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):
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.
Once the cover is finalized, I will add it here. It was designed by my colleague, Kaitlyne Bozzone, Ooligan’s Design Department Lead, who is always awesome to work with.
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:
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!
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.
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.
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!
Chrys Buckley 