Welcome

 

My greatest editing enjoyment comes from helping authors bring their short and long crime works up to award-winning standards. I'm especially good at shaving word count while saving story elements and enhancing the author's unique voice. My sensitivity reading expertise covers adult-onset disabilities, chronic illness, and wheelchair use.

USA Today bestselling author Shelley Adina says

 “Jayne Barnard has an eye for structure and an incisive ability to cut to the heart of a story. At the same time, she draws out of the author ways to improve world building and character. Both methods result in a better read.”

How did I gain those essential skills? 

• By reading and writing a lot of crime fiction over several decades.  
• By serving on literary juries for long and short crime fiction, plays, general fiction, and non-fiction awards
  
• By being edited, often very well but sometimes quite poorly.  
• By mentoring beginning crime writers in both organized mentorships and less formal writing groups.
  

Good editing is a supportive collaboration between the author and the editor, not a hierarchical power struggle, to bring out the highest potential for each story.

My short and long crime fiction has won Canadian crime fiction awards and been a finalist for the UK's CWA Debut Dagger as well as twice nominated for the Prix Aurora Award for Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy.  My decades serving on fiction and non-fiction juries across North America have further honed my understanding of story structure and the importance of style/voice in creating outstanding fiction.
 
I've mentored beginning crime writers for 15 years, edited for five years, and most recently had the immense pleasure of seeing a story I worked with the author on in 2021 win the 2022 Canadian Crime Writing Award of Excellence. 

Author Marcelle Dubé  had this to say about our work on her award-winning short story, 'Cold Wave,' published in CRIME WAVE 2: WOMEN OF A CERTAIN AGE:

"Jayne Barnard is a good writer but shines as an editor. She protects the writer’s voice while pointing out strengths and weaknesses and making suggestions. She is encouraging and friendly in her clear-eyed approach; her light touch improved my story and led to my award. I recommend her highly."

Check out the other tabs for information about my writing, education, editing philosophy, and my rates for structural edits and manuscript evaluations.

If you approach me about an edit, I'll ask for a writing sample and a project overview, and give you my honest opinion about whether we'll make a good team for that project.