Maine Crime Writers

Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson here, today writing as Kathy to report that the biggest writing project of the year (decade? my life?) may finally be complete. After three solid months of proofreading and revising (no additions, just making the entries read more smoothly) the three volumes (A-F, G-O, and P-Z) of the print edition of  A Who’s Who of Tudor Women, containing over 2300 mini-biographies of women who lived at least part of their lives between 1485 and 1603 and providing starting points to learn more about them, is now available in print-on-demand and the e-book edition (all entries) has been updated to match the revised texts.

This whole thing started a lifetime ago when I developed an interest in women of sixteenth-century England by reading the Reader’s Digest Condensed Books version of the novel Young Bess and followed that up with a biography of Elizabeth the First in what was probably a Landmark series book for young readers. I was twelve or thirteen. By the time I was in high school, I had discovered a fascinating family of Tudor women, the Cooke sisters, who were given the same education as boys of their era received. Three of them grew up to marry prominent Elizabethan statesmen and a fourth was renowned as a scholar and even consulted by (gasp!) University-educated men. The fifth, sadly died young.

one of my favorite depictions of a Tudor woman

In college and grad school, my fascination with sixteenth-century women continued, expanding to include depictions of strong women in the plays of William Shakespeare and John Webster. Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi is considered Jacobean drama, but he grew up during the reign of Elizabeth, and I’m a strong believer that what goes on during one’s formative years influences everything that comes after.

During the next few years my interest in Elizabethan women continued, although the only thing I did about it was take notes on sixteenth-century women’s fashions at the library. It wasn’t until I was nearly thirty that I decided to “go for it.” Instead of looking for a job after I gave up on teaching at the junior high level, I sat down in front of my manual typewriter and started to write fiction, most of which I set in sixteenth-century England with real sixteenth-century Englishwomen as my protagonists.

Unfortunately, those early attempts were pretty pitiful and none of them came close to tempting an editor to offer me a contract. However, in addition to a large pile of rejection slips, I was also accumulating a ton of information on real sixteenth-century women. Never one to waste material, and having had a couple of short pieces published (for no pay) in scholarly publications, I decided to see if I could sell a nonfiction book about Tudor women.

I worked on my first attempt, titled Spinners in the Sun, from mid 1977 to early 1979, ending up with a book that ran 198,000 words. I was hopeful of success because there was a strong push back then to establish Women’s Studies as a discipline. Unfortunately, the Feminist Press didn’t think I was sufficiently liberated. Another publisher rejected me for being “too scholarly” while a third said that book was “not scholarly enough.” In all the proposal was rejected forty-seven times between 1978 and 1980, at which point I had the bright idea to revise it into a “who’s who” format instead of one with chapters. I arranged my entries alphabetically by the maiden name of the subject or by married surname if her birth name was unknown. Each entry was cross-referenced by married surnames, of which there were often four or five.

Back then there were many more publishers and small presses to submit to, but I’d already tried most of those who published biographies and/or books about English history. One that was left was Whitston, the small, scholarly press that had published a book that included an essay I wrote on Maine author Gladys Hasty Carroll. They offered me a contract in December 1980. There was no advance. In fact, it was a very bad contract, but I was too much of a newbie to realize that. All that mattered to me was that it was my first book sale.

I turned in a manuscript of 110,000 words by February of 1981. Now titled Wives and Daughters: The Women of Sixteenth-Century England, it contained 570 entries. When I was told to add illustrations, I got permission to reproduce portraits by contacting the owners, mostly in England, and paying for the rights myself. I’m not sure when it was that I realized I would not see royalties until after the first 500 copies sold and that the first print run was . . . 500 copies. I know it was much later before I understood that there would be no royalties on those first 500 sales.

The book was published in July 1984 at a price of $45. There was later a trade paperback edition. I didn’t get my rights back until the publisher went out of business in 2009. By that date I had earned a whopping $413.79 in royalties.

But it was my first book sale. And it garnered reviews, if not massive sales. The best one was written by a former professor of mine at Old Dominion University: “An invaluable reference tool for scholars of the Renaissance, as well as for librarians, genealogists, and Women’s Studies specialists.” The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger Star

Between 1981 and 2009 I wrote a great many more novels set in the sixteenth-century, most of which were published, and accumulated a lot more material on the real women of that era. Some of it contradicted what I’d said about several of the women I’d included in Wives and Daughters. New information turns up all the time, so that was to be expected, but I wanted to make corrections. I revised. I added. I put the result up for free online at the A Who’s Who of Tudor Women website. Between 2010 and 2020 I kept adding entries. Every time I researched a new novel I ended up finding more real women who deserved their own. Finally I just had to say STOP!

During Covid lockdown I took down the Who’s Who website in favor of an information page at KathyLynnEmerson.com and produced the first e-book edition of A Who’s Who of Tudor Women, publishing it through Draft2Digital for $7.99. It included a list of “Titles Used in Tudor Times” and  “Lists of Women at the Tudor Court.” I put a master list of entries on my webpage. Before long, I had requests for a print edition, but given the length of the book, that wasn’t something I could easily produce. That project went on the back burner until this past year.

And now this gigantic project is complete, or so I sincerely hope. I am no longer writing new novels. I read very few new biographies of Tudor women (there are many of them and more coming out all the time) and I’ve declared myself semi-retired. I’m pleased with the result. Even if the rather expensive print-on-demand editions never sell, they exist. Individuals and libraries can buy them. Best of all, even those with no particular interest in the Tudor era may find the books and discover that the women who lived back then had fascinating lives, and have quite a bit in common with the women of the present century.

If you have read this far and are intrigued, here’s how you (or your library) can find copies. For the e-book ($7.99 ISBN 978-1-393-38350-5), click here: to find links to buy

For the print-on-demand volumes, check your usual online bookstore. For brick and mortar stores, you’ll need the following details:  Vol. 1: $29.99 ISBN 979-8-232-68666-6, Vol. 2: $26.99 ISBN 979-8-231-71244-1, and Vol. 3 $29.99 ISBN 979-8-232-41569-3

Kathy Lynn Emerson/Kaitlyn Dunnett has had sixty-four books traditionally published and has self published others. She won the Agatha Award and was an Anthony and Macavity finalist for best mystery nonfiction of 2008 for How to Write Killer Historical Mysteries and was an Agatha Award finalist in 2015 in the best mystery short story category. In 2023 she won the Lea Wait Award for “excellence and achievement” from the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance. She was the Malice Domestic Guest of Honor in 2014. She is currently working on creating new editions of her backlist titles. Her website is www.KathyLynnEmerson.com.