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Book reviews by our editors Carr, David. The Night of the Gun: A Reporter Investigates the Darkest Story of His Life—His Own (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2008). Meyer, Stephanie. Twilight O'Donohue, John. To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings |
Science Fiction - Fantasy - Horror
Supernatural - Psychic
You've carefully constructed your alien planet, lovingly invented alien beings, and painstakingly developed the alien society in which they live. Or perhaps you've extrapolated from current human technology and developed a vision of North America in A.D. 3050. Is the gravity appropriate for the size of your planet? Does your travel time match your speed and distance? You've worked hard to create a cohesive future Earth, alternate history, or extraterrestrial civilization, but the last thing you want to do is turn your manuscript over to an editor who doesn't know the difference between a light year and a light beer. As a science fiction writer you need to ensure that the editor to whom you're entrusting your work shares your mindset. You need an editor who understands that Sol III is Earth while Sal III Jr. may be the natural son of Sal's third clone. You need an editor who recognizes the difference between typos and alien vocabulary.
Choosing an Editor for Your Science Fiction Manuscript
By Arlene W. Robinson with Terry Robinson
Why Use A Copyeditor?
By Dorrie O'Brien
The Difference Between Agents, Publishers, and Editors
By Dorrie O'Brien
Musings on Science Fiction
By Stephen MacEachern
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Editors Carrie Andrews is an honors graduate with a BA in English. She has worked in the publishing industry for several years as a project editor, copyeditor, and proofreader, with specialties in fiction, entertainment, and college-level textbooks. She works with companies such as Reader's Digest, Random House, Inc., Kensington Publishing, and Wadsworth/Thomson Learning. A bibliophile her entire life, Carrie has a natural talent for language. Her avid reading has helped her develop a sharp eye for detail and has honed her sense of flow. While copyediting, she strikes that delicate balance between maintaining an author's voice and making the language clear and vibrant. She is also a meticulous proofreader and fact checker. Clients have called her work "superb" and "astute." Authors enjoy Carrie's personable style and find her easy to work with.
Carrie is booking for January 2009. DEANNA BRADY is a highly versatile freelance writer and editor with more than two decades of experience. She ghostwrites, rewrites, and edits self-help books, novels, biographies, cover and query letters, proposals, articles, essays, scripts, textbooks, business communications, Web content, and literary fiction. Deanna taught in the Continuing Education Department at California State University for a dozen years. In addition to writing several children's textbooks, she is an award-winning author of short fiction and poetry. For more than two decades, Deanna has written and edited virtually every type of nonfiction literature, including advertising and marketing copy, prospectuses, and training materials, for major corporations, magazines, and publishing firms. She also works with most genres of fiction, including young adult, romance, historical, autobiographical, mystery, adult, horror, and science fiction. She is adept at editing ESL text, dialects, and British language variation and also specializes in subjects concerning spirituality, ecology, alternative healing, and American Indian culture.
FAITH HICKMAN BRYNIE specializes in science and health, especially for children and young adults. She has a Ph.D. in science curriculum and instruction, and she is an experienced editor of science activity books, trade books for middle school and high school, and textbooks K-12. She has worked for major publishers as writer, substantive editor, developmental editor, copyeditor, and fact checker. She excels at communicating complex ideas clearly and simply. She loves fiction, and has written three novels, all published by Geneses under a pseudonym. She has won several contests and awards for her short fiction, which has been published in such magazines as Thema, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Midnight Zoo, Aberrations, Over My Dead Body!, Haunts, and others. She critiques mainstream, science fiction, horror, and mystery manuscripts, helping authors develop their characters, plot, dialogue, voice, and style. She also does developmental editing and copyediting of fiction manuscripts.
Michael Carr has edited or copyedited 300+ fiction and nonfiction titles for major publishers and authors. Notable nonfiction authors include Bernard Goldberg (NY Times best-seller Arrogance), CNN anchor Lou Dobbs (Exporting America), Rev. Al Sharpton (Al on America), and CNN Crossfire host Tucker Carlson (Politicians, Partisans, and Parasites). Michael edits most fiction genres but specializes in literary and historical, crime/mystery, drama, fantasy, and science fiction. Notable fiction authors include Brad Meltzer (#3 NY Times best-seller The Zero Game), NY Times Notable Book of the Year author Archer Mayor (The Surrogate Thief, Gatekeeper, The Second Mouse), crime grandmaster Donald Westlake (the Dortmunder series), and the fantasy master Michael Moorcock (The White Wolf’s Son). Michael has also edited eight published volumes on world affairs and some twenty self-help books (medical, psychological, personal growth, and business) and has translated a dozen novels and other literary works from Spanish to English.
