Published: May 30, 2025

Synopsis: Misha and Zane are two young eco-scientists who fall in love when she joins his jobsite. Their romance blossoms, with some spicy scenes, making this appropriate for an adult audience. As engineers, they both pursue innovative careers in eco-science: she’s a passionate scuba diver and he builds climate control venting systems. Misha discovers a new kelp species during one of her dives, which she hopes will have long-term carbon capture potential.
Misha and Zane want to have a child, but Big Brother© controls the fertilization process through its single child policy and fathers have lost their reproductive rights. With the help of Zane’s mother, who works at the fertility lab, they secretly engineer their own jar-baby.
Meanwhile, Zane’s friend, Reno, travels to Iran on business and falls in love with a Muslim woman who is highly politicized. Zane gets involved and finds himself in legal hot water. Forced to stand trial, will Zane get separated from Misha just as she is about to give birth?

Genre: Science Fiction, Dystopia, Romance
Audience: Adult

Available in: Paperback & eBook
Pages: 242

Purchase a copy from Amazon.ca
Visit Naomi P. Lane’s author website

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Naomi reached out to me about developmental editing for her newest novel, 2084, a 62k-word dystopian love story woven together with important messages about irreversible environmental shutdown. I’ve previously read the classic, 1984, so I was excited to find out how her novel paid homage to it.

The Process

We went ahead with the Premium Developmental editing service, which includes two read-throughs with in-text comments, as well as a full report about plot, structure, characters, relationships, and more. The Premium service also includes a 1-2 hour video chat with me, the editor, about the work and any questions the author may want to discuss in detail.

She also sent me a list of specific questions she had about the work, which I answered and sent back to her after my first read-through so she would have something to review before our chat.

For my first read-through, I gave my first impression comments: questions I had about the text, predictions for the characters, etc. Once I finished the whole manuscript, I began my report. For Naomi’s 62k-word manuscript, I wrote 15 pages, first with my observations about the work, then with my suggestions for improvement (separated into categories). After that, I reread the document, giving my second set of comments (marked accordingly). These comments took into account things that happened further in the text as well as my new perspective of the story once knowing the whole thing.

Our video call was on the last day of the project, shortly after I delivered the final documents for review. For an hour, we talked about my suggestions for her work and why I made the suggestions I did.

I try to only take on developmental editing projects of books I know I can add value to, but never have I been so surprised to click with a story as easy as I did with this one. It was primarily a story about the romantic relationship between the two protagonists, which isn’t as much of my speciality as adventure, mystery, or quest fiction, but I thoroughly enjoyed reading this story. Naomi is excellent at seeding tension and conflict into her work to let the story flow.