At the King's Pleasure (Secrets of the Tudor Court) (45 page)

A: I have to confess a fondness for Will Compton. He’s always struck me as a charming rogue. I’m sure the real person was less appealing, but seeing him that way allowed me to understand why Lady Anne would be tempted by him.

Q: How did you come to be a writer?

A: I’ve been writing one thing or another since I was very young. My first literary efforts were newspapers for my dolls. I was an English/Drama major in college, but there were no creative writing courses offered at that time so I’d have to call myself self-taught as far as fiction is concerned. I finally made the commitment to write full-time when I decided I was not cut out to teach seventh-grade English.

Q: Do you have any interest in writing historical fiction set outside the Tudor era? If so, what other time period in history would you like to write about? Why?

A: I’ve actually written about several other historical periods under the name Kathy Lynn Emerson, specifically the 1880s in the United States, Colonial America, and the English/Scottish border in 1400. I also wrote an unpublished children’s book set in New York State in the 1920s. My interest in genealogy has led me to most of those eras. I have to say, though, that the sixteenth century is my favorite, and there is still plenty to explore in that hundred-year stretch.

Q: According to your website, you live and write in rural western Maine. Are you originally from Maine? Have you lived elsewhere? Explain how the place(s) you call home have helped shape you as a writer.

A: I’m originally from the Sullivan County Catskills in New York State, a rural area very similar to the western Maine Mountains where I now live. In order to write, I need quiet and solitude, so a rural environment is perfect for me. I can always travel to do research if I need to.

Q: What would you name as the major theme(s) of the novel? Why did you choose to focus on these specific themes in
At the King’s Pleasure
?

A: Revenge has been mentioned above, and it is certainly a factor, but most of my novels deal, in one way or another, with the difference between illusion and reality. Lady Anne and the heroines of the earlier novels come to realize that the gilded trappings of the court are tarnished. How they deal with this discovery affects how they deal with other characters and what they finally learn about themselves.

Q: Do you consider Anne something of a renegade? Unlike many women during her historical era, Anne is seemingly unafraid to stand up to her brother and to speak her mind. Is this part of Anne’s character historical or fictional?

A: I’m not sure she’s so unusual. Or a renegade. She married both of the men her brother picked out for her, apparently without a qualm. The occasions when she stands up to her brother come only after she has been gone from his household for several years. These scenes, of course, are fiction. We don’t have any records of actual dialogue between brother and sister, nor do we know what Lady Anne’s reaction was to being incarcerated in a nunnery. We don’t even know which nunnery it was, or what happened there. The specifics in the novel, including the loss
of her child, are my invention, used to motivate what happens next.

Q: Who is your favorite author? Who are you reading now? What is next for you?

A: I don’t have any one favorite. In fiction I read primarily cozy mysteries, both contemporary and historical, and romantic suspense novels, with regular forays into the paranormal mystery genre. The book I’ve just finished reading, however, is Eric Ives’s
The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn,
an excellent biography which is also research for my next historical novel, which will be set during Anne’s time as Henry VIII’s queen.

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