Let’s talk for just a moment about editors.

I know my way around editors. I was an editor, after all, in the copy-editing sense and the story assignment sense and… well, in the newspaper senses. I was an editor, and dealt with editors as a writer.

I’m saying this so you have perspective when I say I’ve never had an editor like Julie Hutchings.

You all — many of you, anyway — know Julie as a writer, and in fact she’ll have some words for this space later this week. She is an excellent editor as well, and if you reread my summed bona fides above you’ll maybe agree I’m qualified to set that benchmark. Yes, she knows the words and the grammar and the hey-hey-hey semicolon, but really her skill at editing made one overwhelming impression on me: It made what I wrote something I wanted to read.

Not that I’m an awful writer, he said, pointing to the years and years of supporting myself doing just that. But I hate reading my writing. Hate. The editorial phase of journalism was always been something I gritted my teeth and endured. No, I don’t believe my words were handed down from on high, like some writers. I just want to tear up and totally rewrite everything ever because it’s never good enough for me.

Step back a bit: For reasons, I have a few completed novels sitting on my hard drive. Just… sitting. I queried a couple of them, back in the day, but that never really went anywhere and it’s a good thing. This work was not query-ready. It was the product of a writer having left the profession but still needed an outlet.

I don’t remember how I learned Julie works as an editor alongside her writing; let’s pretend it was a meet-cute where I spilled my Twitter all over her feed or… or something that sounds less salacious. After much consideration, I chose what I thought to be the most saleable of my finished manuscripts and sent it her way.

For weeks, Julie said cryptic but encouraging things on Twitter. I was surprised.

I will tell you I initially resisted reading the edited copy. But I did, and boy am I glad: She *got it*. She really *read* the book. She saw things in the characters I hoped readers would, and in turn became their advocate to make sure I went back and rewrote them to be true to who they were. She was, in short, the best editor I’d had in my career.

Will the book ever sell? I don’t know. All the great editing in the world isn’t a guarantee in this market. But will the book be the best it could be? A thousand times yes.

Tomorrow, I’m turning over part of this blog to Julie to help promote her new novel. I hope you’ll check in, both here and then anywhere RUNNING AWAY is sold. It is — and Julie is — well worth your time.