Michael is booking for November 2008. ROSANNE CORNBROOKS CATALANO specializes in children's and young adult books, fantasy novels, and Christian/inspirational manuscripts. Prompt and professional, Rosanne works well with any author's voice, providing clarity and punch while respecting the integrity of the work. Rosanne's love of the written word began with her passion for books, but her knowledge of punctuation, grammar, diction and style comes from a lifetime of exceptional training. A poet herself, Rosanne understands the blood, sweat and tears that go into writing. She gives each author';s work the care it deserves, drawing on her diverse life experiences and knowledge in many fields like period clothing, genetics, all aspects of theater, Celtic legends, rustic camping, the martial arts, architecture and languages (Latin, French, Anglo-Saxon, Middle English, a little Welsh and Japanese). Add that to the marketplace savvy she learned working in publishing houses, and you have an experienced editor who can polish a manuscript and get it past that crucial first reader!
"I cannot say enough about how great working with you was. You read my work, could see my intent and did not try to comprise its integrity. Your willingness to not get in the way of the story and your professionalism helped make my book just as I had envisioned it! I would highly recommend you to anyone that has a special piece of work needing a special editor. Again, thanks!" --Cindy Pitta, Dream Catcher The award-winning writing of KAREN DAVIS prompted one of many loyal clients to call her his "secret weapon in attaining communications supremacy." She earned magna cum laude degrees in English and history and world-class journalism credentials from the London Times and Regional Newspapers. Since 1976 she has been an international correspondent and author of hundreds of magazine and newspaper articles; publishing house editor (several books won American Library Association Outstanding Reference Source awards); acclaimed advertising writer (First Place in the Pacific Northwest, direct mail campaign) and technical writer ($10,000 First Place in North America, engineering paper); director of publications and marketing; author of style manuals; university lecturer in writing; and published lyricist and poet. She brings clarity and conciseness to confusing language and organization to chaos..
"You are a magician with language. The ms. reads much better now, which is amazing because it had already been revised at least thirty times and professionally edited. I've learned a great deal from you and it's been a pleasure working with someone so pleasant, extremely talented, and knowledgeable.... Now I don't think I'd want my agent to see anything you haven't seen first! Thank you for doing such a marvelous job. Don't be surprised if you get some referrals. You're brilliant."— Linda Dennis Richmond, author ANNE GREENBERG was an in-house editor of children's books for 16 years at Simon & Schuster/Pocket Books, specializing in fiction for readers 5-8, 8-12, and young adult. As a freelancer, she focuses on developmental editing, editing, and copyediting of adult fiction and nonfiction, in addition to children's books (but not picture books). At Pocket/S&S she edited more than 550 books (including all-new Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys titles) and worked with seasoned and first-time authors.
SUSAN GREENMAN offers highly personalized editing, long experience, and a diverse range of knowledge and interests. She has worked in publishing for nearly twenty years—from management, acquisitions, and developmental editing to copyediting and proofreading. Susan works on a wide variety of fiction and nonfiction and has a special interest in science fiction, fantasy, and horror. She has worked for highly regarded publishers of speculative fiction such as Ace, Baen, Bantam, and Random House Spectra, and she was a managing editor at Macmillan Children's Books. A writer as well as an editor, Susan participated in the highly-regarded Clarion West Writers Workshop and has published nonfiction children's books as well as short fiction, poetry, plays, interviews, and technical articles. She has also been heavily involved in producing award-winning CD-ROMs for Microsoft. She believes her role is to offer feedback and tactful editing that help bring the writer's vision into reality and maximize the story's chances of consideration. Says one client, "I've come to rely on Susan for that gift the very best fiction editors have for recommending that one small change that dramatically improves the whole work"--an editorial ideal Susan strives to consistently meet.
TIM GRUNDMANN, is an author, playwright and TV scriptwriter and story editor with 25 years of experience. His books in the Doug Chronicles series are published by Disney Press. He was part of the creative team behind Pee-wee's Playhouse on CBS (for which he wrote the show "bible"), and developed the HBO comedy Norman's Corner with Seinfeld creator Larry David. As head writer and story editor for the Disney Channel's New Mickey Mouse Club and Nickelodeon's Doug, he guided scripts from concept to final draft. He's written episodes of Allegra's Window and Welcome, Freshmen for Nickelodeon, and was developmental writer for Mowgli and His Friends and WaysideSchool for the Disney Channel and ABC-TV. As house writer for Broadcast Arts in NYC, he wrote scripts, proposals, treatments and show bibles for TV shows starring Gilbert Gottfried, Madeline Kahn and others. Recently he wrote scripts for the PC game My Scene Goes Hollywood for Vivendi Universal Games. STAVRA KETCHMARK has edited more than 200 fiction titles while working for major publishing houses, as well as numerous medical, technical, and scientific trade, academic, and professional titles. She specializes in a variety of fiction genres, including romance, historical, mystery, suspense, crime, horror, fantasy, science fiction, and young adult. Her nonfiction specialties include all medical disciplines, nursing, allied health, alternative health, political science/politics, history, journalism, religion, parenting, and cooking. Stavra has also helped a broad range of corporate clients fine-tune their annual reports, advertisements, websites, and other marketing materials to achieve the image they are seeking. Her edited manuscripts have been published by Wadsworth, Mosby, Signet, Roc, NAL Trade, Thompson Delmar Learning, and Onyx.
