To Lisa and all the fellow travelers at The Writers' Collective,
I want to tell ya'll about Bob Spear. Lisa mentioned him to me when I joined The Collective earlier this year. I have never enjoyed a working relationship more. His suggestions were insightful, and right on point. We had sometimes daily e-mail conversations about style, content, music, and I had the pleasure of reading a first draft of his novel. We talked about music, guitars, and my book.
Bob suffered through two complete rewrites with me. His patience is amazing,and helped me make my novel something worth reading. Anyone out there looking for an editor, or interior designer, Bob's your guy. Just check out
your welcome letter, his e-mail address is right there. And in case you're not a member, it's heartlandreviews@kc.rr.com
Lisa? You had it right, Bob was the guy I needed to make The Blue Cove Incident a polished, first class book. That alone is worth the price of admission.
Thanks again,
Will Harris
The Blue Cove Incident
On behalf of all the authors of In Our Shoes, I want to express our belief that finding our way to Bob Spear was a stroke of good fortune. Bob stayed in touch with us throughout the editing process, keeping us apprised of his progress, and most importantly, giving us priceless information on the patterns that appeared in our writing, patterns of which we were not aware. Bob's editing not only improved the quality of our book, it improved our skills as writers. We are thankful we entrusted our work to his care, and we wish other writers the good fortune of finding their way to him.
--Charlotte Rogers Brown
Author, speaker, and workshop facilitator
I was delighted with the review I received from Heartland Reviews for my children's novel, THE TAIL OF THE SEA WITCH. In fact, it was one of the most professional reviews I've received so far. It does your book no good to get a rave review from a reviewer who hasn't a good command of grammar and punctuation as everything the review claims is suspect. The review I received was not only professionally written but well-thought out and perceptive of story nuances. I'm hoping for more reviews from this excellent review site in future.
Wendy Peterson
Bob --
Wonderful, gratifying words! You are a keen observer and have managed to capture the sense of this book in a truly remarkable way. Certainly much better than we've been able to do at our end.
In my book, it's even more remarkable to do such a terriffic job in such a compact space. My congratulations on a very incisive piece of writing: you are certainly living up to the goals you set out for Heartland Reviews. We will put this review to good use.
Paul Feathertree
Publisher
Wynderry Press
Dear Bob,
I didn't write back to you yesterday because I was so stunned, pleased and downright overjoyed by your review that I wanted to make sure it would still be there when I woke up this morning. :-)
I'm amazed that you were able to encapsulate the book's main plot/themes in so few words; you're a positive master of brevity! You should give lessons.
And the glowing review itself is one that authors can only dream of. Believe me, we intend to utilize this in every way possible.
Lisa Grant, Founder and CEO of The Writers' Collective
As a professor of English Literature, the author of over a dozen books and many scholarly articles, and someone who has spent most of his professional life in a love affair with the English language, I take a lot of pride in my writing. It is not easy for me to consider the possibility that someone could improve something that I have written. After all how can one enhance perfection?
Bob Spear taught me the answer to that question. I spent over five years on my latest book, The Book of Life: An Operating Manual for the Human Body, and I have no idea how many times I went over it and over it. I was sure it was flawless and that I didn't need an editor.
Bob Spear proved me wrong. One of the luckiest things that happened to me in my writing career was the decision to entrust my precious manuscript to him.
If he can satisfy the relentless perfectionism of a pedant like me, it boggles the mind to consider what he might achieve for mere human beings.
Mark Draper, Ph.D.
Chairman of English and Humanities Emeritus
University of Charleston
