MAIA TOLL
Author • Developmental Editor & Mentor
Seven books.
Over half a million copies sold.
And (still!) infinitely curious about the magic of words and the mysteries of the natural world.
As Seen In
People • Publishers Weekly • Library Journal • Forbes • The New York Times • National Geographic travel
“A real-life Professor Sprout from Harry Potter.”
Forbes
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Books By Maia
Creative editing
to help writers
become authors.
If I could share only one thing with writers, it would be this:
Your book will thrive best if you give it boundaries.
Like a garden, a book needs bursts of color and moments of calm, a carefree edge and a tinge of restraint.
Oftentimes structure is exactly the thing a writer resists or has trouble crafting on their own. This is where I come in. I’ve kept my sanity planting and pruning while writing seven books, all for Big Five publishers. I know how to help you find and structure the patterns lurking in your manuscript so you can create a book people intuitively understand and are eager to read. It’s really no different than putting a trellis behind an unruly rose. Once it’s properly supported, your book will be able to bloom.
I work with a handful of writers at a time. Drop me a note to find out the current wait time.
Let’s tend your words without giving up your wild.
“Expansive & laser focused, there is no one I trust more with my pages."
— Steph Jagger, author of Everything Left to Remember and Unbound
Hi. I’m Maia.
In my early thirties, I sold my house, left my teaching job, and traipsed off to Ireland to apprentice with a traditional healer. It was a year of damp wool and nettle stings, scented with roses, and fizzing with dandelion wine. I didn’t know what I had set off to find, but I returned home with a head full of plant lore and the first inklings of what would become seven books, selling over half a million copies, in multiple languages.
My hair is grayer now. I’ve sold my apothecary shop and a rather dreamy home in the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina to move to Edinburgh, Scotland. A spoof, a lark, a twist of fate… I don’t one hundred percent know what took me to Edinburgh. But I’m eager to see how this new adventure unfolds, and what books it might birth.