ABOUT
Marissa is the writer’s secret weapon (shh!). Her editing credits include Amazon #1 bestsellers, award-winners, and non-fiction ranging from National Geographic hardcovers to university-press publications. She specializes in speculative fiction and non-fiction, and has edited for Startup Guide, Evolved Publishing, Delius Producing and various other outlets. She’s also a regular guest on the SFF Audio Podcast, where she is reading her way through all of Philip K Dick’s works.
Marissa grew up in New Zealand/Aotearoa, has lived in Dublin, Munich and Berlin, and is now based in Los Angeles, where she co-hosts a regular writer’s meetup and buys too many books. Her other passions are playing atmospheric video games, hiking, and learning about what makes audiences fall in love with fictional characters and worlds. She lives with a comedian (her husband), a cat (Officer Ripley), and five bajillion plants. Her favorite way to spend an evening is roaming the park in the company of owls, bats, and coyotes.
TESTIMONIALS
Marissa is a consummate and talented editor, always challenging me to look at my own work with fresh eyes and think again how to make it better. I attribute much of my growth as a writer in the last two years to working with her, and I count it a privilege to have had that opportunity. I cannot recommend her enough.
Ciara BallintyneMarissa is a fantastic editor. … Her line edits are some of the best I’ve seen. I highly recommend her.
Dan JeffriesMarissa has reset my bar for creative collaborators. From the firm guiding hand, to the side conversations about literature, to the different points of view she was able to get me to look at my own work, our time together was invaluable.
Alys ArdenIt’s kind of creepy, how you get in my head and know what I mean even when I write it badly. Some authors I know resent the edit process, but it felt empowering to share the vision with you. I learned more during these edit sessions about my own weaknesses and how a reader views my words than I have in any other experience.
Ellen JoyceYour work is extraordinary. I can’t even begin to enumerate what I like about it. It’s all wonderful.
Bayard WestWorking with Marissa as a developmental editor was a wonderful experience from start to finish. She identified story issues that had escaped both me and my critique partners and made her suggestions with such insight and enthusiasm that I was left energized rather than anxious about the revisions ahead. I have no doubt my book is much stronger thanks to her guidance. Can’t wait to work with her again!
Megan CreweRECENT POSTS
New release: HUNTER’S MOON by D. A Godwin
Happy release day to Hunter's Moon by D. A Godwin! This novel is the beautiful, twisty and surprising sequel to Eyes of the Blind. It's SO fun to edit books like these, where the author is cleverly revealing new elements of the world, building on previous...
read moreFantasy tastes of habaneros and honey…
I stumbled across this beautiful quote by GRRM on why he writes fantasy - how great is this? It so perfectly captures my love for fantasy, science fiction and all its wild colors. We fantasy readers are the children who dreamed of hunting the forests at night and...
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The Cities of Dead
By ALYS ARDEN. The Cities of Dead Gothic Horror / Fantasy Novel "Old World witches collide with the French Quarter’s strangest denizens, setting off events that could tear the fabric of the Natural and Supernatural worlds, and only the most elusive, mischievous Voodoo...
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HP Lovecraft’s THE SHADOW OUT OF TIME
I recently re-read HP Lovecraft's The Shadow Out of Time for an SFF Audio Podcast episode. It's one of my favorite Lovecraft stories because it's got all that obligatory cosmic horror, primordial masonry, and "unguessable horrors" (as Lovecraft calls it in...
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MERMAIDS AND THE VAMPIRES WHO LOVE THEM by Debbie Goelz
"Everyone knows mermaid blood is like vampire crack ..." I had a reeee-diculous amount of fun helping the brilliant Debbie Goelz with early developmental edits on this gorgeous and funny YA novel. Mermaids and the Vampires Who Love Them is -- if you can't tell from...
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BORNE by Jeff VanderMeer (book review)
Another gorgeous and strange novel from the mighty lighthouse keeper of the Weird, Jeff VanderMeer (whose Southern Reach Trilogy blew me away a few years ago and is still the series I most often recommend to my friends and clients). Borne is a story about nature vs...
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