ON THE BLOG TOUR
1/6/12:
For the schedule of blogs I'm visiting to talk about various aspects of my latest historical novel, click on the title. At the King's Pleasure . There are free autographed book offers at some of these locations if you're willing to leave a comment.
Meanwhile, in other news, I've turned in The King's Damsel, which will be out in August and deals with the period of King Henry's marriage to Anne Boleyn. The protagonist is the "unknown mistress" of 1534. Since she IS unknown, for a change the heroine of one of my novels is entirely fictitious. Just about everyone else, of course, really lived.
BLOG TOUR SCHEDULE
12/12/11:
I've just put up the blog tour schedule for At the King's Pleasure . There are a few things to be announced yet, but it will give you an idea of what's coming up. If anyone with an appropriate blog site is interested in posting a guest blog from me sometime during the first couple of weeks of January, email me by clicking on the quill.
ANOTHER UPDATE
11/4/11:
I've just been to the Simon and Schuster page on me and they are listing the omnibus ebook with an "on or after" November 29 release date. The full price is $35.99 for all three books in one e-download, but keep your eyes open because there will be a sale sometime in December and the price will drop, temporarily, to (I believe) $28.99. Here's what the cover looks like:
Meanwhile, I'm in the process of setting up a blog tour for early January to coincide with the publication of At the King's Pleasure. Every blog will be different and each will focus on some aspect of Tudor life that has a bearing on the plot of the novel. I'll put up the entire tour schedule as soon as it is set.
UPDATE ON RELEASE DATE
11/1/11:
It looks like it's January 3, 2012. At least that's what the online booksellers have listed. Thank you for your patience!!!!
NEW COVER NEWS
10/28/11:
One good thing to come out of the delay in publication of At the King's Pleasure is a redesigned cover. Below are both the old and the new. They're very similar, but I must say I like the new one better. My ego likes the way my name is bigger and above the title. My sense of fashion approves of not showing enough of the model's head to tell whether she's wearing a headdress or not. In reality, at that period in Tudor history, she'd be wearing a gable headdress that would completely hide her hair.
EBOOK, PUB DATE and OTHER NEWS
9/17/11:
First up: I've added Face Down O'er the Border, Book Ten in the Lady Appleton series (w/a Kathy Lynn Emerson), to the lineup at Belgrave House (and ultimately to other outlets). Click on the cover for the link to Belgrave House.
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In pub dates, the paperback of the Liss MacCrimmon Scottish-American Heritage Mystery, The Corpse Wore Tartan, written under the pseudonym Kaitlyn Dunnett, will be in stores October 4, 2011, with the new hardcover in that series, Scotched following on October 25, 2011.
In blogging news, I'm guest blogging at FreshFiction.com on September 19 and continue to blog every ten or eleven days at Maine Crime Writers. My September 19th topic is "The Evolution of an Office."
AT THE KING'S PLEASURE PUBLICATION DELAYED
7/26/11:
I'm sorry to have to announce that publication of At the King's Pleasure has been delayed. Don't worry. The book is written, edited, and copy-edited, and ARCs went out for review, so it will be published. This is just a scheduling change, and as soon as I have a new publication date, I'll post it here. Stay tuned.
BLOG NEWS
7/9/11:
As Kaitlyn Dunnett, I am one of ten mystery writers involved in a new blog launched on July 6th. All born in Maine and/or living in Maine now, they can be found at Maine Crime Writers. The other nine are Gerry Boyle, Vicki Dodera, Paul Doiron, Kate Flora, Sarah Graves, James Hayman, Barbara Ross, Julia Spencer-Fleming, and Lea Wait. There will be individual blogs, group discussion blogs, interviews, and guest posts from Maine librarians and others conncected to our favorite subject . . . murder in Vacationland. Kathy Lynn Emerson will make occasional appearances. Kate Emerson . . . not so much. My first post went up on July 8. I'm participating in the group blog on July 10, and my next individual blog will be on July 21. Toward the end of the month, I'll be interviewing one of the other writers, followed by an interview with me. Since I haven't blogged on a regular basis before (only guest blogs) I find myself looking forward to this new experience. Future topics will include something on Maine Coon Cats and a look at life in rural Western Maine.
