Melody standing with Anubis outside of King Street Station in Seattle

I grew up in northwestern Michigan and completed an A.A. in Liberal Arts at Northwestern Michigan College and then a B.A. and M.A. in History at the University of California, Santa Cruz. I taught history and English courses at UCSC while a Ph.D. candidate there, and I was an adjunct history instructor at Seattle Central Community College and Seattle University before deciding to pursue a career in editing and writing in the late 1990s.

I began as a proofreader at the Seattle weekly alternative newspaper The Stranger, where my conviction that the world needs more humor was reinforced on a daily basis. I soon worked my way up to copy editor and then copy chief, and I also wrote a variety of reviews and features for the paper. After dabbling again in teaching history and tutoring ESL, I began doing copy editing, developmental editing, proofreading, research, and writing for book publishers, toy companies, food packagers, and online retailers.

Soon I added a wide range of marketing and advertising firms to my roster of editing clients, as well as technical design companies, including Microsoft contractors. I also worked for Microsoft directly as the online copy chief for MSN’s Branded Entertainment and Experiences Team (BEET). On the writing end, I wrote food columns for Seattle Metropolitan magazine on a variety of local food producers and purveyors.

Since then, I have gone on to help more than 30 authors of both fiction and nonfiction books bring their best work forward before publication.

I now live on the north coast of California. In my free time I enjoy traveling, bird watching, hiking, exploring local museums and food markets, reading historical fiction, cooking, and making snarky comments about bad television.