Not by Sword” went off for its final round of professional editing this weekend!

Selecting an editor was tricky (especially since prices seem to have gone up from a year ago). I looked at several different editors—on Reedsy and Google—and ended up requesting sample edits from 5 of them. I sent them the first chapter or two of my manuscript, and they replied with an edited version. This was an interesting process because each editor noticed different things about the chapter, and they didn’t all agree about what changes should be made. (Although they all agreed that I was punctuating my dialogue tags incorrectly. 😬)

A couple of them didn’t offer me enough feedback, so I passed on those. One suggested so many changes that I felt like it was flattening my writing voice. Pass. One was a very prestigious editor, and also priced prestigiously. Pass.

Ultimately, I decided to go with Molly from Rookwood Editing. She pointed out a number of things that were good and that could be improved in my sample chapters, and she demonstrated real interest in the project. She also works as a Jewish sensitivity reader, identifying harmful tropes and stereotypes of Jewish people in fiction. My book adapts some of the most famous stories and characters from the Hebrew Bible, and I read those stories through a Christian lens, so I’m eager to have her perspective as a Jew on the way I’ve interpreted and adapted the source material that is sacred to both our traditions.

The copyedit should be done around the end of April, so I’ll let you know then how it went.

Joyous Passover, and Happy Easter!