My name is M.C. Knight and I love to read. I’m also a perfectionist.
Put the two together and what do you get?
A copyeditor!

Freelance Editor at large

I started freelance editing in June of 2021, finding my niche following my dream of editing fantasy novels. Since then, I have grown my presence on social media and I am always learning new tricks for growing my business, which I am happy to share in my blog.

Testimonials

I pride myself on building personal relationships with my clients. The connection between writer and editor should be a collaboration, not just a wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am! Whether it’s through email or messaging, regular communication ensures that I know exactly what you expect and helps me understand what you want to accomplish with your story and, ultimately, help you grow your career as an author.

Developmental Edit: "Redfin"

“Michaeli has provided proofreading and conceptual feedback that I have asked from many others to no avail. She was happy to provide what I needed within several hours. Michaeli’s work is astoundingly efficient and thorough. She is patient and forthcoming, constructive and professional. I feel lucky to have connected with her.”

-Blaire Grady

Beta Read and Copyedit:
"the Last Lion of Karkov"

“Michaeli is an enthusiastic, talented, and thorough copyeditor. It is very obvious that editing is her passion. Highly recommended!

-Corey Griffin

Copyedit: "Spirit Sight"

“She finished on time and the feedback was exactly what I was looking for.”

– Ross Hightower

Background and Influences

I have a Bachelor’s degree in English and copyediting is my passion. I work quickly, but that’s mostly because I have been an avid reader my whole life and I just read really fast. I was a copyeditor and layout editor for my school’s newsletter back in college, and I’ve been helping people edit papers, resumes, emails, and the like for years.

As a kid, I read pretty much whatever I could get my hands on. We had a small room lined with bookshelves in our house that we called the Library, and it was full of fantasy and sci-fi novels. I started with the Oz books, then Narnia, the Time Quartet (Madeline L’engle’s A Wrinkle in Time etc), Piers Anthony’s Xanth series, Robert Aspirin’s Myth series, Anne Mcaffrey’s Pern and Rowan series, Asimov’s Robot Novels and Foundation series, Mercedes Lackey’s Valdemar books (and later the Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms)… the list goes on and on.

In more recent years, I’ve enjoyed the In Her Name books by Michael R. Hicks, Elizabeth Hunter’s Elemental series, Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth series, C.L. Wilson’s Tairen Soul books, and pretty much everything Jeff Wheeler writes, starting with Muirwood. I will often get the first book in a series free on my kindle, then end up buying the rest of it! (I occasionally subscribe to Kindle Unlimited, but because I like to go back and read things over again, it’s not always practical.)

My Life's Story

I was born in Murfreesboro, TN to a pair of quasi-hippies that didn’t know any better. We never lacked for love in my family, although some of the other stuff (like money, or discipline) may have been in short supply. I pretty much ran wild, and it came back to bite me one or two times.

It was hard to grow up in my family and not be a musician. Both my parents sing and play piano, although they come at it from different sides; my mother is classically trained, while my father is more of a rock ‘n roll kind of guy. I have a little bit of both, but am a huge choir nerd.

When I was four, we moved to Huntsville, AL and joined the Episcopal Church (or “Catholic light,” sometimes “recovering Catholic”) and the church gives me ample opportunity to indulge my love of choral music. My faith has always been important to me, especially in recent years.

All throughout school, I thrived in a magnet school focused on the Arts. I played the cello in middle school orchestra and became a leader in my church and school choirs. I mistakenly thought myself an extrovert because I was not shy; however, I never really quite fit in with any one group and needed a lot of time to “decompress” after being around people. Reading was (and still is) my escape.

In seventh grade, I was diagnosed with juvenile myoclonic epilepsy. When I got up in the mornings, I would twitch (Mom said it looked like a “startle reflex”) until I fully woke up. In the early morning and late evening, when the sun was low on the horizon, driving in the car could trigger these “twitches” when the light flashed through the trees. In high school, I developed deep depression and anxiety, and retreated into myself.

Meanwhile, the internet was gaining steam. I had made some friends on AOL, visiting a chat room called “The Xanth Glade,” where we played characters who lived in Anthony’s Xanth. The internet continued to be a refuge for me, somewhere I could be me with anonymity.

The summer after my freshman year in college, I had my first tonic-clonic (formerly known as grand-mal) seizure. It was terrifying. I woke in the hospital, my knees and elbows scratched up and tongue sore and swollen from where I’d bitten it. This started a very dark period in my life, riddled with depression, unemployment, abusive relationships, substance abuse and, eventually, homelessness. After a while, my right shoulder started to dislocate during my seizures and eventually I got to where I could not use my dominant arm at all.

I could not take care of myself, so I was forced to move around, first to Virginia with my father, then to Ohio with my mother.

more to come…

My name is M.C. Knight and I love to read. I’m also a perfectionist. Put the two together and what do you get? A copyeditor!

My name is M.C. Knight and I love to read. I’m also a perfectionist. Put the two together and what do you get? A copyeditor!

Freelance Editor at large