I was delighted when Jade contacted me in summer 2025 and asked me to work with her again on her new novel, Tenebris. Jade writes the kind of stories I love as a reader, and editing for her barely feels like work!

Jade had already undertaken developmental edits following feedback from beta readers, and tasked me with providing her with a full line and copyedit, along with developmental feedback such as:

• Timeline organisation: There are multiple narrators in Tenebris, so it was important to track the timeline of events between them to make sure all events align, and that switching between narrators doesn’t cause issues with overlap where characters might be required to be in two places at once.

• Adding/removing/rearranging small plot details: I provided feedback that led to Jade bringing forward detail that she had originally planned to reveal later to enhance the reader’s understanding of a character’s background and motivation. There were also occasions where detail that felt superfluous was removed, or was more relevant in a different scene. We did quite a bit of rearranging together to make sure the narrative flowed clearly and wouldn’t raise unintended questions!

• Characterisation feedback: Assessing the speech, behaviour and actions of Jade’s characters against their descriptions to ensure they align with their portrayal.

• Plot and pacing feedback: Providing my opinion on how tension is built at key moments, where detail could be removed or added to maintain consistency of flow, and general feedback on whether the flow of events makes sense.

Tenebris was 130,000 words long and the edit Jade asked me to complete took 120 hours over four weeks.

Tenebris is available to buy on Amazon.