Less than a year after hiring several editorial assistants and a social media and marketing manager, I’m growing and hiring for Mary Kole Editorial again! Now I’m looking for a dedicated administrative assistant to help me with the day-to-day logistics of my business. This will be a part time position (20 hours or so per week, unless need increases).

I’m also looking for editors, ghostwriters, and proofreaders for referrals of overflow work. I find myself turning work down if a project isn’t a perfect fit for my team, and would love some qualified editors and proofreaders to recommend. Sometimes my clients also look for ghostwriters. This is an opportunity to receive referrals. I’m especially looking for excellent proofreaders, ghostwriters, and editors who specialize in non-children’s fiction.

This remote position is perfect for someone who has experience as a support person and administrative assistant, either in the corporate or start-up space. Maybe you want extra income as you work on your own writing, or need to work from home.

Ideally, your skills and attributes include:

• Clean written communication–you will be writing on my behalf sometimes, and that means clear, error-free, delightful copy
• Time management and dedication to deadlines
• Ability to set, then meet or exceed expectations
• Clear communication with me about timing and progress
• The ability to follow instructions but largely work independently and take initiative
• Reliability and trustworthiness, you will be privy to sensitive business information
• Proactivity and love of learning–if you don’t know how to do something, you will seek out additional resources, learn what you need, and enjoy the process
• Familiarity with the Google suite of productivity tools, especially spreadsheets, Dropbox, DocuSign, and Slack
• Some basic graphic design skills using Canva and templates
• Commitment–I put a lot of energy and passion into my working relationships, and I’m only looking for people who could see being available for a minimum of two years, ideally more

Projects will include:

• Tracking and following up with potential client inquiries
• Bookkeeping, issuing client agreements, generating invoices, and tracking payments
• Reaching out on my behalf to marketing opportunities
• Responding to inquiries on my behalf
• Helping set up and update various marketing elements like email newsletters and webinars

This is not an editorial position, unfortunately, but I welcome applicants who are interested in the publishing business, as we will invariably end up discussing the industry and various client and project needs.

Starting pay is $15/hour with the opportunity to grow, and my needs will start at 20 hours a week (as a minimum, never less) though they  might increase to up to 29 hours a week. You will be a 1099 contractor for tax purposes (responsible for withholding your own income taxes and reporting them), rather than a W2 employee. Please understand that I am not in the position to offer employee benefits, like health insurance. This is an opportunity for US-based candidates only for legal reasons. (I sadly had to turn down many qualified editorial applicants from abroad during my last hiring event.)

I’m looking for cover letters and resumes sent in the body of an email or as an attachment. Please use the subject line “Assistant Application” and send to mary@kidlit.com. The deadline for applications is Friday, June 7th, 2019 at midnight, Central. The next step is a phone interview for qualified candidates. Since we will be working very closely together, the personality fit factor is important here. I welcome all applicants! The position would most likely start at the end of June or beginning of July.

If you’re interested in being an editorial, ghostwriting, or proofreading referral, please use the subject line “Editorial Referral” and send to mary@kidlit.com. There is no deadline on this request.

Here’s a post that I’m thrilled to write. On February 7th, we welcomed Finn Mikhail Macdonald to the world. He joins big brother, Theo, who is three years old today.

Those who’ve been following know that our daughter, Nora Pepper, died in December 2017 after being born with a very rare and completely surprising birth defect. But my husband, Todd, and I knew we weren’t done building our family. Or so we hoped. We never learned our recurrence risk for Nora’s condition, despite doing whole genomic sequencing, the most comprehensive option available. Our odds were either 1 in 4 of a repeat (if the condition was inherited), or 1 in a billion (if it was a random mutation) of being struck by the same lightning twice. But there was no way to close that gap.

When you’re hit with such a devastating loss, and medical uncertainty, you can’t help but think, “Was our healthy child the fluke? Or was our unhealthy child the fluke?” And then, “Could we go through this again, if it happened? Are we brave enough to try?”

