Deanna Hoak

I just got a thank-you note from Matt Sturges for the copyediting I did on his wonderful book Office of Shadow, forthcoming from Pyr, and thought I’d share:
Just finished reviewing your edit and wanted to tell you thanks for doing such a fine job. You made some really clever catches there, such as noticing that [...]

The past week has been lovely for me, with wonderful words from authors whose books I’ve worked on. Michael and Kathleen Gear, whom I’ve copyedited for many years now, told me that I’d done a wonderful job on their latest book and said that they told their editor they “cherish” me as a copyeditor. They’re [...]

I got a wonderfully nice letter from Allen Steele today. He noted that he had accepted China Miéville’s Locus Award for Best Young Adult Novel for Un Lun Dun for him at the Locus Awards this year, and he sent me along a copy of what China asked him to read, since it mentioned me [...]

Alexis Glynn Latner was nice enough to contact me through my website last week to let me know how much she appreciated the job I did on her novel Hurricane Moon (which is wonderful hard SF with a romantic twist):
I e-mailed the MSS back today, much improved, thanks to you! I attached a cover [...]

In a very good way.
I’ve been very lucky in having a lot of authors express their thanks to me for my work on their books, but Fiona’s is particularly wonderful for suggesting that copyeditors and other “invisibles” in the process deserve recognition for their contributions. For those who don’t click links, here’s some of what [...]

I just got a phone call from an author whose books I normally copyedit but whose latest novel I had to turn down. He said that he’s going to request in his contract for all future books that I be hired if I’m available.
I don’t know what emotion to write about that. Proud? Touched? Happy? [...]

I was contacted this week by Josh Conviser, whose novel Echelon I copyedited. He said he hoped Del Rey had told me how happy he was with the copyedit, and he passed along a note I’d actually never received:
Deanna,
I wanted to thank you for all your work on Echelon. Your notes were fantastic, really helping [...]

I got nice notes from Liz Gorinsky and Cherie Priest this week about my copyedit of Cherie’s book Wings to the Kingdom. Cherie (who had to review copyedits the week before her wedding!) had these complimentary things to say:
Thank you–in a big and loud way–for handling Wings to the Kingdom with such panache. I loved [...]

Someone asked in the comment thread: I wondered about that–what is the etiquette. I think it’s possible a huge project of mine is at last going to get read and a pub date…and if so, I was wondered this past week, as I wait to find out, if I could request you or if the [...]

I’ve had some nice copyediting news recently. Scott Lynch told me in an e-mail that he was “delighted” with my copyedit of The Lies of Locke Lamora and continued with all kinds of wonderful-to-hear things about the job I’d done and my reputation as a copyeditor and so on. I particularly liked this line [...]