Exclusive interview with author Kate Emerson and a review of her new novel of love and intrigue at the Tudor court
Rating: Three Stars
Reviewed by Gabrielle Pantera
“I’ve wanted to use Will Compton and Lady Anne Stafford in a novel since 1978, when I was first learning how to write fiction,” says At the King’s Pleasure author Kate Emerson. “That time around, they were secondary characters in a picaresque novel whose protagonist was a serving maid at the court of Henry VIII. It wasn’t very good and it never sold, but the characters of Will and Lady Anne stayed with me all these years until the opportunity arose to tell their story.”
That Emerson is writing about aristocrats who played a part in history, yet weren’t central to the action grants an intriguing insight into the Tudors. At the King’s Pleasure is Emerson’s forty-fifth book to be published in print and her fourth historical novel for her current publisher Gallery Books. Emerson’s series can be read in any order.
In At the King’s Pleasure, Lady Anne Stafford is a lady in waiting to Queen Catherine of Aragon. Anne is married to George, Lord Hastings, who she claims to love, but she’s physically attracted to William Compton. With court intrigue all around her, can Anne keep from doing something very foolish?
Emerson says that one character in the story, Madge Geddings, demanded more of a voice. “The Duke of Buckingham’s mistress, who started out as a very minor character, became more and more important to the story as it developed and even ended up with a couple of scenes written in her point of view.”
Emerson says she uses a similar approach to research all her historical novels. “I read as many biographies as I can find of people who were around at the time the novel is set, along with general histories and social histories of the period. Since At the King’s Pleasure includes a number of hunting scenes, I also did considerable research on hunting and hawking in the sixteenth century.”
Emerson also uses online sources. “A wonderful source of original documents is British History Online, which has Henry VIII’s Privy Purse Expenses, the Letters and Papers from his reign, and the accounts of the Revels Office, which put on masques, tournaments and other entertainments. These are broken down by year and contain all kinds of day-to-day details of life at court.”
Emerson says one of her hobbies is compiling information on real sixteenth-century women, some of whom appear as characters in her novels. “I’ve been doing this for over forty years. Everything I discover goes into the A Who’s Who of Tudor Women section of my website. Every time I start research for a new novel I find more interesting individuals to add and more details to add to existing entries.” At present there are close to 1500 entries at www.KateEmersonHistoricals.com.
Emerson has written two historical mystery series, several children’s books, and many historical and contemporary romance novels. She’s written three works of nonfiction under the name Kathy Lynn Emerson. She’s currently writing a contemporary humorous mystery series under the pseudonym Kaitlyn Dunnett. Emerson won the Agatha award for nonfiction for 2008 for How to Write Killer Historical Mysteries: The Art and Adventure of Sleuthing Through the Past.
Emerson says her next historical, The King’s Damsel, is in production for publication in August. She’s deciding who to write about in an as-yet-untitled novel that will be published in 2013.
Emerson lives in western Maine, “nowhere near the ocean”, and was born in Liberty, New York.
At the King’s Pleasure (Secrets of the Tudor Court) by Kate Emerson. Paperback: 384 pages, Publisher: Gallery Books, January 3, 2012, English, ISBN 978-1439177822
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