I promise to edit your story in a way that values your author voice and solidifies your intention for your target reader.

My Degrees 

BA – English and Literature 

This was my 4-year degree spent studying literature of different periods and writing across many styles. There was a lot of horror, sci-fi, literary fiction, cli-fi (a funny name for climate fiction, which is especially popular in Alaska, where I grew up and earned this degree), and “weird” fiction, among others.  

MA – Publishing, Editorial 

This was a 3-year degree for me, and I studied across concentrations like editorial, agenting, digital publishing, and children’s publishing. I have a few classes I would like to highlight for you folx specifically:  

• Editing Book-Length Fiction 

• The Mechanics of Editing 

• Small Press Practices 

• Role of the Literary Agent 

• Practices of the Publishing Professional 

• Editorial Roles in Publishing 

Let’s break these down quickly just to detail how this is beneficial.  

Editing Book-Length Fiction: This one is pretty self explanatory. I spent an entire course digging into 10 full-length novels in a variety of genres and target audiences. I detailed out to them my editing suggestions and notes just as I will for you.  

The Mechanics of Editing: This was a copy editing course that was entirely dedicated to CMOS style, which is the industry standard for fiction.  

Small Press Practices: This was covering the roles and responsibilities of a publishing professional within a smaller press. This is going to be similar to an indie press, though there are connections that an imprint would have that are different from an indie press. This gave me a good overall scope of the publishing cycle for a book, which would benefit any of you who are interested in traditional publishing.  

Role of the Literary Agent: This one was one of my personal favorites because I was able to dig into manuscripts, query letters, and the cycle of a manuscript from the very first step of publication. I saw contracts, queries, pitches, communication regarding cover choices, negotiations, blurb requests and drafts, etc. A lot of my encouragement that authors find appropriate comp titles for their book comes from the information I learned in this course.  

Practices of the Publishing Professional; Editorial Roles in Publishing: These courses have a lot of similarities, so they blur a bit in my brain. They covered the roles of various editors in the traditional publishing world, as well as the capacity of a freelance editor and how these roles interact with the publishers in the industry. I interviewed industry experts that I was able to personally choose and reach out to, and overall it was a very customizable course while actively pursuing current publishing news, its effects on authors and publishing professionals, and lots of other things that sparked my interest. 

My Work Experience 

I’m going to just spitfire the different roles I’ve filled in a professional capacity. These include paid and unpaid positions, but they all held valuable information and helped me hone my skills.  

Fiction Reader, Bandit Fiction – 1 year 

Read and reviewed the fiction slush pile. I love short fiction, so this was one of those really fun roles where I was able to read and review what I personally enjoy.  

Student Tutor – 1 year 

Edited and reviewed writing (mostly essays, reports, creative nonfiction, etc., though I had quite a few fiction pieces) from students and community members. This gave me great experience with thinking on a dime and just editing what was given to me. It exposed me to a lot of new writing and topics at multiple levels of expertise.  

Fiction Editor, Icebox literary journal – 1 year 

This was a very collaborative experience. We all read every submission and made notes and recommendations on which ones should make publication. I worked personally with two of our authors to make their story ready for publication. I copy edited all of the fiction and nonfiction stories and essays. It was great practice for making a collection of something that makes sense together but has inherent variety and uniqueness.  

Copy Editor, newspaper journalism – 2 years 

I spent every day in the nitty gritty of dozens of news articles from local reporters and of those across the country on an inordinate number of topics and themes. I also laid out and designed the paper and magazines every day, but that was more for my enjoyment than relevance to you folx. This was solid and continuous copy editing for two years, recognizing the style rules and the house rules of the journal itself. I like to think it prepared me for developing style guides for authors. I know which areas need to be notated so that they can be referenced in later stories in your series and even under your author umbrella (if you say blonde in one standalone and blond in another, I will call you on it, mark my words).  

Publishing Internship, Indie press in Denver – 3 months 

This was a quick experience, but really helpful. Again, I dug into manuscripts, I created social media content and over a dozen blog articles (this is where I shamelessly promote my blog, which I am filling with advice to authors as we speak!). What I found most helpful here was the front and back matter experience. I had to painstakingly deal with the copyright page for a nonfiction self help book that had 50+ references. FIFTY. VERSIONS. I had to reference and provided copyright information for each version, and I think my eyes fell out of my face. But it was valuable experience nonetheless to get a look at all of the technical, behind-the-scenes aspects of indie publishing.  

Finding Your Aurora – 1 year 

This, finally, is my pride and joy. It’s not perfect, but it’s the first project that I’ve singlehandedly orchestrated from start to finish. With all of my experience and knowledge, I set out to gather submissions for a short fiction anthology written by LGBTQ+ Alaskan authors. It was a passion project, and it was successful! It is available on Amazon and Nook, if you’re interested in downloading the free sample and seeing some of my 2024 editing (ignore the formatting, though, it was my first venture with Vellum, and I’m only improving now).  

Community Editing – 3 years 

This is very unofficial, and the years is skewed a bit either way. What this is referencing is the 15+ projects I’ve workshopped and edited for my fellow authors in my communities outside of any work role or course context. Some of these are even published in the great wide world. It’s always been important to me for authors and editors in the indie community to work together and lift each other up. This includes authors who are going into traditional publishing and who want a great product, but working with authors in places that mean a lot to me personally has been a great experience and adventure that I hope to continue.  

Whew! That was a lot.  

I appreciate that you’ve read this far and have been interested in looking through my editing experience. I hope you’ve found the information you were looking for.  

If you have more questions or curiosities, please email me and I will be happy to discuss it. 

I’ll leave this as-is for now, but as someone who is an eternal learner, I’m going to compile a few courses I’ve taken that are relevant to my editing business (let me know if I should compile a list of these courses that I would recommend for authors) and drop them in my inbox.