Sue Copsey

Author and Editor

Hello! Welcome to my website.

I’m a professional book editor and author, with more than 20 years’ experience in the UK and NZ publishing industries.

I should probably have two websites – one for my editing services, and one for my books, fun stuff and blog. But really, life is complicated enough don’t you think? So if you don’t want to wade through this home page, go straight to the tabs at the top of this page and select away!

Editor

I have extensive experience as both an in-house and freelance editor. I trained at Dorling Kindersley in London, and was a project editor then senior editor at DK for four years. After moving to New Zealand, I became a freelance editor specialising in non-fiction titles (adult/children’s), educational material, children’s/YA fiction, and genre fiction. I have edited more than 200 UK, US,  and NZ titles.

To find out about my editing services, including my publishing background, client list and portfolio, click here.

Author

My writing career began at London Zoo, where I was a  press officer. I also wrote a weekly column for the UK national children’s newspaper The Early Times.

During my time at Dorling Kindersley, I wrote Children Just Like Me, which was an international bestseller and won several major awards.

In New Zealand, my non-fiction title Our Children Aotearoa (Pearson) was published in 2011, followed by my first children’s novel – a spooky adventure called The Ghosts of Young Nick’s Head. The sequel, The Ghosts of Tarawera, received a Storylines Children’s Literature Trust Notable Book Award - yay!  The third in the series, The Ghosts of Moonlight Creek was unleashed on unsuspecting children in 2016, and was a finalist in the Sir Julius Vogel awards in the Best Youth Novel category.

In Jan 2020 my first adult novel, Wife After Wife, a modern retelling of the story of King Henry VIII and his six wives, written under my pen name Olivia Hayfield, will be published by Little Brown UK, and Penguin Random House in the US.

Wife After Wife, a modern retelling of the story of King Henry VIII and his six wives, will be published by Little, Brown UK and Penguin Random House US, in Jan 2020 (read all about it here on thebookseller.com). This ‘rollicking’ tale (heh - publisher’s description) is written under my pen name Olivia Hayfield. Olivia will have her own website soon. It will be much fancier than this one.

“An action-packed adventure with a good dose of spookiness.”

– Zac McCallum, Children and Young Adult Outreach Librarian, Christchurch Libraries 

“A fabulous spooky adventure tale with its New Zealand setting offering something unique in a genre dominated by non-specific locations …”

– SQ Magazine