Kasim Mohammed – Editor

I've worked mostly on commercial fiction (crime/thriller/bookclub fiction), but have also worked on SF/F books (including Andy Weir, Holly Black, and Naomi Novik). I also have experience of working in non-fiction, including memoir and smart non-fiction. As an editor, I work top-down, starting with the bigger picture of what the book needs to work (I focus on structure, plot, and character, in that order), and then dive deeper for a line-edit, ensuring that the manuscript has been tightened as much as possible. My biggest editorial concern is always characters; I'm a firm believer that if the characters sound and feel real to a reader, we can take them to the moon and back.

I work collaboratively, so though I will have my own ideas about what might work and what might not, I want to have a conversation with you about those ideas before the editing begins. At the end of the day, a book belongs to an author, and I'm only here to help and guide them, not take over and insert myself into the process.

I have also been published myself, which means I understand both sides of the editorial relationship: to be edited, and to edit.