It started with a comment on socials.
That's it.

One of us made a post. The other commented.

Neither of us had any idea that one completely ordinary interaction was about to result in years of friendship, a writing partnership, endless book discussions, mutual editing, questionable amounts of sarcasm, and eventually… this.

But somewhere along the way, things clicked into place.

We wrote our own books, read each other's, complained about them, encouraged each other, and generally became the person the other one sent things to when they needed an honest opinion.

And we mean honest. Don’t ask about ‘Platform Guy’ – there were words!
Neither of us has ever been particularly good at pretending something works when it doesn't.

Then we discovered we were apparently living parallel lives.
We'd both released our debut novels on exactly the same day, in exactly the same year.
Before we'd ever met.
And, we'd both thought about different career paths from the ones we were on.
We joked about one day giving up our jobs. Being editors, maybe even working together.

We had no idea that ‘one day’ would actually happen.

Except... we were already doing it.
For each other.
And somewhere along the way, we realised something.
We don't just complement each other because one of us specialises in developmental editing and the other in line and copy editing.
Or because we cover different genres.
We complement each other everywhere.
Steve has absolutely no problem looking at a lovingly nurtured chapter and saying, “Kill it.”
It’s about pacing, structure, momentum. He knows when a scene is taking too long to get somewhere and when a chapter needs cutting rather than another eight paragraphs of rescuing.
Kerry is slightly more inclined to ask whether the chapter has examined its feelings.
It’s about the emotional depth, description, showing rather than telling, character nuance, and all the little things that make a scene feel something.

Neither of us is always right.
Thankfully, neither of us needs to be.

We’ve been doing this two-editor thing for years.
Talking about our current work, messaging about a chapter, a scene, a character problem, a pacing issue.
Sometimes it's a quick question.
Sometimes it turns into a full-blown debate.
We challenge each other.
And then we work out what's actually best for the book.
Because that's how we work.

We don't have identical editorial brains.
We don't always see the same thing.
But that's precisely why it works.
And as a result, the manuscript gets better.

So eventually we thought... Why aren't we doing this properly?
And now we're fixing that.
We're bringing together our different specialisms, our different editorial instincts, and years of knowing exactly how the other works.

And yes, we're still us.
We take your book very seriously.
Ourselves?
Not so much.

So that's how we got here.
One random comment.
A lot of swapped chapters.
A whole load of books.
Two freelance editing businesses.
Several years of accidentally beta-testing a two-editor service.

And, finally, over breakfast at a 1940s-themed festival, we finally did the thing we'd joked about doing years ago.
Were we told we were ruining the aesthetic when we whipped out the laptop? Yes.
Did someone ask if we were time travellers? Obviously.
But we worked it out.
And now we're excited to see what happens next.

Want to take your manuscript on a journey with us? Get in touch today!