What I Can Do for You

Congratulations! You’ve written your book and are rightly proud of your accomplishment. You can’t wait to share it with the world. You want to run to Amazon and upload your files and hit that Publish button. Then the reviews start coming in. Praise for the story. Great job there! But then you start to see reviews that mention the errors and readability of the book. What should you do? At that point, you can hire a copy editor to correct your manuscript and upload a new version, but the damage has already been done. Those reviews are there to stay.

Instead, send me an email or fill out my contact form before you publish your book. Working together, we’ll make sure your readers and reviewers focus only on the merits of your story and not on any errors that might have been there before the editing process. I’ve helped a number of authors do just that, and I’d love to help you as well.

My Early Education

In 5th and 6th grade, my English teacher, Mrs. Hughes, taught me a love for writing and grammar. She once told us that she was teaching us out of an 11th grade grammar book, which made quite an impression on my 11-year-old self. I remember how much fun I had diagramming sentences, even going so far as taking whole sections of books and spending hours happily drawing lines and labeling parts of speech. That background has given me a solid grasp of English grammar and mechanics.

In my undergraduate years at Texas A&M University, I majored in English with a goal of becoming an editor. Along with my English classes, I also took several journalism courses dealing with publishing. For one semester, I served as an editorial intern at the University Press on campus, where I learned about publishing and performed such tasks as proofreading, entering author corrections, and even writing cover copy.

My Initial Experience

After graduation, I worked as a copy editor for Arthur Andersen, editing financial documents, and then for the Cancer Information Group, which published medical oncology journals. A move led me toward academia where I started working as a consultant in a Writing Lab at a local community college. I eventually went back to Texas A&M for my MA in English.

My Time in Graduate School

Once I had my MA, I continued in graduate school to earn my PhD at Purdue University. My work in medieval literature and time spent teaching in the classroom broadened my background and experience. The journal Arthuriana moved its offices to Purdue and I served as an editorial assistant for its first year at Purdue. I also frequently provided editing services to other graduate students at the university. After receiving my doctorate, I joined the faculty at a community college, teaching composition and literature. I also published an article about medieval literature as well as a couple of book reviews.

Beyond the experience with story and mechanics that I gained in graduate school, I also developed an extensive knowledge of the medieval world. My area of specialization in particular was Arthurian literature. Therefore, if your fantasy world is set in a medieval-like setting, my expertise in that area can help you with those world-building details to make your world come to life for your readers.

My Freelance Editing

Although I have left the world of academia and am now a full-time freelance copy editor and proofreader, all of my past experiences have helped me become a better editor. I have continued to work with writers in academia but have also expanded my reach to work on everything from websites and blog posts to fictional novels. But it is indie-authored fiction that I am most focused on working with, especially in the genres of fantasy, speculative fiction, dystopian fiction, and paranormal fiction. If your book takes place on another world or another version of our world, I’d love to work with you.

I consider myself a lifelong learner, so I am taking various continuing education opportunities, such as webinars and classes about editing and fiction writing, and I am reading a number of books on writing and editing fiction. I also completed the Copyediting Certificate program from UC San Diego in 2021.

I now also teach as part of the UCSD Extended Studies Department in the Copyediting program ; currently, I am teaching Copyediting for Fiction and Copyediting II.

For more details about my freelance copy editing experience, visit the Books Edited and Testimonials section of this website.