Well, we tried. And the pregnancy was its own special kind of hell, because Nora’s condition doesn’t show up on imaging or any kind of prenatal testing (since we never found the gene responsible, we had nothing to test for).

So I had to basically have a baby and see if it … worked. Brutal.

Happily, Finn seems healthy, as far as we can tell. He’s very different from our sweet Nora. He cries, he eats (and eats!), he opens his eyes, and he seems very engaged with the world around him. In other words, a typical newborn, just like Theo was.

The second Finn was born and screamed and latched immediately, a huge weight was lifted. Worry and heartbreak that I didn’t even realize I’d been carrying around for so long dissipated. I can’t describe how happy we were, and still are, to have this beautiful new creature join our family.

To be totally honest with you, the end of 2017 and into 2018 was devastating. Not only did we have the worst surprise of our lives when Nora was born and passed away in December 2017, but I lost my dad to cancer in March 2018. This was also a surprise. He sincerely thought he had more time. They both departed way too soon. It was too much. I was numb for about six months. That’s why Finn has the middle name Mikhail. That was my father’s name, the Russian version of Michael.

At least our Finny has two amazing guardian angels watching over him.

And, of course, two furry ones. (Token pug picture of Olive and Gertie…)

Thank you to everyone for following this saga. I kept the pregnancy a secret for the most part. I learned the hard way not to count my chickens. Hearing congratulations for Nora and then condolences two weeks later was very hard. So I didn’t want to say boo about a baby until there was one. Well, boo!

It was such a thrill to have the same photographer who took our Nora pictures, Sarah Ann Photography, back to chronicle this new arrival. We also got to share Finn with the incredible NICU doctor who cared for Nora, which felt so gratifying. It was such a wonderful way for things to come full circle. I hope that now we can close out one tumultuous chapter of our lives, and begin an exciting new one.

Today, on what would’ve been her first birthday, I’m remembering my daughter Nora Pepper. For those of you who don’t know, Nora was born with a very rare birth defect on this date, November 30th, in 2017. It was a complete surprise to us because her condition didn’t show up on prenatal imaging or testing. Unfortunately, hers was a terminal diagnosis. She died on December 16th, 2017.

The Taboo of Baby Loss

We had a little more than two weeks to create memories as a family, and include our son, Theo, then 21 months, in Nora’s short life. During that time, we hired a professional photographer, the wonderful Sarah Wroblewski of Sarah Ann Photography, to come take pictures in our home. Now that Nora is gone, these pictures have become touchstones for our family that we will treasure forever. That sounds like such a cliché, but in this case, they really are all we will ever have. They mean everything to us.

We had our favorites made into a photo album. (In the blur of grief, I just sent a big batch to Shutterfly and used their “I don’t care, just make me an album” service. It actually worked out better than expected!) Our photographer gifted us with an absolutely stunning album as well. This morning, we sat together as a family and showed both off to Theo, then talked about his sister and how much we love and miss her. The photos will be part of our tradition on her birthday for the rest of our lives.

The last year has been difficult but, ultimately triumphant. Theo is an utter joy to us, now a wild and rambunctious 2.5-year-old. We savor even the most mundane moments with him in ways that we didn’t before. My relationship with Todd, my husband, is stronger than ever. I’ve done a huge amount of inner digging, and grown into a person I never would’ve been without this experience. The editorial business is thriving and I get to do what I love every single day.

Another facet of the last year has been connecting with other loss parents. The “Dead Baby Club,” as I jokingly call it, is a club nobody ever wanted to be in, but we are. After I posted about Nora’s death, I heard from so many of you who’ve lost pregnancies, babies, or children. Nobody talks about this kind of shattering loss. Children aren’t supposed to die. It breaks the natural order.

But they do. Sadly, so sadly, they do.

When this tragedy happens, parents sometimes feel alone because it’s too terrible, too impossible to talk about. The world wants to shield its eyes and pretend. There’s a cultural taboo surrounding the topic. So, all too often, we suffer in silence, except when we meet another family in our shoes.