Update on People and Dates
6/4/11: I've just added a lot of new entries and a new page to A Who's Who of Tudor Women. The entries, and additions to many of the existing entries, were the result of finally getting my hands on a copy of an unpublished PhD dissertation, The Women who served Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth by Charlotte Isabelle Merton. I've seen this source cited in published biographies and social histories for years but it took me a long while to track it down. It was worth the effort. I found a few errors (I always do!), such as calling Blanche Parry the sister of Thomas Parry, but considering that the dissertation was written in 1991, that's not too surprising. What was exciting to me was that there was so much information on women I had previously been unable to identify. Following my usual practice, I then went searching for more information online and in the books on my shelves. Finding a woman when you have only her name is difficult unless she did something to make herself notorious. But if you have her parents' names or her husband's name, there's a chance she'll turn up in a genealogy or in British History Online or her husband or father will have been famous enough to have an entry in the Oxford DNB or the History of Parliament. Anyway, to make a long story short, there are now over 1300 entries in the Who's Who.
I've also added a new page titled "A Note on Dates and Why You Shouldn't Trust Them." The dates on documents from Tudor times can be very confusing and far too many scholars have made matters worse in past centuries. If you're interested, you can find the page by clicking here:
NEW EBOOKS; FREE SHORT STORY; NEW CONTRACT; COVER PROOF
5/6/11: There's all kinds of news to report today. Let me start with the blurb announcing that two more of my backlist historical mystery novels are now available as ebooks:
Kathy Lynn Emerson has made two more of her backlist historical mysteries available as ebooks at http://www.awriterswork.com. In FACE DOWN O’ER THE BORDER, book ten of the Face Down series, sixteenth-century gentlewoman, herbalist, and sleuth Susanna, Lady Appleton travels to Scotland in search of her dear friend Lady Glenelg, who has disappeared after being accused of murder. Not only must Susanna discover who the killer really is, she must cope with the disadvantage of being English in a land that mistrusts anyone from south of the border. In LETHAL LEGEND, book four of the Diana Spaulding 1888 Quartet, scandal-sheet journalist Diana Spaulding and her fiancé, Ben Northcote, are back in Maine, getting ready for their wedding, when an old friend of Ben’s asks for his help. From murder on an island off the coast of Maine to archaeologists, deep sea divers, and a duel with fencing foils, the action never stops. Add in the long anticipated meeting between Ben’s mother and Diana’s and the return of other characters from earlier novels and this is a book fans of the series won’t want to miss.
In addition, I've put the short story "Lady Appleton and the Yuletide Hogglers," which was published as a Christmas card by Crippen & Landru last December, on my website as a free read. You can find it by clicking here:
Next up, in news for Kate Emerson fans, the fifth and sixth books in the Secrets of the Tudor Court series are a go. I'll be starting work soon on THE KING'S DAMSEL, which features Henry VIII's unnamed alleged mistress of 1534. This will be much more fictionalized that the first four books, since there is literally nothing known about this woman, but the background, during Anne Boleyn's tenure as queen, will be as accurate as I can make it. The protagonist of the sixth book is not yet decided.
And, still on Kate Emerson, I've seen an early version of the cover for AT THE KING'S PLEASURE and once again it is gorgeous. I'll post it when it's final but I can give you one hint now: at long last the model is a brunette. Nothing against blondes, but it's nice for the author when the hair color on the cover matches that in the text.
NATIONAL HISTORY DAY CONTEST
4/14/11:
I had the great pleasure of meeting the five young ladies pictured above, all students at Buckfield High School, when they visited me to ask questions about England in Henry VIII's day. They went on to take first place in the Maine competition for National History Day at the end of March, portraying (from left to right) Katherine Parr, Anne Boleyn, Anne of Cleves, Katherine of Aragon, and Jane Seymour/Catherine Howard. They used these historical figures to express various sixteenth-century views, particularly on the controversial topics of religion and divorce. On June 12-16, they will represent Maine in College Park Maryland in the Kenneth E. Behring National History Day Contest. Between now and they, they will be spending their April school vacation in London. I applaud their dedication to history and wish them the best of luck in June. For those interested in the competition, you can find more details by clicking here:
In other news, there are now more than 1200 entries at the Who's Who of Tudor Women. Also, I've updated my tour page with the two conferences I'll be going to in the next couple of months. You can check that out by clicking here:
UPDATES TO THE WHO's WHO
3/13/11: I've been adding more Tudor women to the Who's Who (what else is new?) but the big news is that I've also done a major revamping of the list of women at court. You can check it out at . The next entry in the "Secrets of the Tudor Court" series, At the King's Pleasure has now been turned in and I'm working on a proposal for a fifth book in the series, but it is too early to talk about that one yet, other than to say that it will probably be set during the one stretch of the reign of Henry VIII that I haven't yet touched upon, the years during which the king was in love with Anne Boleyn.
