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.

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Read the Books

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

  • Cover of a book titled "Letting Magic In" by Maia Toll, featuring a silhouette of a person's profile with flowers, greenery, and a spider web.
  • Cover of a book titled 'The Night School' by Maia Toll, illustrated by Lucille Clerc, featuring celestial imagery, animals like a unicorn, a bear, a snake, a fish, and planets against a starry night sky.
  • Cover of a book titled "The Night School for Young Mystics" with illustrations of owls, celestial objects, a crystal ball, and books.
  • Book cover titled "The Illustrated Herbiary" with colorful botanical illustrations including roses, daisies, and other flowers, and a banner noting 36 oracle cards included, authored by Maia Toll.
  • Book cover titled "The Illustrated Destiary" by Maia Toll, featuring illustrations of animals including a dove, owl, beaver, fox, deer, and butterflies, with a decorative nature background.
  • Book cover titled "The Illustrated Crystallary" with imagery of crystals, flowers, and mystical symbols, includes guidance from 36 gems and minerals, by Maia Toll.
  • Colorful book cover titled 'Mata Toll's Wild Wisdom Companion' with illustrations of a bear, rabbit, flame, apple, and various plants and flowers around a large wheel, with the subtitle 'A Guided Journey into the Mystical Rhythms of the Natural World, Season by Season' and information about oracle cards and illustrations by Kate O'Hara.

Creative Editing

— to help writers become authors

Your book will thrive 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.

Learn More

“There is no one I trust more with my pages." 

— Steph Jagger, author of Everything Left to Remember and Unbound

Black and white photo of a woman sitting on a park bench, smiling, with her legs crossed. She is wearing glasses, a jacket, and sneakers, and is holding a notebook or sketchpad. There are trees with dense leaves in the background.

Hi. I’m Maia.

When I was thirty-three, 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 rose geranium, and fizzing with dandelion wine. 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 still don’t know what wind blew me to Edinburgh. But I’m eager to see how this new adventure unfolds, and what books it might unearth.

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—A YEAR OF BOTANICAL SECRETS

Dark Botanica

Think Dark Academia gone to seed…and root…and flower.

Begining at the Autumn Equinox, 2026.

Housed in my newsletter, Something True.

Come into the Garden