About Story Coaching & Editorial
At the end of 2024, I formally launched Story Coaching & Editorial--a service designed to support writers at any stage of their creative journey. Whether you're looking for an experienced author to dig into your story and help work through the nitty gritty of drafting and editing, or if you just need a discerning eye to review your work before you start submitting it to publishing professionals, Story Coaching & Editorial was created to meet you where you're at.
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With an MBA from Emory University and fourteen years of corporate marketing experience, as well as a Certificate in Teaching Creative Writing from The University of Cambridge and decades of writing stories under my belt--Story Coaching & Editorial is uniquely poised to offer you creative and publishing guidance via a personalized and professional approach.
About Charlene
I've been writing books since I was seven years old and have collected my fair share of experiences since then. At sixteen, I wrote a manuscript that received the National Novel Silver Award from The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, and went on to sign with my first literary agent the summer before my freshman year of college. Unfortunately, that agent turned out to be unethical ("schmagents," the industry likes to call them) and I left that relationship fairly terrified to dip my toes back into the publishing pond. Instead, I graduated college and got a big girl job, but I could never entirely shake the belief that I was born to tell stories. So, I started writing again.
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I queried a novel that had ~80% agent request rate before I wrote the manuscript that would become my debut (Seton Girls). I queried Seton Girls for a couple months at the beginning of 2020 (with a much more intentional strategy than I had pre-college) before I met my current and incredible agent, Ann Rose, at The Tobias Literary Agency. She signed me based on the partial of an R&R (revise & resubmit), and once I finished writing the latest version of Seton Girls--over the course of the next couple months--we received two Big 5 offers after three months on submission. I landed at Dutton Children's Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House, and Seton Girls released in August 2022.
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Since then, my second book (Streetlight People) published with Penguin Random House in November 2024, and I'm presently working on my latest proposal. I was also approached by an editor at Scholastic who asked me if I'd be interested in working on an IP project with her--that deal ultimately turned into It's You Every Time, releasing in Summer 2025.
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As of October 2024, I am represented by Alec Frankel at IAG for film rights for all of my books.
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I share all this to say that I've seen and experienced a lot so far in this industry, and I'd like to think that's a good thing. I know how much hard work it takes. I know how to fail and get back up. And I know that just because the path may not be straight, it doesn't mean you're on the wrong one. Writing is hard. I get it. That's why I want to help.