NEW GUEST POST ABOUT BY ROYAL DECREE
2/13/11: For those interested in reading blogs, I've just done a guest blog at "Book Drunkard," writing about Bess Brooke, heroine of By Royal Decree. You'll find the text at
TWO NEW EBOOKS UP AT AWRITERSWORK.COM
1/14/11: Two more of my historical mysteries, Face Down Beside St. Anne's Well and No Mortal Reason are now available as ebooks at A Writer's Work. Click here to find them, see a more detailed description and reviews, and read sample chapters: And don't forget that you can get the ebook of Fatal as a Fallen Woman for free, one day only, January 22, 2011. See the entry below for details on this offer.
BY ROYAL DECREE IN STORES; NEW "ASSORTED BLOGS" PAGE; FREE EBOOK OFFERS
12/14/10: Today is the day By Royal Decree, the new Kate Emerson historical novel, hits bookstores. Yea! For more details about this one, click here:
On the Kathy/Kate/Kaitlyn front, I've set up a new page containing a collection of blogs I've done as a guest blogger and articles I've written on various occasions under all three names. It's a random assortment of thoughts, but I hope some readers may find it interesting.Click here to go to the "Assorted Blogs" page:
And finally, the group of professional writers who make up A Writer's Work.com are making a couple of special holiday offers to our fans. First is a free book day on December 26, 2010 and the second is a "Free Book a Day" promotion for the entire month of January. Here's how they will work. On the day after Christmas readers will be able to one free book per author. If a reader orders more than one book from the same author on that day, they will get the MOST expensive book for free. Because of the way the site is set up, this has to be done on a "pay and then get a refund" basis. Buyers will have their purchase price refunding via PayPal by December
29th. The "Free Book a Day in January" offers one specific book free each day of that month. There will be a list on the website to tell you which book is offered on each day. Readers who order a free book in the first half of the month will have their payment refunded via PayPal by the 17th of January. Readers who order a free book in the second half of the month will have
their payment refunded via PayPal by February 2nd. I have two books in the offer, Face Down Beneath the Banqueting House will be available for free on January 5, 2011 and Fatal as a Fallen Woman will be free on January 22, 2011. Both were written as Kathy Lynn Emerson. Click here to reach A Writer's Work:
ALMOST HERE: BY ROYAL DECREE
11/16/10: In just a few more weeks, BY ROYAL DECREE will be in stores. As of today, I've added a sneak peek at Chapter One. You can reach it from a link on my index page or by clicking here: . In other news, I'll be blogging about the book at Writerspace.com on the day after Thanksgiving. And for those of you who also read contemporary mysteries, my latest title written as Kaitlyn Dunnett, THE CORPSE WORE TARTAN, is now in stores, along with the paperback reprint of last year's book, A WEE CHRISTMAS HOMICIDE. Happy Reading!
UPDATES TO THESE WEBPAGES
10/8/10: Go back to the index page and check it out! I've added more pictures and other information to the sections on Henry VIII and "Life at the Tudor Court" and I've created a new page to showcase portraits of some of the Tudor gentlemen who appear in the novels. Want a peek at William Parr, the hero of the forthcoming BY ROYAL DECREE? He's there. So are the villains and the heroine's father. Enjoy!
NEW BOOKS IN STORES
10/6/10: First up are two titles in my contemporary mystery series, which I write under the name Kaitlyn Dunnett. The mass market paperback reprint of A WEE CHRISTMAS HOMICIDE is now in stores and will be followed on October 26 by the new Liss MacCrimmon Scottish-American Heritage Mystery, THE CORPSE WORE TARTAN. The next Kate Emerson novel, BY ROYAL DECREE, third in the "Secrets of the Tudor Court" series, will be released in trade paperback format on December 11th. I've been doing more interviews, the latest at the Pittsburgh Historical Examiner, and I'll have a blog up at Writerspace.com on October 25th, talking the mystery and the role my husband played in writing it.
