Averill Buchanan

Professional memberships

Advanced Professional Member, Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP).

Full Member, Association of Editors, Proofreaders and Indexers of Ireland (AFEPI Ireland).

Partner Member, Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi).

Member, Society of Authors.

Qualifications

BA (Hons) English (First Class) 1998; MA (Distinction) Modern Literary Studies (2000); PhD (2004).

Training and professional development

On-screen editing 1 and 2 (SfEP, 2010); Basic Proofreading by Distance Learning (PTC, 2011); Introduction to web editorial skills (SfEP, 2011); Introduction to copy-editing (SfEP, 2012); Brush up your grammar (SfEP, 2012); Fiction Editing (Publishing Ireland, 2013); Advanced Proofreading (PTC, 2015); Rewriting and Substantive Editing (PTC, 2016).

Experience

Freelance editor and proofreader since 2004.

I am a tutor on the CIEP’s ‘Introduction to Fiction Editing’ online course.

Media

Books, novels, short stories.

Skills and services offered

Development/structural editing; copy-editing; proofreading; self-publishing advice; manuscript assessment; formatting for print-on-demand (POD) and ebook; ebook conversion.

Subject areas

Fiction (general; crime; literary); academic non-fiction; biography, autobiography and memoir.

Specialisms

I specialise in editing fiction – novels and short stories – and in working directly with authors. I also offer a hand-holding service through the self-publishing process.

Clients include

City & Guilds; Blackstaff Press; Lagan Press; Whittrick Press; Booklink; authors such as Bernie McGill, Caroline Healy, Amna K. Boheim, and Rosemary Jenkinson; and more than 30 books for self-publishing authors.

Examples of work undertaken

Development editing: Francis O’Hagan, The Auditor (Lagan Press, 2010); Eliza Green, The Exilon 5 trilogy (self-published, 2012-14) and Altered Reality (self-published, 2013); Pat Fitzpatrick, Keep Away from those Ferraris (self-published, 2013); Luke Prochnow, A Far Cry from Living (self-published, 2013); Raymond Watson, The Cell Was My Canvas (self-published, 2013); Amna K. Boheim, The Silent Children (Matador, 2015).

Copy-editing: Stormont: The House on the Hill (Booklink, 2008); Colin Cousins, County Armagh and the Great War (The History Press, 2011); Karen Brown et al, Musing in the Museum (special edition of Word & Image, Taylor & Francis, 2013); Linda Fullerton, More Than A Suitcase of Memories (self-published, 2013); Bernie McGill, Sleepwalkers (Whittrick Press, 2013); Rosemary Jenkinson, Aphrodite’s Kiss and Further Stories (Whittrick Press, 2016); Tony Doherty, This Man’s Wee Boy: A Childhood Memoir of Peace and Trouble in Derry (Mercier Press, 2016).

Proofreading: Catherine Ryan Howard, Self-Printed (self-published, 2012); Patricia Craig, A Twisted Root (Blackstaff Press, 2012).

Additional information

In 2014, I was awarded the SfEP Judith Butcher Award for ‘raising the profile of the SfEP and the editorial profession, both in Northern Ireland and around the world’.

I am the author of Mary Blachford Tighe: The Irish Psyche (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2011).