll try out Google Talk and see if it’s any better than AIM. I can be reached at dheditor AT gmail.com (Your user ID is your e-mail address.) I don’t have a microphone set up, but try chatting at me if you’d like. If anyone needs a Gmail invite in order to [...]

Sigh. And I thought I was a geek…. Pure Nerd 56 % Nerd, 26% Geek, 21% Dork For The Record: A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia. A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one. A Dork is someone who has [...]

My brother went home last night. The kids cried terribly, but we had a wonderful visit with him. Hopefully he’ll get to come out again soon. I have one of my rare forays away from science fiction and fantasy waiting on my desk for me to copyedit: a novel by “the Queen of Hip-Hop Fiction,” [...]

Every once in a while, I get a request from a production editor that makes me realize how very…Zen, for lack of a better word…my approach to copyediting novels is. I’ve been specializing in fantasy and science fiction for eleven years now–that’s a long time for a freelancer to survive–and I’ve worked hard to build [...]

Courtesy of is the news that Jeff VanderMeer is conducting the The Evil Monkey Bad Last Lines Contest. Prizes are $50 for first place, $25 for second, and $10 for third, with 1st getting three of Jeff’s books, 2nd getting two, and 3rd getting one. Limit of 7 entries per person. Here’s my entry: And [...]

I’ve reread my entire story now, and I’ve made minor edits and rewrites, along with notes for where I think I may need more major edits. I’m going to sit on this for the next week while I work on a copyediting project I have in, and then I’ll get back to it fresh.

Charles Coleman Finlay is saying nice things about my copyediting over in his journal. I always love to hear compliments. :-)