What Can Happen When a Writer Retires , by Kathy Lynn Emerson

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I was delighted to catch up with Kathy Lynn Emerson at this June's Maine Crime Wave. As we were chatting (and I was trying to not look like I was eating all the tiny spinach quiches, which I was) she dropped a bombshell on me. 

She was retiring! 

I'm afraid I gaped in a very inelegant way (and probably with green between my teeth.) Kathy Lynn (and Kaitlyn Dunnett and Kate Emerson) has been part of the national and New England mystery scene forever. I read Face Down in the Marrow Bone Pie as part of my home-made crime fiction education back in the late nineties, and of course her Liss MacCrimmon series, set in the wonderfully named Moosetookalook, Maine are required reading in my neck of the woods. 

Of course, as she explained to me, she had some very good reasons. And as you'll see here, it's not quite like she's resting on her laurels...

 

 A question I hear a lot these days is: Why did you decide to retire? There isn't just one answer. I'm well over the traditional retirement age of sixty-five. I have arthritis, making long hours in front of a computer painful. The publisher of the two cozy mystery series I wrote as Kaitlyn Dunnett dropped both of them during the Covid lockdown and wasn't interested in the only other suggestion I had for a new series. No other publisher was exactly beating down my door, begging for a new book by Kathy Lynn Emerson or Kaitlyn Dunnett or Kate Emerson. After having had sixty-four books traditionally published between 1984 and 2021, I wasn't interested in writing something I wasn't enthusiastic about just to make a sale, especially if acceptance would mean committing to spending more time promoting a new book than it took to write it. I exaggerate, but not by much!

 

But the real reason I decided to call it quits was that, in spite of all the extra writing time available to me during Covid, I couldn't come up with a single new story idea. I still can't. Apparently, I've already used all the ones that appeal to me, some more than once. If I were to try to write another novel, I'd end up reusing plot devices, or settings, or character types, and possibly all three. I've always believed in recycling bits and pieces of discarded writing, but not to that extent!

 

That said, my career as a writer didn't exactly end. Even before Covid, I had started work on several self-publishing projects—all material I'd already written but which had never found a commercial home, in particular my grandfather's memoirs and a collection of over 2300 mini-biographies of women who lived in England from 1485 to 1603. I'd posted the text of both The Life of a Plodder and A Who's Who of Tudor Women online for free for years, but let's face it, those files really do disappear after a while. For—well, let's call it my legacy—I wanted a more permanent format. The Who's Who has too many pages for a print edition to be feasible, but works well as an e-book. For other projects, I was able to produce both e-books and print-on-demand trade paperbacks.

 

Oh, yes. There were more. My earliest published books were written for young readers. I wrote more of those than I sold and still had the unsold manuscripts. Plus I issued new editions of the ones that were traditionally published back in the 1980s. Then I put together a collection of essays (originally posts at Maine Crime Writers) titled I KillPeople for a Living, and a collection of short stories featuring pet photographer Valentine Veilleux, the character I'd once hoped would be the sleuth in a new cozy series.

 

 

At that point, I was still calling myself semi-retired, but people were traveling again. Conferences were back on. Invitations to speak at libraries in person started to reappear. And I realized that I didn't want to do any of that anymore. It's not that I don't like people. I do. But even Zoom programs are exhausting. Worse, prep time, travel time, and the usual pre-and post-performance second-guessing myself would take time away from working on my "projects." That's when I started saying "Sorry. I'm retired."

 

By then I'd branched out into creating e-book omnibus editions of my backlist historical mystery series—three volumes of novels and stories from my Elizabethan-era Face Down series and a one-volume collection of the Diana Spaulding mysteries set in the U.S. in 1888. Next up I planned to create an e-book omnibus edition of the three historical romantic suspense novels I wrote for the Harper Monogram line of paperback originals back in the early 1990s. And that's when things took an odd turn.

 

While I made a few changes to the other books before issuing those omnibus editions (mostly getting rid of excessive use of 'tis and 'twas), they held up well. I expected the first of my romantic suspense novels, Winter Tapestry, to be the same. It didn't quite work out that way. The more I read, the more I itched to make changes. To make it better. To take it back to the mystery  novel it had started out to be all those years ago. I ended up rewriting the whole thing, including reducing the number of point-of-view characters from many to one. I might not have had any fresh ideas for new books in years, but suddenly I had plenty of ideas for making an old story better.

 

I ended up with a new novel. Sort of. It isn't considered a new book by traditional publishers, or so my agent informs me. Since they would feel bound to reveal that it had been previously published, they would lose the opportunity to have it reviewed as a new title. Therefore, no one was interested in buying it. If I hadn't already been into Indie publishing, I might have been discouraged. As it is, Death of an Intelligence Gatherer (formerly Winter Tapestry) is available now for pre-order and the release date as an e-book and trade paperback is August 9.

