I have a lot to report for May – this is one of the longest round-ups for a while! I spent the beginning of the month in Mallorca. It was a relaxed week, with plenty of good food and scenic views – even if I did have to buy another jumper in Palma because it was a tad colder and windier than I had prepared for.
Not long after my return, my nephew decided to make his entrance to the world on the hottest May day on record. He and my sister are doing well, and I am looking forward to visiting them for a few days in June.
What I’ve been working on
My work schedule was very light for May, but I did have the copy-edit of a historical fantasy that mixed pirates and magic. The proofread of a short story collection will take me into June.
CIEP Competency Framework: Fiction specialism
The Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading has an established framework to describe the skills and knowledge editorial professionals should develop throughout their career. I’ve volunteered to help with the development of a fiction specialist area of the competency framework. The committee members working on it have put in a huge amount of work, and I hope my experience as a fiction editor will be useful as the project continues.
A well-deserved win
I had the pleasure of working with Willow Healy as the development editor for two versions of her novel The Nine-Tailed Fox, a supernatural mystery set in Japan. Willow’s hard work and evocative storytelling have been recognised by a win at the Indie Gold Awards, and I am thrilled to have been part of the editorial team.
What I read for fun
May’s book club read was The Names by Florence Knapp. Knapp sets out to explore three versions of a life, with different names and different decisions leading to very different outcomes. It’s a hard read, in terms of content, and it is structured in a slightly unusual way, but I think it is a compelling piece of writing.
The book I had been anticipating, though, was All Hail Chaos by Sarah Rees Brennan. This is the sequel to Long Live Evil, which is a delightfully dark and subversive novel about a reader who is transported into her favourite fantasy world and who decides to embrace her dark side. I loved the exploration of many of the secondary characters in the new book, and I’m looking forward to the next installment.
Looking ahead
I’ll be out of the office for a week or so in June – auntie duty calls – but I will be ramping my workload back up after that.
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