"Simply put, Stavra is a PRO! She has been editing my work for over a year and I find her professional, accurate and easy to work with. Quite frankly, I don't know what I would do without her." —John Bishop, Executive Director, Accent On Success, www.TeachingMoments.com FLOYD LARGENT specializes in history, natural history, anthropology and the sciences on the non-fiction front, and speculative fiction (science fiction, fantasy, horror, and allied fields) otherwise. He's published his own e-book on fiction marketing (100 Great Places to Sell Your Short Stories, Both On and Off the Web), and is intimately familiar with technical writing, having worked as a technical writer and editor for ten years. He's also been published in most of the popular American history magazines, including American history, America's Civil War, Old West, and True West. Mr. Largent can provide publishing assistance (especially with short stories and journal articles), content development, manuscript evaluation, and mentoring services, supplemented with advice concerning manuscript mechanics, query letters, book synopses, and proposals.
Pulse-pounding high adventure, painstaking attention to detail, carefully drawn characters who step off the page and into your life ... As book editors, they look at the book as a whole and as a series of inter-related parts. It’s not uncommon for a writer to be strong in one area (e.g., character development) and weaker in another (e.g., setting).
The MacEacherns' goal is the same as the writer's: to get the manuscript inside the publisher's door and to get the royalty check in the writer's hands. When they are not editing books, writing books or writing magazine articles, they are reading books, from biography to science fiction and everything in between. They have interacted with some of America’s most well-known authors and been published with many of New York’s top houses. They’ve been around the block, you might say—but always with a book! Specialties: science fiction and fantasy, action/military/adventure, speculative fiction, thrillers/espionage, horror/vampires, detective/crime. KARL MORGAN is a book editor, script doctor, and writer. He has written for Epicurious, Thinkwell, and nerve.com, and his fiction has appeared in the Austin Chronicle and been read at Borders Books and on KUT public radio. Books he's edited have been singled out by the Chicago Review Press and Independent Publishers Group and have been praised by Deepak Chopra, Jim Belushi, and David Zucker (writer/director of Airplane! and Naked Gun). In 1997, he was named Boston University's Helen Deutsch Fellow--the school's most prestigious graduate writing fellowship. He edited the film industry book Reel People, the sports biography The Last Sure Thing: The Life and Times of Bobby Riggs (finalist for the Independent Press Best Memoir/Biography award), and the horror novel Wind Walker by Tom Chaney (screenwriter of Mosquito and director of Wrath of the Wendigo). He specializes in genre and mainstream fiction, scholarly non-fiction, and screenplays.
"Karl's editing is precise and intelligent. He knows how to deal with the most complex areas of my writing and how to make it more accessible for the audience. Karl's assistance was of great help to my book." --Eiko Ikegami, author of The Japanese Path to Modern Civility and The Taming of the Samurai, Harvard University Press DORRIE O'BRIEN focuses on mysteries, science fiction, fantasy, thrillers, adventure, and horror titles. She has considerable experience with trade non-fiction. As Editorial Director of her own publishing house, Dorrie published almost 100 titles, garnering several awards in "Best Of" categories. Almost half of the titles were bought for paperback reprints, and two were optioned for TV/movies. She has invaluable knowledge about the industry, the type of people who run it, how to work within it, and tips for getting your foot in the door. She’s reviewed, evaluated, and edited thousands of manuscripts through the years, and uses that knowledge to help her clients produce results-driven manuscripts, query letters, and synopses. She works particularly hard at staying in the author’s “voice,” making sure the facts and dialogue match the time period in which the book is set, and “losing” excess verbiage. She's a good mentor, hard worker, and in many cases, has ultimately become a good friend.
"I am absolutely sure I wouldn't have gotten the publishing contract if it hadn't been for Dorrie's evaluation and editing. What an enormous find she was for me!" Shayne Easson, Wrath of Zar. MARK ORRIN, M.A., Johns Hopkins (Teaching Fellow, 1971), has authored ten published books, scores of articles and poems, and taught writing on college and university levels. A seasoned publications editor, he has also mentored numerous successful American and international authors and poets. During a career in fund raising, Mark was considered one of America's leading copywriters, copy chiefs and creative/strategic consultants. He has been listed in Who's Who In the West, Who's Who In America, Who's Who In Entertainment and The Dictionary of International Biography.