UPDATES to LISTS OF WOMEN AT COURT and to WHO'S WHO OF TUDOR WOMEN
8/7/10: I've been updating and adding to both the entries in the WHO'S WHO and the
Lists of Women at Court sections of the website. As I've said before, this is a never-ending process. What can I say? I just keep finding information on more and more interesting women. Almost every time I begin research on some aspect of the work in progress (in this case AT THE KING'S COMMAND, the 4th book in the SECRETS OF THE TUDOR COURT SERIES), I come upon references to Tudor women that intrigue me. I try to find out more about each of them. If I find enough on someone, she becomes a new entry in the WHO'S WHO. Sometimes there is nothing to find, but with more and more new information being shared online every day, it's always possible something will turn up later. That's also why the older entries keep being revised. New (to me, anyway) information turned up, either in books I've bought or borrowed for research, or online in genealogies or other material that has been added since the last time I looked. I get a real thrill out of solving the mystery when I can connect a stray name to a family, a life history, and sometimes even a portrait.
WEBSITE UPDATED WITH COVER AND INFO ON BY ROYAL DECREE
8/4/10: I've just received the final proofs of the cover for BY ROYAL DECREE and they're gorgeous! The earlier version had Bess Brooke wearing a pale pink dress. This one is much more striking. I've also started to add information on the novel to these pages. This is an ongoing process, so please check back from time to time to see what has been added. To go directly to this material, you can click here:
NEW EBOOKS ADDED
7/12/10: More of my ebooks (written as Kathy Lynn Emerson) have just been added at A Writer's Work web store.There are five books for young people (ages 10 and up), four of them previously published (JULIA'S MENDING, THE MYSTERY OF HILLIARD'S CASTLE, THE MYSTERY OF THE MISSING BAGPIPES, and, in nonfiction, MAKING HEADLINES: A BIOGRAPHY OF NELLIE BLY) and one (SOMEDAY) that is an ebook original. For grown-ups, there are two titles, the eighth book in the Face Down Mystery series, featuring 16th century gentlewoman, herbalist, and sleuth, Susanna, Lady Appleton, FACE DOWN BELOW THE BANQUETING HOUSE, and the Agatha-award winning nonfiction, HOW TO WRITE KILLER HISTORICAL MYSTERIES: THE ART AND ADVENTURE OF SLEUTHING THROUGH THE PAST. I hope to add more mystery titles before the end of the year.
CHECK OUT WHAT'S NEW AT THE WHO'S WHO
6/26/10: I've just added a section titled "How the Who's Who Came to Be" at my A Who's Who of Tudor Women. You can go directly to it by clicking here.
In other news, I'm still adding to the Who's Who (it has over 900 entries now) and working on the next Kaitlyn Dunnett mystery and doing research for the fourth novel in the Secrets of the Tudor Court series, which will be titled At the King's Pleasure. The protagonist in this one is Lady Anne Stafford, another of the women to whom King Henry VIII was romantically linked. It's unlikely they had an affair, but Anne was part of an interesting love triangle, the other two points being her husband, George Hastings, earl of Huntingdon, and Sir William Compton, one of the king's most trusted courtiers. Some of you will remember Will Compton from The Pleasure Palace. At the King's Pleasure begins with Anne's wedding, which took place at court in 1509 and follows her life through to the execution of her brother, Edward Stafford, duke of Buckingham, in 1528.
Since I haven't even started to write that one yet, however, let me take a moment to talk about the next book coming to stores, By Royal Decree. The story of Elizabeth Brooke, marchioness of Northampton, it begins late in the reign of Henry VIII, when Henry is looking for a sixth queen, and continues until the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth I. During that time, Bess Brooke led a fascinating and controversial life. She fell in love with a married man in a country where there was no divorce unless you were the king. William Parr, brother of Queen Kathryn Parr, secured a separation from his adulterous wife, but he was forbidden to remarry. The only solution was to persuade the king to grant a royal decree permitting them to wed. In the course of their relationship, Bess and Will find themselves married under one sovereign and unmarried under the next. Bess goes from being the mistress of a married man to a position as the highest ranking lady at court and back to being a mere mistress again. More than any of the other books in the series, this is a love story, and one of hope and triumph over tremendous odds. And of course, there's plenty of political intrigue and danger, too.