Coming Together

This has gotten me thinking about community, and reaching out to other loss families who have experienced the unimaginable. I remember what it was like to be broken open in the most vulnerable moment of my life, sitting there in the hospital that Monday evening, and learning that Nora would absolutely die. There’s just not a lot of support for a family on that horrible day.

As the anniversary of Nora’s birth and death rolls around, and I’m thrust back into these memories, I want to tell you about a cause that means a lot to me, if you’ll listen. This year, my family has made a donation in Nora’s honor. I’d love for you to join us, if you feel at all compelled. While I can’t personally be there to support families facing baby loss as it’s happening to them, there’s an organization that does just that.

And it does something else incredible. It provides them with tangible memories of a life gone too soon: those same kinds of photographs that mean the world to us now.

A Request in Nora’s Honor

Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep is a nonprofit organization that you may never have heard of. I hope that’s because you’ve never needed them. They service any parents in a hospital setting who are facing stillbirth or neonatal death. They provide a network of photographers who will come at no charge to the family, at all hours of the day and night, and take pictures of the baby and family. These pictures are usually heart-wrenching. But beautiful. And oh-so-significant to families who may only get to spend a few precious moments with their babies.

My family didn’t personally use their services. We brought Nora home initially, because we didn’t know exactly what was wrong. We had photographs taken there. But if we’d spotted her condition earlier, we probably never would’ve left the hospital. From experience, I know how amazing it is to have pictures of my baby. I never thought I’d lose a child. But families experience it every day. Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep serves them in their time of most desperate need. It supports photographers who volunteer their time and talent to step into the worst moment of a person’s life. Think about walking into that room for a moment.

Please excuse me for using my platform for a cause. But I want to help Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep and enable them to do their very important work, if I can. If you feel so compelled, please make a donation to Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep in Nora Pepper Macdonald’s name, or the name of any other child who survives only in your heart.

We’re thinking about you today and every day, baby girl!

Do you (or someone you’ve worked with) provide non-editorial services to writers? Services can include:

• Graphic/cover design
• Book layout
• Formatting for Kindle/ebook publication
• Book production
• Self-publishing consulting/services
• Marketing/PR
• Social media support
• Ghostwriting
• Illustration

This is an opportunity to be included in a resource guide.  I’m always getting requests for ghostwriters, cover designers, book formatting, etc.

Please contact me at mary@kidlit.com or leave links in the comments. For all service providers, I will ask for examples of successful work you’ve done, so be prepared to talk about your services, your experience, and give a sense of your pricing. If you’re a writer who has used a service that you are THRILLED with, please spread the good word and let me know. Thank you so much.

The holidays always seem to put people in a reflective mood, and I am exactly that kind of sap! So if you want hardened writing advice for the next few weeks, you are out of luck.

No joke, my gorgeous blog readers, I have had the best personal and professional year of my life: We built basically a new house in a four-month renovation; my son, Theo, continues to be a daily joy; I got back to conference speaking, which was always a deep love for me; I was lucky enough to work with over 300 talented freelance editorial clients, and they continue to sign with agents and sell books and otherwise made me very proud; and we started on the journey to expand our family.

A baby girl is joining us in December. Terrible time of year to meet the ol’ health insurance deductible, of course, but we couldn’t be happier! This was the year that all my dreams came true, honestly.

I’m taking some time away in December to do the newborn thing again, but I am one of those terrible people who can’t sit still, so I will have a limited slate of clients continuing with me. The blog may be a bit quieter, or my updates might happen at 2 a.m. Who knows?! After that, it’s back to business as usual in January, helping writers everywhere make their dreams come true for 2018!

I’ll send out an email blast once I’m back to scheduling my regular slate of clients, so if you’d like periodic updates, sign up in the sidebar.

Happy Holidays to you and yours, and I wish you blessings and joy this season. Now let’s eat some pie.