My name is Jenny Rarden. Thank you for visiting my site to learn about me and my work.
Personal
I’ve been married for 27 years, and we have a 25-year-old son. We lived in the Kansas City area (on the Kansas side!) for 15 years, and we bought our first house and have lived on the Missouri side for a year. Previously, we lived in four cities in Kansas, and I was born and raised in Oklahoma, so I’m definitely a middle-of-the-country girl with an accent to match. We currently have one dog (our first) and two cats, but we’ve have had the pleasure of being in the company of four previous cats as well. There’s no doubt we’re animal lovers around this house!
I’m also a writer. I started out in fanfiction, writing mainly for the Stephanie Plum and Twilight fandoms, but I’ve self-published a couple of books with more to come. Click the link to check out my books, as well as the other books by my co-writer we published under our “publishing company” name, RR Books.
Professional
I’ve always been interested in English (by far my favorite subject in school), and I got my start in editing when I became the beta for many, many fanfiction authors way back in 2008. In 2012, I began work as a line editor for Musa Publishing, which I did for two years.
Then I moved on to working as a line editor for Loose id, working for them until the end of 2017. With Loose id, I was not only responsible for editing the manuscripts, but I also compiled a style sheet for each one I worked on, keeping track of characters and their descriptions, places/locations, story-specific terms used throughout, and other important items to track through the story/series.
During that time, I had begun also working as an editor (as well as doing some proofreading) for Waterhouse Press starting in December 2016 and a proofreader for Gemma Halliday Publishing in July 2017, both of which I continue to work for currently.
Not only have I worked with publishing companies, but I have also worked with many independent authors, most of whom choose to self-publish their books, since 2018.
How I Work
I work with Microsoft Word and use track changes. My general turnaround time obviously depends on the length of the manuscript and how much editing is needed, but I do work at a good pace and make sure to give you an estimated time when you send me the file–and am sure to communicate with you throughout if that time changes for some reason.
If I send you back edits and you need to make significant changes, I agree to look over the changes once you’ve made them for no charge unless stated otherwise (due to the extent of the changes made. For example: If you have to rewrite an entire chapter or story line, there may be an extra cost. But I will communicate that with you if needed.)
For my fees and the description of what editing levels I provide, see my Rates/Services page.
Thank you for your interest. I look forward to working with you!
Jenny