Chris is an experienced freelance developmental editor, copyeditor and proofreader trained and qualified via the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading. She works a lot with Top Five publishers and has a thriving private practice as ‘the midwife to indie author dreams’. Her degree is in Literature with Philosophy. She came to editing via the unusual route of a long career in social and community work, as well as her own indie author journey in which she writes as CJ Harter.

To relax, Chris loves to spend time with her mischievous Border Terrier pup, Jazz, going for long rambles and doing lots of fun tricks and training. She is also a passionate singer with a local community choir, and is a dedicated and longstanding member of a wonderful and talented writing group.

As a reader, her tastes are eclectic, ranging from Charles Dickens and Jane Austen, via Stephen King and Susan Hill, to Donna Tartt and Tana French. But if she were stranded on a desert island, the books she’d take with her would be historical novels. She would take anything by Sarah Waters, a writer she adores. If you make her choose just one, she will plump for Fingersmith; no, wait, The Little Stranger. No, she simply must take them all. And she would add to those the Regeneration Trilogy by Pat Barker, the three most moving and intelligent novels about the First World War, bar none.