My Recent Favs
Here are a few recent and upcoming releases I’ve had the pleasure of working on and am especially excited to share, along with a glimpse into the editorial work that helped bring them to publication.
Revenge in Rome
by Mandi Lynn Bell
I enjoyed copyediting Revenge in Rome, a fake-dating millionaire romance featuring a character I first met when I edited Sparks in Iceland for Mandi last year.
Mandi is generous about sharing what she’s learned as a self-publishing author. If you’re looking for helpful, authentic advice about self-publishing, marketing, cover design, or balancing ambitious creative work with parenting and nap schedules, her YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram are worth checking out.
She even made a video about how she decided to resolve a query I raised about one of her main characters: Was Asher a billionaire flying on a private jet, or a young millionaire who could splurge for first-class tickets?
I appreciate Mandi’s storytelling, engaging characters, and warm, human voice!
“I’ve worked with Nicole twice now, and I’d be happy to work with her for each of my future novels! Besides being a great editor, I always appreciate her promptness and communication. She goes above and beyond what I’d expect from an editor.”
Making Sense in Crooked Rooms: Distorted Mirrors, Cognitive Dysmorphia, and Collective Knowing
by Jessica Oladapo, LCPC
“I am so incredibly grateful to have partnered with Nicole as she provided both developmental and line editing for my book, *Making Sense in Crooked Rooms.* I appreciated her professional expertise, and, maybe even more significantly, her personal touch, care, and encouragement. One incredibly valuable insight was Nicole encouraging me to add more personal and narrative to the work, making the book richer and less jargon filled. Readers have appreciated the narratives and see themselves not just reflected in the concepts, but in the stories that bring the concepts alive. I’m so grateful. Discovering that my work, which speaks to a lived experience of many minoritized and marginalized people, impacted her as well made the connection feel even more valuable and meaningful. I could not have asked for a better experience for my first book!”
Jessica Oladapo is a clinician, instructor, facilitator, leadership strategist, and now author—and it was an honor to help her bring this book into the world!
We started with developmental editing, focused on her ideas, structure, and vision for the manuscript. An excerpt from my developmental editorial letter:
“My primary recommendation is to incorporate significantly more narrative storytelling, especially from your clinical, teaching, and coaching experience, to ground the manuscript’s strong conceptual insights in lived, concrete examples. … For example, when introducing a concept, you might begin with a brief story about a client who struggled with it, walk the reader through how it appeared in practice, and then expand into the broader conceptual insight. These additions will make abstract psychological dynamics easier to understand and help readers see themselves reflected in the material. You do this really well at the beginning of chapter 13 and end of chapter 22; I’d love to see that replicated more frequently in the manuscript.”
Jessica dove into revision and expanded her book from 47k words to 72k words. By the time we reached the copyediting stage, she had woven relevant stories from her professional and personal experiences throughout the manuscript to skillfully illustrate her concepts.
I loved spending time with her ideas about identity and belonging, and I even wrote a series of grocery-store poems inspired in part by her theories and stories.
Jessica presented her concept of cognitive dysmorphia at the 2026 conference of the Association of Black Sociologists. You can find Crooked Rooms on her website, and she’s working on an accompanying workbook.
I’m also looking forward to editing her dissertation in 2027!
What a touching story of family reconnection after estrangement! This honest and vulnerable memoir weaves a family history across decades and continents, looking at dysfunction and shortcomings with calm compassion and presence.
It was the book that Jake shared on his Instagram as the book he was “terrified to write.” His manuscript kept me hooked the whole time I was scrutinizing and polishing it—the first time through, and the second, and the third.
After I finished copyediting, I was delighted to connect Jake with a book designer I knew through the Northwest Editors Guild, Riley Earle, who did the layout and created a gorgeous cover that I think captures the feel of the book perfectly.
A Million Little I Love Yous will be available in autumn 2026.
“Could not have asked for a better, more thorough, more collaborative, honest, clear, professional copy-and-line editing experience for my book. Thank you, Nicole!”