Shauna Granger

Do you ever wonder how people get started in their jobs? I don't flatter myself enough to believe that a great following of people are drooling over my "How I Got Started Editing" story, but some may wonder, so I'll share.

Once upon a time, my favorite cousin got married to my favorite cousin-in-law. At their wedding, I met my new CIL's best friend. Her name is Shauna and she's a writer. A month or so after the wedding, Shauna remembered that I'm a writer wannabe and she offered to trade books for editing.

And then my world changed.

I loved editing her book. She was fun to work with, liberal with her praise, and actually thought I was good at editing. One would hope that, after years of higher education, I would have decent grammar skills, but I didn't have a ton of confidence in my editing ability. I just read a lot and edited based on what I've learned from reading. Nothing made me feel better than finding an inconsistency or pointing out where she needed more or less information and getting her to say, "Gah, why didn't I see that?!" One day I asked her if people actually get paid for this. She sent me a link to an editing agency and I shot them an email. Two days later, I was an official freelance editor!

Shauna has written a series of YA fantasy books and I have had the pleasure of working on all of them. Earth is available for sale on kindle and amazon now and I loved reading it. Her characters are Elementals, meaning they can control an element. In Earth, someone new to town to performing blood magic and trying to unleash hell. Shayna, Jodi, and Steven, along with some help from a local witch, are the ones left trying to stop a menace the police can't catch. Perhaps that isn't fair, but what can you do when you're given special powers? Seriously though, her book is better than my summarizing skills. You can follow her blog here: http://shaunasspot.blogspot.com/


On top of being a kick ass author and a pleasure to work with, Shauna has become my friend. It never ceases to amaze me how relationships can be formed over the internet. I read articles all the time about how people don't connect anymore because they're too busy sitting in front of computers or they go on tirades online, forgetting that real people with real emotions read those tirades. These articles always forget to mention the beautiful people putting their hearts on their online sleeves and connecting to people across the country.

I guess the moral to Shauna's story (or her story thus far) is to reach out and connect with someone. I'm not saying my life would be a black hole of suck if Shauna hadn't reached out to me, but it wouldn't be the bright, sparkly rainbow of joy it is now without her. The best part about it is that she's grateful for me too! So go email that person you want to talk to, go apply for that job you want, go try that hobby that you've always thought looked cool.

And they all lived happily ever after.