MISCELLANEOUS NEWS
5/11/10: For those of you interested in A Who's Who of Tudor Women, the online version, I've restructured the text into smaller sections. Some of them were getting really unwieldy to add to! Most are now separated into letters of the alphabet, except for a few letters that just plain have a lot of people in them. Who knew so many women had maiden names that began with B? Anyway, if you bookmarked one of the sections, just go to the index for new links.
In other news, I'm getting ready to go to Mayhem in the Midlands in just two more weeks. I'm presenting a solo program on Historical Mysteries and also participating on two panels. This may be my only foray into the world of fan conventions and writers' conferences this year as I have two new books to write, one as Kaitlyn Dunnett and one as Kate Emerson, and a 45th high school reunion to go to in the fall. And, of course, I keep adding to the Who's Who, which is fun but time consuming.
you can reach them by clicking on the links for the Tudor court and for each of the two books (so far) in the Secrets of the Tudor Court series. Enjoy!
MORE NEAT STUFF AT AWRITERSWORK.COM
3/11/10: I've just added more e-book originals to my listing at the A Writer's Work web store. Crimes and Confusions: Five Historical Short Stories is a never-before-published collection of novella length. Included are "The Reiving of Bonville Keep," "The Kenduskeag Killer," "The Tell-Tale Twinkle," "Any Means Short of Murder," and "The Curse of the Figure-Flinger."
Also new is my historical novel for young readers, Shalla. Set in Colonial Rhode Island it is based on real events in the year 1643. Click on the link above to go to the A Writer's Work homepage or below to go directly to my page there.
TWO TITLES NOW AVAILABLE AT AWRITERSWORK.COM
2/23/10: "A Writer's Work" is now in business! At this new web store you'll find not only my books (written as Kathy Lynn Emerson) but others by a variety of multi-published authors. Historical? Contemporary? Romance? Mystery? Nonfiction? They're all there for your reading pleasure.The books at this site go directly from writer to reader. We're changing the process. No middleman. We've done the scanning, proofreading and covers ourselves to make our books available, many for the very first time as ebooks, and set up a system whereby we can also offer original ebooks direct to readers. The two Kathy Lynn Emerson titles available for the launch of the site are Murders and Other Confusions, a collection of Lady Appleton short stories originally published by Crippen & Landru, and Fatal as a Fallen Woman, second book the the Diana Spaulding Mystery Quartet, set in 1888, originally published by Pemberley Press. The ebooks come in a variety of formats and can also be easily converted to read on a Kindle. Check it out!
For those of you who aren't into ebooks, I now have a special offer available on the complete Diana Spaulding Quartet in trade paperback editions.
NEW BLOG AT WRITERSPACE
2/8/10: Click on the quill below for a new blog on filling in the gaps in the historical records.
New Interview
1/2/10: Click on the quill below for a new interview with me.
There will also be new material about me at my old faves, The Burton Review and Historically Obsessed.
Housekeeping: The Story Behind THE PLEASURE PALACE
12/11/09: I've been rearranging the website in preparation for the publication of the second book in the Secrets of the Tudor Court series, Between Two Queens. It will be in stores in early January 2010. There are links on the index page to all the locations that have been updated. So far they include my biography page, the bibliography of books I used in writing the first two books in the series, the information on Henry VIII (more pictures have been added there) and the page with pictures of palaces. One change I've made is to move the story behind the writing of The Pleasure Palace from my bio page to this one. It makes up the remainder of this entry. Enjoy!
The idea for The Pleasure Palace goes back a very long way, to the earliest attempts Kate (then called Kathy) ever made at writing historical fiction. Having come to the conclusion that a career teaching seventh grade English was not for her, Kate decided to fulfill a lifelong dream of becoming a novelist and sat down to write her first historical. It was awful, heavy on the information dump and full of "telling" instead of "showing." It was 1976 and there were few writer's groups around. The Internet hadn't even been invented yet. The only way to learn how to write was by writing.
