Cheri Lasota
Fiction editor

Websites:

• http://www.stirlingediting.com

Cheri Lasota is founder and principal editor of Stirling Editing, a freelance fiction editing service.

Over the course of her thirteen-year career, Cheri Lasota has edited fiction, nonfiction, screenplays, and short stories for publication. Clients include McGraw-Hill Publishing Company as well as individual fiction writers and screenwriters, some of which have been published. She has five years of experience editing various types of fiction, including genre fiction, children's books, and screenplays.

Cheri began her editing career in news and nonfiction. In high school, she edited books, journals, and newsletters for the Ludwig von Mises Institute, a nonprofit economics group. While earning her B.A. in Communications/Film and minor in English, she worked as editor-in-chief of the University of South Alabama's weekly student newspaper The Vanguard. Other recent work includes editing documents and drawings for engineering firms Bechtel National, Inc. and Westmar Consultants Corp. Her nonfiction work totals eleven years in all.

Cheri has recently published her first e-book, Plan Well, Write Well: The secret to crafting your best plots, characters, and settings. This e-book was created to help fiction writers craft better stories by using planning techniques, such as freewriting, visualization, and timelines. Cheri also has over seventeen years of experience writing poetry and fiction. Cheri is currently revising her first novel, an historical fantasy novel set in the Azores Islands, Portugal, where she lived for two years. Also in the works is a sequel to the first novel.

Cheri is currently a member of Women In Portland Publishing (WiPP), the NW Independent Editors Guild (NWIEG), Oregon Writers Colony (OWC). She is an active member of Willamette Writers, and will teach three workshops for the Southern Chapter coming up on June 7. She has also participated in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) for the past two years.