Editing – Chrys Buckley

The Abbey of Saint Zosimos – Focused Developmental Editing Letter and Manuscript Markup – Cozy Fantasy

The Abbey of Saint Zosimos by Anna Shomsky is Ooligan Press‘s latest acquisition. It should launch in winter 2028. One of the people in my cohort described it as “a funny silly goofy good time,” and that description has stuck. It takes place in an abbey of magicians on Vashon Island who use spells and potions for such serious business as changing the color of slugs and elongating nose hairs.

For the developmental edit, we were divided into teams and asked to write letters of only 1-2 pages, focused on our specific focus. So, this is (much) shorter than a full DE letter.

Here’s my focused DE letter about Narration (POV) and tone:

DE Letter – Abbey of St Zosimos – Tone and Narration – Buckley Download

Along with the letter, we each marked up a full manuscript with focused developmental editing comments. Many of mine centered on tracking the POVs in each chapter and noting when they shifted, briefly or for longer stretches. I also included tone comments.

Here’s a sampling of my manuscript markup:

Pages from DE_Abbey of Saint Zosimos_Buckley Download

This book likely won’t get a cover for quite some time, given the long publication timeline, but when it does I’ll come back and add that and link to the cover designer.

Developmental Editing Letter – Literary Fiction

Here is a sample of a full-length developmental editing letter for a literary fiction novel, as part of the Developmental Editing class for the Editing track of my grad program in Book Publishing.

I’ve anonymized the author’s name and the book title and a few other things for the sake of privacy for the author.

DE Letter Literary Fiction Download

Harnessing the Power of Museums – Developmental Editing (3 Rounds) – Academic Nonfiction

It has been my absolute joy to work with Dr. Elizabeth Lahti and Lisa Abia-Smith on their forthcoming book from Bloomsbury later this year, Harnessing the Power of Museums: A Guide to Programs for Well-being. Not only are Elizabeth and Lisa a pleasure to work with, but their book is also a balm for so much of what feels off in the world. This book centers creativity, attention, art, and connection and includes moving essays on a variety of universal themes. Every time I work on the book, I’m reminded of what actually matters over the long-term. I also feel hope every time I work on (and thus read) this manuscript, which is in very short supply these days. I can’t wait for this book to be out in the world.

This project came to me in three stages so far—a fourth is in the works!—so this portfolio post will also have three parts to represent each round of developmental editing.

Round 1 Developmental Editing

The first phase occurred last spring, when Elizabeth and Lisa hired me to give their manuscript a first pass. It had a different title then, and a much different structure from its final form.

Here is my first developmental editing letter for this project:

HtPoO Editorial Letter Download

Round 2 Developmental Editing

The second round was, by far, the most intense. Because of Elizabeth and Lisa’s publisher’s timeline and my grad school schedule, I did most of this work over winter break. The manuscript was much longer at this point, so there was a lot to get through in a short amount of time. I may or may not have worked a lot of hours on this project on Christmas Day with Hulu Christmas movies playing in the background.

We did a lot of work in the document. I did a lot of developmental editing by Word doc comments, as well as copyediting, but since we were working on such a tight timeline, we were all in the manuscript via Word for Web, and we didn’t preserve any of my comments because of the live editing workflow the project needed. So, there is a lot I can’t show you, I can share my editing letter that addressed the authors’ specific questions and other developmental observations. We did this via Google Docs, so that I could get them feedback while still working on other parts of the manuscript, to accommodate time constraints. It might sound stressful, and there was time pressure, but I look back on these winter memories with fondness.

Here is the round 2 editing letter:

Harnessing the Power of Objects (Round 2) Letter Download

Round 3 Developmental Editing (Response to Peer Review)

After Lisa and Elizabeth received their first round of peer review, they asked me to go through the comments, as well as the updated manuscript, and give them feedback and suggestions. Of the three rounds, this was the lightest one. It was, once again, a pure delight to dive back into the project.

Here is the Round 3 editing letter:

Harnessing the Power of Museums Round 3 Letter Download

Stay tuned for Round 4: Indexing

I’m so excited for this possibility. Indexing is fun!

It will get its own post because indexing is a different type of work.

Promise the Sky – Heavy and Light Copyedits – YA Sci-Fi

Another upcoming Ooligan Press book that I can’t wait for everyone to read is Promise the Sky by Katrina Spillman, which we’re publishing in partnership with Multnomah County Library Writers Project. It’s a YA sci-fi space opera, and it’s awesome. Promise the Sky will release in spring 2027.

I’ve been a little more hands-on with this book than some others because we’re also going to be recording the audiobook, which falls under my department. More on that to come.

For this book, I participated in both the first-round copyedit (heavy/medium) and the second-round copyedit (medium/light), so I’m sharing samples of both.

Here’s a sample from the first, heavy/medium copyedit, which involved a lot of standardizing ellipses and capitalizations of names and terms within the world of the book (style sheets are our friends):

PTS – Heavy:Medium CE Download

Here is a sample from the second, medium/light copyedit:

PTS – Light:Medium CE Download

We don’t have a cover yet for Promise the Sky, so I’ll come back and update when we do!