So, Kate kept at it. This time she didn't write an entire book, just a synopsis and one chapter for something she called The Princess of Pleasure Palace. The protagonist was Mary Tudor, Henry VIII's sister, and it was quickly rejected by a publisher.
While writing two other novels set in the mid to late sixteenth century, Kate continued to work on versions of one taking place early in the reign of Henry VIII. These incarnations were very different from THE PLEASURE PALACE as it was completed in 2008. The Perils of Pleasure Palace was intended to be historical romance and centered around a fictitious character, a girl from the London streets, who was supposedly brought to court by Will Compton after he seduced her. She subsequently became the mistress of several other courtiers. By the end of the book, they'd all died. She finds a home, if not happiness, as a servant to Mary Boleyn, someone Kate always thought was a much more interesting person than her sister, Queen Anne. This was long before Philippa Gregory wrote The Other Boleyn Girl and even long before Karen Harper wrote about Mary in The Last Boleyn, which was originally published under the title Passion's Reign. Needless to say, this early version of The Pleasure Palace, which stood at 72,000 words in 1978, did not sell, either. Kate was still learning her trade. After two rejections, she revised it, ending up with a 96,000 word manuscript which was rejected ten times.
Kate Emerson, however, never gives up on an idea she likes. Even though she went on to be published in other genres, she never quite forgot the idea of setting a novel in the reign of Henry VIII. In 1994, she gave it another try, this time her focus on the French prisoners of war at Henry's court and the women who loved them. This version, titled My Lady's Ransom, involved a fictional English gentlewoman with a fictitious servant of the duc de Longueville, only this servant was to turn out to be a French nobleman in disguise, working to thwart an evil uncle who tried to steal his inheritance. Kate wrote an outline and a chapter and tried to market it as historical romance but had no luck selling this incarnation either.
Flash forward to 2007, when suddenly all things Tudor are popular and historicals don't have to fit into a subgenre like historical romance or historical mystery in order to sell. THE PLEASURE PALACE that resulted is Kate's thirty-ninth published book (she's written under three other names over the years, in just about every genre going) and is a far better story than any she dreamed up for earlier versions. But there are bits and pieces of older versions here and there and Pleasure Palace (Greenwich) itself still plays a key role in the plot.
BLOGS AND INTERVIEWS
10/8/09: I seem to be popular all of a sudden. People keep asking me to blog and do intereviews. This is kind of neat. It also means I can write short essays (okay, okay . . . I can BLOG!!!) about whatever strikes me as interesting at the moment. I don't think I'd want to commit to doing that on a regular basis. I'd never get any novels written if I was trying to put out a daily or even a weekly blog. But once in a while, especially for a previously untapped audience, one that really seems interested in what I have to say, the process can be fun. And, let's face it, being asked is always flattering. Most writers, myself included, need all the ego-boosts we can get.
If you haven't explored the rest of this website, I hope you'll do that now, but if you're ready to move on, here are some of the places where you can find me blogging or being interviewed. Keep in mind that I may be listed under one of my other names, so be sure to look for all three of me: Kaitlyn Dunnett, Kate Emerson, and Kathy Lynn Emerson.
I'm already posted, talking about my "Who's Who of Tudor Women," at The Burton Review. And I've done an interview about my historicals for Historically Obsessed, another historical blog. You can find that at Historically Obsessed.
Later this month there will be a blog from me ("Who Am I Today?") at http://www.writerspace.com/wsblogs. It is scheduled to be posted on October 14th. I've also just done an interview for http://workingwritersandbloggers.com. Looking a bit farther ahead, I'm working on an article for the March issue of The Medieval Chronicle, which was a print newsletter back in the day and is now starting up again as an e-newsletter. You can check it out at www.TheMedievalChronicle.com. I think I'll be writing about letter writing in the early sixteenth century, but don't hold me to that.
I'm going to try to update this news page on a regular basis, but don't hold me to that, either. There isn't always anything new or newsworthy to share. Mostly I sit and type. This is very boring if you're not the one doing it. Sometimes it's boring when you are!!
© 2009-11 Kathy Lynn Emerson. All rights reserved.