Interview with Kathy Lynn Emerson

Question: You write both historical and contemporary novels. Why is that?

Kathy: I like variety, and I find that alternating between completely different projects keeps me fresh for both. When I hit a snag in plotting one of my Face Down mysteries, I spend some time on a romance proposal or a non-fiction book or a short story. By the time I either finish that one or get stuck again, I have all sorts of new ideas for the historical mystery.

Question: Where did the idea for your paranormal romance, Echoes and Illusions, come from?

Kathy: It started life as a failed science fiction short story. When I first began trying to sell what I wrote, I had no idea what I was doing, or even what genre I belonged in. I imagined the story in a future time when my heroine and her husband traveled to England using a sort of pneumatic tube for instant transportation. In that version, it was the trip that triggered her memories of life in the distant past.

Question: Why do you so often use Maine as a setting for your romances?

Kathy: It's easy to research, literally my own back yard. And I have an in-house source of information (my husband) for any law-enforcement questions. Not all my heroes have carried a badge, but many of them do, and I've always tried to make their behavior and outlook on life as accurate as possible. I live in western Maine, near ski areas, but nowhere near the ocean, and my settings reflect that.

Question: Do you use real places?

Kathy: Not really, with the exception of large cities. It's my house, improved version, in Echoes and Illusions, and I based the twin houses in Love Thy Neighbor on my in-laws' house and Austin's Crossing (loosely) on their town, but I generally make up the names of places in the novels and tend to combine real buildings and real towns with a great deal of poetic license. The characters, of course, are totally fictional.

Question: Any other favorite settings?

Kathy: Most of my historical novels, both romance and mystery, are set in sixteenth century England. I've also written two non-fiction books about that era (The Writer's Guide to Everyday Life in Renaissance England is the most recent) and so I "know" it well in the sense that I've spent many years studying it. I've also set an historical novel (Firebrand, now out of print) in colonial New England and a contemporary novel (Tried and True) in rural New York state, where I grew up, but Maine for contemporaries and England in the 1500s for historicals are the two settings I'm most comfortable with and feel confident of presenting accurately.

Question: Accuracy is important to you?

Kathy: It has to be. Readers are smart. They resent sloppy research and they tend to stop reading books by writers who make too many careless mistakes.

Question: What are you working on now?

Kathy: I've just (January 2001) finished a draft of the seventh book in the Face Down series, which features a sixteenth century gentlewoman as sleuth. The sixth book, Face Down Before Rebel Hooves, will be out in August of 2001. I'm also working on a young adult romance, Someday, which will be published as an ebook early in 2002. One autobiographical touch included in that book is something I also used in a character's background in the adult romance Sleepwalking Beauty, the fact that as the tallest girl in my ballet class (and conveniently flat-chested) I was twice picked to take the role of the hero in recitals. Unlike the heroine of Someday, I enjoyed being the center of attention. But then, at the time I didn't have a boyfriend I was trying to impress.