"Throughout our work and rework on my manuscript, Mark was encouraging and kind, and he never made me feel like the rookie I am (was). He never left me feeling like he knew more about the publishing industry than I did — he just continued to teach me in an incredibly thoughtful and gentle way, fine-tuning my work and imploring me to be the best I could be. ... At the moment there are ten agencies and two publishers who have responded favorably to my query (which you taught me how to write, I might add) about my novel. " – Gary Kaschak ARLENE ROBINSON has developed and edited 200+ full-length manuscripts in a variety of genres since 1996. Her clients include women's fiction author Angie Daniels, sociology professor Joyce Tang and college-success guide author Josh Richardson. The true crime memoir The Twelfth Man Standing received Turner Broadcasting Network's Trumpet Award in 2002, and 'PRESSIONS: Memoirs of a Southern Cat by Edith M. Holmes, won the YOUnity Reviewers Guild Top Honor Award. Arlene welcomes new or published authors as clients, and enjoys helping journalistic, business and academic writers transform their writings into marketable, polished products for mainstream readers. She also takes pride in helping non-native-English writers produce topnotch fiction and nonfiction works. While not a professional humor writer, she could be. Arlene lives in the Deep South with her probation officer/journalist husband and two almost-adult sons, and looks forward to the day when her human offspring venture into the world as independently as she envisions her writings springing onto bookshelves.
"Arlene is everything you want in an editor: thorough, timely and accommodating. If it weren't for her, I certainly would not have landed a publisher for my manuscript. Not only was her editing topnotch, her advice on everything about publishing was very helpful. Arlene really cares about the work she does and it shows!" — Josh Richardson, Ahead of the Pack: Balancing Your Way to Personal Success in College, Thomson Delmar Learning A. J. SOBCZAK is an editor, proofreader, and writer (business writing, business methods, business history, communication, literary analysis, fiction in various genres) with more than 18 years of experience in the publishing industry. He has edited nonfiction work, both articles and books, in a variety of fields, including various social sciences, technical research, and medical research. He has edited dozens of books and journals in the social sciences, research methods, mathematics, political science, psychology, business and management, history, and health and medicine, among other topics, and also has worked on several successful doctoral dissertations. He is an expert in APA and Chicago styles and is on several publishers' lists of "go-to" editors for manuscripts with heavy math content. His fiction specialties include science fiction, fantasy, mystery, and young adult.
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Submission Cut and paste the questions and answers into an e-mail: Alternates: 2008@book-editing.com, coordinator@airmail.net, editingnetwork@gmail.com Required: Along with a sample, the following information is required. Ignore questions that do not apply to your project (e.g., footnotes). (01) Word count of complete project (under "Tools" in MS Word): (02) Put your 100-word (approx) synopsis/description here (or attach): (03) Describe your genre and topic (e.g., nonfiction/self-help, science fiction, horror, romance, mystery, Western, young adult, children, poetry, Christian, creative nonfiction, literary): (04) Deadline date, if any, for return of complete project. (Please be realistic. Remember that professional editors usually have a project in process.): (05) If you have no immediate deadline, when do you want to start the editing process?: (For instance: within 30 days, within 60 days, within 90 days, 4-12 months) (06) Level of editing desired/expected --
(07) Number of charts/tables/pictures (if any): (08) Writing style/format manual (e.g., Chicago Manual, APA, MLA), if applicable: (09) Number of footnotes/references: (10) Do you have a contract with an agent or publisher?: (11) Do you plan to self-publish?: (12) What is your budget for the entire project? (13) Your name: (14) E-mail addresses: (15) Day/evening phone numbers (required -- in case the response to your e-mail bounces or the editors need clarification regarding the scope of service needed, deadline, etc.): (16) City, State, Country (or time zone): (17) The name(s) of the editor(s)/writer(s) you'd like to contact. (18) How did you learn about our service?: (19) Attach writing sample(s) (e.g., prologue, chapter 1, proposal, query) Notes: No hidden charges To learn more about the rates charged by professional editors, please see: Editorial Freelancers Association It is a mistaken notion that freelance editors work "on spec" (speculation) with no payment to the editor. It is basically asking the editor to work for free. There's no guarantee that a book will see a profit (or even be published). The editors posted here do not work on spec. Note: Price quotes and time estimates for individual editors cannot be given over the phone or via chat. This is a network of freelance editors with varying prices and work schedules (see our FAQ). To obtain a price quote please follow the procedures listed on our quotes page. Contact live support if you do not receive a response within three hours. It is possible that your submission was not received. You may also page the network coordinator by leaving voicemail or sending a fax to 469-789-3030. Please be as complete as possible in representing your project's scope and size so you will receive the most accurate estimate. Disclaimer: Your agreement, whether oral or written, is with your freelance editor / proofreader / writer, not with the freelance network as a whole or its coordinator. |
Copyediting, developmental editing|
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