Editorial Services

CURRENTLY ACCEPTING NEW CLIENTS

Working for more than a decade as a creative and academic writer, I’ve honed a razor’s edge to my obsessive attention to detail and aimed the blade at editing. In some ways, having an editor set up camp in my brain has been a fabulous advantage, but it’s an impossible voice to silence!

Since 2016, I’ve been lucky enough to work with some amazing authors, helping them to bring the best version of their books to life, and I would now like to offer that service to the wider writing community.

I am now offering structural editing and proofreading services, where I can, around writing and editing my own books. My skill set focuses on Fantasy and Sci-Fi, and all of their subsets. Works outside these genres will be considered on a case by case basis.

For more information, please contact me via email: alicia.wanstallburke@gmail.com

Previous work

Structural Editing:

The Lore of Prometheus

Graham Austin-King

2020 Book Bloggers’ novel of the year award – winner

John Carver has three rules: Don’t drink in the daytime, don’t gamble when the luck has gone, and don’t talk to the dead people who come to visit.

It has been almost five years since the incident in Kabul. Since the magic stirred within him and the stories began. Fleeing the army, running from the whispers, the guilt, and the fear he was losing his mind, Carver fell into addiction, dragging himself through life one day at a time.

Desperation has pulled him back to Afghanistan, back to the heat, the dust, and the truth he worked so hard to avoid. But there are others, obsessed with power and forbidden magics, who will stop at nothing to learn the truth of his gifts. Abducted and chained, Carver must break more than his own rules if he is to harness this power and survive.

A ritual of flesh

Volume II of The Dead Sagas

LEE CONLEY

“As evil ravages the north and the dead walk, all eyes fall to Arn… The apprentice journeys south, home to the College, unaware of the dark events that transpired in the High Passes after his departure. His leg in ruins, and haunted by watching shadows, the College council in Arn awaits him, but he does not travel south alone.

Arnulf and his warriors must travel to Arn also, with tidings for the king of the risen dead and the terrible curse which has destroyed all that he knew. Arnulf seeks vengeance upon the College, but must choose wisely if he is to save his son.

Meanwhile in the west, Bjorn and his strange Wildman companion report back to High Lord Archeon at Oldstones with grim news of cannibal Stonemen encroaching from the Barrens, but is embroiled in news of war and invasion as Archeon requests his service once more.

In the capital sickness awaits them all, Nym has fled to the city and must now continue her struggle for survival on the plague ridden streets of Arn, keeping all who she cares for safe from the halls of Old Night.

The many threads of this Saga converge on the city of Arn, but amid plague, invasion and terror, a greater darkness is looming. Dark forces are seeking to unleash evil upon Arnar, honour and renown is all, and sword, axe and shield is all that stands between the living and the grasping hands of the dead.”

Seraphina’s Lament

Sarah Chorn

“The Sunset Lands are broken, torn apart by a war of ideology paid for with the lives of the peasants. Drought holds the east as famine ravages the farmlands. In the west, borders slam shut in the face of waves of refugees, dooming all of those trying to flee to slow starvation, or a future in forced labor camps. There is no salvation.

In the city of Lord’s Reach, Seraphina, a slave with unique talents, sets in motion a series of events that will change everything. In a fight for the soul of the nation, everyone is a player. But something ominous is calling people to Lord’s Reach and the very nature of magic itself is changing. Paths will converge, the battle for the Sunset Lands has shifted, and now humanity itself is at stake.

First, you must break before you can become.”

Proofreading:

The Skin

Black Hind’s Wake: Book 1

J.E. Hannaford

How far would you go to save your skin?

I’m a selkie, trapped above the waves until I can recover my skin. Humans used to call us seal-wives many years ago – before they broke the planet. I thought that less humans, after the warming, would mean less danger. My kind believed our world was finally recovering.

We were wrong.

Up here, the magic is fading and Old Ones like me are being traded as trophies for rich and powerful humans to display in collections.

Without the Old Ones, the magic fades, without magic, the planet dies.

Humankind has gone too far and someone has to put a stop to it. I just wasn’t expecting it to be me.

Far to the south on his enormous pleasure ship, Barge, Lord Sal hunts for missing Old Ones – with a grand plan to leave his own mark on the world. But, Icidro and Prince Ulises are searching for them too, and this is a world where money talks louder than morals.

The Golden Minute

John Birmingham

Cady McCall, a foul-mouthed geek grrl of the twenty-first century teams up with Deputy US Marshal John Titanic Smith to search the centuries for the little girl he lost in 1874. Standing in their way – a Puritan Jihad, actual Nazis, and the mysterious, murderous keepers of time itself.