Editorial services

Freelance substantive editor, copy editor, proofreader and researcher with over twenty years’ experience.  Currently writing and researching  a sea story, the Ghost Ship of Trinity Bay, about the Welsh Marie Celeste What can I do for you? Do you have a finished or an unfinished book, story, essay or other work? Does it need some polishing, or would you like a considered opinion (based on a thorough reading) of your work? I can evaluate it, suggest rewrites or changes, do detailed copy editing,  or simply check it for errors and anything that is unclear (proofreading).  All  manuscripts considered, in electronic…
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From the UK to Random Island. Has a 130-year old mystery been solved?

From the UK to Random Island. Has a 130-year old mystery been solved?

From a press story in Newfoundland, 2018 Three families, one from the UK, one from the United States, and one from the former community of Deer Harbour, Random Island, will come together this month in Newfoundland  to commemorate a seafaring tragedy from the 19th century. 130 years ago, a British warship patrolling off Catalina discovered a merchant sailing ship from Wales, abandoned in fair weather, seaworthy but with no sign of captain or crew. No trace of them was ever found, and the story became known as the Welsh 'Marie Celeste' like the famous ghost ship. UK-based writer Will Wain…
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Primrose Hill before it was posh: Will Wain meets Eugene Manzi

Primrose Hill before it was posh: Will Wain meets Eugene Manzi

I met Eugene Manzi at one of Primrose Hill’s many patisserie/coffee shops, this one (or was it the place next door?) stocked with a minimalist display of startlingly coloured cupcakes. Eugene and I opted for tea and croissants – not a classic pairing,  but preferable to any of the whirly child’s-paintbox confections on offer. Eugene as a small boy lived above his father’s shop at  105  Regent’s Park Road from 1944 to about 1955, and recalls a mixed ‘Bohemian’ and working-class neighbourhood of artists and students, immigrants, small factories and workshops that seems a world away from the swish ‘village’ of…
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Screechin’ in St John’s

Screechin’ in St John’s

You don’t come to Newfoundland for the weather. I’d flown in the previous evening in a misty rainstorm that would have seemed just right for Craggy Island, but my single day in St John’s before hiring a car and heading up country dawned sunny and clear, a summer day with none of the country’s notorious fogs. I was in the country to research the story of my great-grandfather, a sea captain in the nineteenth century who had vanished from his abandoned ship, along with all the crew. Before setting out on my quest for ‘the Welsh Marie Celeste’, I had…
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The Welsh Marie Celeste: a true story

The Welsh Marie Celeste: a true story

THE WELSH GHOST SHIP RESOLVEN In August 1884  the Royal Navy vessel HMS Mallard was patrolling the fishing waters off Trinity Bay, Newfoundland, when she sighted the merchant ship Resolven, apparently adrift. She gave no answer to the Mallard’s signals, and on boarding her, the Navy sailors found that the ship was completely deserted, though there was no sign of damage or disturbance. A fire was lit in the galley and there was food on the tables, but not a soul aboard. The lifeboat, too, was gone; for some unknown reason, the crew had simply abandoned their ship. She was salvaged,…
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The Rained-Off Rocket Battle

The Rained-Off Rocket Battle

  The film is the low res movie I took of the Chios rocket battle, Easter 2012 - please watch it with the sound on otherwise you won't hear the fizzin' of the rockets and the pealin' of the bells... ... The fireworks ‘war’ between the two parish churches of Vrontados, on the Greek Island of Chios, is said to have started in the 19th Century, with children firing stones at each other from slingshots. Now it's the young men who fight, with thousands of homemade rockets that they spend all winter stockpiling. The target on St Mark’s church, separated from…
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Editorial ‘CV’

Editorial ‘CV’

Editorial CV Some of my recent projects: 2020 substantive editing on CHASE, a thriller by Brian Waltham 2019 copy editing on Chris Clunn’s book (published 2020) on Semanta Santa Marinera, photographs of the Holy Week in Valencia’s Maritime Quarter 2018-19 Work on Betou: the Biography of a French Hamlet (Line Press, London) 2016-19 Substantive editing on Damian Knight’s the Pages of Time series 2015 Copy editing and helping to bring to press Damian Knight’s first novel, a sci-fi thriller for young Adults,  ‘The Pages of Time’. 2014 Video editing for Brian Waltham Celebration in London in September 2014 2013 design and maintenance of website on…
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Smaller Sky Books 2000 – 2008

Smaller Sky Books 2000 – 2008

In 1998, an old friend, the poet, jazz pianist and former BBC Producer Graham Tayar, happened to mention to me that the author William Cooper (pen name of Harry Hoff) was looking for a publisher for his latest novel, the final one in the series of Scenes… that had begun in the 1950s with Scenes From Provincial Life. After a trip to London from Oxford to meet Harry, who was charm itself, and who in fact funded some of the initial print costs, Lucien Crofts and I set up Smaller Sky Books, initially working from a tiny premises next to the…
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