Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Wendee Mullikin. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Wendee, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear about how you got your first non-friend, non-family client. Paint the picture for us so we can feel the same excitement you felt on that day.

The crisp air made me wish I’d brought a jacket to watch soccer practice. One of the youngest two Spawn (my now-grown children) was on the practice field doing drills…or maybe scrimmaging as the sun dipped lower and lower on that fall 2012 evening.

What does a soccer mom do while they’re waiting for practice to end? Scroll social media!

I ran across a post by a best-selling author I’d followed because they live in Michigan, and I love to support local–well, in-state–authors. She was looking for some beta readers for a new series she was launching, so I responded.

Moments later, she replied, asking me to direct message my email address.

Huh. That was easy.

I was a full-time special education teacher in a residential placement facility for adjudicated youth at the time, so after dinner, the Spawn did their homework and I checked a set of papers and wrote draft goals and objectives for an upcoming IEP, but I was really itching to open up the Word file that had arrived in my inbox before I even made it home from soccer practice.

Around 10 p.m. that night, I opened the manuscript instead of a book on my ereader. I was hooked from the first sentence, but there were things I could fix, as a veteran English teacher. So, I emailed the author and asked if she would mind if I did a little proofreading along the way.

The next day, she responded, “Sure, but I can’t pay you.”

I was okay with that, and really excited–after all, I was reading the book anyway. Why not make the corrections?

Fast forward. The book did well–it became an international best seller–and the second book was well on its way. The author asked if I would edit it, and we worked out payment terms.

We did seven or eight books together before my availability and speed that I could edit while working a full-time job and having a couple Spawn in middle and high school got in the way and she went with another editor.

You never know where an opportunity may appear!

Wendee, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Purple Pen Wordsmithing, LLC is an umbrella business for the work I do with words. In addition to being a romance editor, I’m also a best selling romance author and I do select copywriting projects.

I got into editing through a chance social media interaction, and my new clients are mostly referrals.

Romance authors like to work with me because I provide one-stop editing and formatting services–the only thing they need to worry about scheduling and working on is their cover and their edits! I also do educational editing, which means I try to support authors as they elevate their work and encourage them to dig deeper and infuse rich emotion, description, and conscious language into their works. Through targeted instruction in the margins or via email or virtual meeting, I partner with the author and teach these necessary skills.

As a romance author myself, I know the genre. I’ve also extensively read romance. In the past, I supported a friend with a book review blog by contributing several reviews a month. It’s so important for authors to widely read in their genre; without those reading experiences, it’s difficult to have a target. For example, my target is to write like one of my favorite authors. Actually, that’s not true. I want to write like I’m a combination of maybe a dozen authors. I want readers to like my books because they see themselves in the characters. With a diverse cast–and more than one way to be paranormal–the small, fictional town of Zephyr, Michigan has a lot of secrets to uncover and changes to make in their government. Ultimately, I’d like for Zephyr to be a utopia where everyone has human rights and is loved and accepted.

I’m proud of my business and myself: I took the leap from full-time work that didn’t fulfill me to having the ability to edit content I adore every day, and also have the gift of time so I can write my own stories and further develop Zephyr and the series. I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever done for my health.

Clients and readers alike are likely to quickly realize that I’m an advocate for equality and conscious language: words matter. As an editor, I am meticulous and want every author I work with to succeed. I support clients as much as I can via social media as well as highlighting their books in my online portfolio.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

With Purple Pen Wordsmithing, I’m trying to create the work environment for authors that I wish I’d had in my previous roles–going back to my first “real” job decades ago. That means there’s a lot of clarity and mutual respect. Authors believe that I’m an expert at editing their stories and I believe that they’re an expert when it comes to their stories. To that end, I’m currently developing–slowly but surely–an author portal. There, authors will be able to access instructional material on a wide array of topics related to the art of storytelling and genre-specific topics for the romance genre.

Authors working with me will have access to this content. Eventually, I’ll be using the content for self-paced courses with office hours and guest speakers–and my goal is to keep the cost down for authors because self-publishing costs can really creep up. Part of my courses will teach elements of self-editing to hopefully keep costs down a little.

That sounds a little weird, coming from an editor, right? Well, there are ways authors can work on their manuscripts themselves and keep their actual editing costs down. Not zero–every author needs an editor. And, as an author/editor, I learn what MY editor catches in my manuscripts that I don’t catch on my own.

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

I wish I’d known about macros for Microsoft Word. These are a game changer for editing as they create shortcuts for different things we might do a lot of. For example, I have a macro that will change a comma to a period and make the next word’s first letter capitalized. I do all that with one combination of keystrokes–I’ve assigned it control-L, and it saves so much time! I took an online course this past year and I’ve been gradually upping my macro game.

I also wish I’d known about text expander software–this really helps with populating comments in a manuscript, text in an email, or other documents I find myself using over and over.

As a solopreneur, life can be pretty solitary–and that’s why I’m so glad I found professional editor groups and created a little mastermind with a few edibuddy friends. I also have a peer group with a few authors–so I have somewhere to turn, no matter the dilemma!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.PurplePenLLC.com
• Instagram: https://www.Instagram.com/vampbard
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/deelylah
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wendee-mullikin-editor
• Other: Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/vampbard.bsky.social
  BookBub: BookBub.com/authors/deelylah-mullin
  Threads: threads.net/@vampbard