About me

Amanda has been editing since 2013 but started Bear Essentials Editing in early 2017 after coming up with the perfect bear-based pun. Despite still working to build a professional portfolio, Amanda has been editing and critiquing writing since she was a teenager. She even got an English degree to better develop those skills as a writer and editor.

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As an editor, writer, and freelance copywriter, Amanda has worked on newsletters, audio transcripts, websites for small businesses, traditional transcribing, newsletters, and novels for independent authors.

Education

• Graduated from Temple University in 2013

  • Bachelor's Degree in English with a focus in ​literary analysis through a critical feminist/LGBT lens

• Certifications from LinkedIn Learning

  • Advanced Grammar (2018)​

  • Editing Mastery: How to Edit Writing to Perfection (2018)

  • Writing: The Craft of Story (2018)

Other Experience

​COPYEDITING

• Glenside Fire House's newsletter The Siren

  • Fall 2015 issue​

• Hibu Digital Marketing (Jan 2015 - Aug 2016)

  • Writing web copy & as-needed QA specialist​

• "Actualization and Action" by Scout Munroe (NeonSaline), published in Game Devs & Others: Tales from the Margins (2018)

• Freelance web copy (writing and editing)

• ​UpWork (copyediting & developmental)​

What I'm looking for

My real focus is and always has been working with independent authors. I love fun, quirky characters, plots that draw me in, subversion of tropes, romance that's founded on friendship, and especially LGBT and other marginalized identities throughout the story.

Genres

• Fantasy

  • Dark fantasy​

  • Low/middle fantasy

  • Urban fantasy/paranormal

• Thrillers/Mysteries

• Horror

Special Interests

• LGBT characters in genre fiction

  • Especially bi characters​

  • Especially NB/agender characters

    • (we love wlw in this house. we are wlw in this house)​

• Ghosts

• Witches/clever magic systems

• Flipping villains to show that they were Right, Actually

  • (think Nancy from The Craft; she was right)

• Dragons

Not for Me

• Rape recovery

  • Think Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, The Female of the Species by Mindy McGinnis or Exit, Pursued by a Bear​ by E. K. Johnston

• Bigotry or sexual assault to give a marginalized person their phoenix moment

• Incest or pedophilia/large age gaps (even if the younger is a teenager)