FAQs

It is important that your beta reader is familiar with the genre(s) you write in. To help you decide if I am a good match for your story, go to my bookshelves on my goodreads profile page. You will find genres I am interested in as well as many of the books I've read and rated.

If you need work completed more quickly than my standard turnaround time, email me with your requirements and I will see if I can accommodate them. If I can, I may charge a premium if it would require my working extra hours or holidays/weekends. I do not bump jobs I have scheduled. I do start jobs earlier than scheduled if I have time and the manuscript is available.

I usually have three large mixed breed rescue dogs. I enjoy swimming, walking in the woods, kayaking, questionable attempts at flower and vegetable gardening, healthy home-style cooking, and fermenting. I have regular political, philosophical, ethical, and moral discussions with my litigation attorney husband. My favorite board game is Scrabble. I have lived on a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia for 30+ years, so I have an interest in personal and small business disaster planning resulting from tropical storms and hurricanes. I also enjoy watching movies and television serials in the science fiction, horror, paranormal, thriller, and action genres. 

A style sheet is, usually, a one-page document which lists the correct spelling of names, places and other unusual words in your manuscript. You can refer to it during any part of the writing process to ensure consistency. I provide a style sheet with all proofreading packages, if you do not provide one. It is particularly useful if you are writing a series. I will use the first occurrence of a name, place or other word as the proper spelling, and when I am proofreading your manuscript I will conform future occurrences of these words to maintain consistency.

A style guide is a much longer, more comprehensive document that attempts to cover every situation where consistency in writing or formatting is necessary. You can create this document yourself, or select from the various industry publications. The Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS), with more than 1,100 pages, is the style guide most often used by authors and editors of fiction. When proofreading or editing your manuscript, CMOS will be my default resource, but I am not wed to it's rules. If the grammar and punctuation choices you have made work better with your style, I will leave it as you have written it.

I built the website using Google Sites, which I would recommend for any newbie site builder (like myself). My goal was to give authors everything they needed to decide whether I was the person they wanted to hire to assist with their story, without wasting any of their time sifting through unnecessary frilly or distracting content.

The awesome dog pictures were taken by an amateur photograph who prefers not the be credited. Many thanks to my photographer and to the dogs for just being themselves.

My logo was created by Sarah J. Primrose. Sarah is one of the first authors I worked with, and when she heard I was building a website, she offered to create a logo for me. I'm not artistic and would probably have forgone a logo once I realized what went into creating one. Now I'm thrilled every time I find a new use for my logo. FYI: She named the otter Hamish. (She's Scottish.) Thank you, thank you, Sarah.