A Freelance Editor’s Guide to Ethics and Entrepreneurship – Light Copyedit – Nonfiction

This forthcoming book from Ooligan Press, a collection of essays on editing written originally by and for the Editorial Freelancers Association won’t be out until February 2027, and right now it just went through the light copyediting phase of book production.

Here’s a small sampling of my light copyedit for this book:

Pages from EFA_Light-Medium CE – Buckley Download

Once the cover is finalized, I’ll come back and add it in for some visual appeal.

The Neighborhood Dames – Light Copyedit – Literary Fiction

In my work at Ooligan Press, I get to work on so many books I’m so excited about, and this sample is from one of them.

The Neighborhood Dames by Portland author and publisher Laura Stanfill (Forest Avenue Press) is a historical literary fiction novel that takes place in the Prohibition era. There are so many layers to this book—illicit cider, Tin Pan Alley, a friendship shaped by the times, neurodivergence, and literal dismantling of the patriarchy—and it’s written so well. When we were reading it for a pitch last academic year, I couldn’t put it down.

The Neighborhood Dames comes out November 10, 2026.

The copyedit of this book was one of the smoothest I ever took part in. I mostly just played hyphenation police and suggested a few word changes. It was a joy to work on such polished prose.

Here’s a PDF of a sampling of my edits:

TND CE Samples Download

Here’s the cover, designed by my Ooligan Press colleague Kaitlyne Bozzone (@residentsapphic on IG), the manager of our Design department, who is always awesome to work with. Again, I did NOT design this, but wanted to include it for the visual element of the cover, as well as to plug Kaitlyne’s work!

Echoes of the Lost – Heavy and Light Copyedits – Mystery

Echoes of the Lost (publishing May 12, 2026) is one of the Ooligan Press books I’ve gotten to work on the most. In other parts of this portfolio, I did a Readers Report on Echoes, and then a Developmental Edit focused on character development for Echoes. It’s a testament to the story and the writing that I still can’t wait to read it in its final printed form when the book is released!

Then it was time for the copyedit, and I got my hands on both the heavy/medium round and then later the medium/light round, so I’m including samples of both.

Here’s a sampling of the heavier round of copyediting:

EOTL CE Heavy Download

And here’s a sampling from the second, lighter round:

EOTL CE Light Download

As you might notice, I like to point out when things are done well, and I make use of the comments even in a light CE, and I’m always tracking plot and continuity (see the comment on the last page in the light CE sample above).

Here’s the cover, designed by my Ooligan Press colleague who taught me everything I know about ebooks, Madelynn Sare. Again, I did NOT design this, but wanted to include it for the visual element of the cover, as well as to plug Madelynn’s work!

cover of Echoes of the Lost: A Mystery by Cindy Brown, with red lettering against a backdrop of a Portland bridge in the rain

Echoes of the Lost – Focused Developmental Editing Letter and Manuscript Markup – Mystery

After Ooligan Press acquired Echoes of the Lost by Cindy Brown (originally titled What the River Knew), the first step was developmental editing.

Instead of doing an intensive developmental editing process like the one in this portfolio piece, we were asked to focus on specific aspects of the manuscript, and write a letter in any form as long as it was under two pages. (Full length DE letters tend to be quite a bit longer.) My assigned focus was character development.

Here is my DE letter:

Buckley_WTRK_DE Download

In addition to the letter, we were asked to mark up the full manuscript. I obviously can’t share the full marked up manuscript as that would be some serious copyright infringement and I really want everyone to go out and read this book when it comes out on May 12, 2026. So instead I’ll share some screenshots that are part of my Ooligan portfolio for the term.

Manuscript Markup Screenshots:

These images each highlight different aspects of the DE markup.

Well, the first one actually wasn’t technically on topic of character development, but I felt it was so me I couldn’t not include it. My memory is weirdly great for dates and days of the week, and I clocked the mismatch immediately. (And while you might think that I automatically knew that Dec 13th in 2017 was a Wednesday because that’s Taylor Swift’s birthday and I’m a crazy enough Swiftie to have an encyclopedic memory for what day her birthday fell on every year, and that wouldn’t be an unreasonable assumption, but in this case the date and day registered right away as not right because my med school interview at the Mayo Clinic was Dec 15th, 2017 and it was a Friday.) Of course, I checked a calendar first before making this comment. Another reason I wanted to share this one was that we’re taught that, when possible, we should give multiple options for how an author can address feedback, and this one lays out three options to get this date/day (and all subsequent ones in the manuscript) back on track.

You can always count on me to catch timing discrepancies big and small!

I included the second one because part of my style as a DE is to make sure I’m not just pointing out what could be better but also what is already great. The third and fourth photos demonstrate the typical feedback I give in DE manuscript markup.

book cover for Echoes of the Lost: A Mystery by Cindy Brown. The title is in large red words over a background image of a bridge in Portland.

Copyedit – YA Fantasy

This, like the developmental editing letter for the same manuscript, RIVERS RUN RED, was part of my Book Editing class. This portfolio piece is a short sample, starting about fifty pages into the text.

Rivers Run Red CE Sample Download