 

Did I mention I've also created print-on-demand editions of two of my backlist nonfiction titles? How to Write Killer Historical Mysteries is already out and The Writer's Guide to Everyday Life in Renaissance England 1485-1649 releases on July 19.

 

I may be retired, but I'm busier than ever . . . and loving every minute of it.

 

Kathy Lynn Emerson has had sixty-four books traditionally published under several names 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" as a Maine writer from the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance. She was the Malice Domestic Guest of Honor in 2014. She is currently working on creating e-book omnibus editions of her backlist titles. Her website is www.KathyLynnEmerson.com

 

They (fill in the blank) like cats and dogs

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  (Breaking news: I am at Mystery Lovers Bookstore in Oakmont tonight! Come on down!)

Anyway, when I lived in Atlanta, we had my cat Lola, and a wacky enthusiastic beagle-type pooch named McGee. They were both terrific animals, but the oh-so-snarky Lola’s take on McGee was that he did not exist. I don’t think Lola every admitted there was another animal in the house, no matter what McGee did. McGee, happily, was a dog of very little brain, so he did not have enough space to include the concept of “cat” after Jim, and food,  and how to “arooooo” and well, that’s about all he could handle. So it worked out nicely.

As the brilliant Kathy Lynn Emerson so hilariously explains, it is not always easy.

The Scottie Barked at Midnight: Of Dogs and Cats

by

Kaitlyn Dunnett (aka Kathy Lynn Emerson)

I hesitated for a long time to introduce a dog of any sort into the Liss MacCrimmon series for one simple reason—there were already two cats. Now, some cats like dogs, but I didn’t think a cat with the personality of Lumpkin, the big yellow Maine Coon Cat Liss inherited along with her house, was likely to be very accepting. He had trouble enough adjusting to Glenora, the little black kitten I added in A Wee Christmas Homicide.

By the time someone suggested I include a Scottish terrier in one of Liss’s stories, I’d already written a scene in Vampires, Bones, and Treacle Scones in which Lumpkin has a run in with Papelbon, the dog belonging to Dan’s niece, Samantha. Here’s what happened when they met:

            Lumpkin spat, hissed, and expanded to twice his normal size. Since he was a Maine Coon cat and weighed in at well over fifteen pounds on his slimmest day, he was a formidable sight. 

            The reason for his ill humor was a dog, Papelbon by name, a black and brown mutt of uncertain ancestry, although it probably included a splash of border collie. He belonged to Dan Ruskin’s brother Sam.

            In spite of the unfriendly reception, Papelbon wagged his plume of a tail and tried to touch noses with the outraged feline. Lumpkin took a swipe at Papelbon and missed. With a yip of surprise, the dog retreated behind Sam’s legs.

            “Come out from there you yellow-bellied chicken.”

            “Daddy!” Sam’s daughter Samantha, age nine, knelt beside Papelbon and flung her arms around his furry neck. “Don’t be so mean. That nasty old cat scared him.”

            Papelbon licked her face.

            Liss hid a grin as she scooped up the cat and slung him over her shoulder, thus clearing the way for Sam, Samantha, and Papelbon to enter the house “I’ll be right back,” she said as she started down the hall. “Make yourselves at home.”

            Lumpkin growled low in his throat all the way to the kitchen. Liss carried him into the connecting pantry/utility room. “Sorry, sport,” she told the cat. “You’re confined to quarters for the duration. Live with it.” She had to move fast once she put him down, but she managed to shut the door before he could get past her. The unmistakable sound of claws scoring wood made her wince but didn’t surprise her in the least.

By The Scottie Barked at Midnight, the ninth entry in the series, Lumpkin has mellowed somewhat, although he still has his share of bad habits. He has accepted the presence of a second cat and a move to a different house, but there are some things a cat just should not be expected to tolerate. Here’s a short excerpt, the scene where Lumpkin and his little buddy Glenora meet the Scottish Terrier Liss has rescued for the first time.   

            Liss unlocked her back door, scooped up the Scottie, and stepped into the kitchen. Both cats materialized out of nowhere. Lumpkin, the Maine Coon cat, caught sight of the dog first. His head shot up, as did his tail, which instantly puffed up to twice its normal size. Glenora, smaller and coal-black, went up on her hind feet, trying to get a better look at the newcomer.

            “Now, guys—play nice.”

            Moving slowly, Liss lowered the Scottish terrier to all fours. She was quivering with excitement, anxious to investigate these new and interesting creatures, one of whom was bigger than she was.

            “Lumpkin. Glenora. This is—” She broke off, momentarily stumped. She had to call the dog something. Sweetie was just too cutesy. Wee Jock was a cliché, aside from being the wrong gender. Pets belonging to past presidents had led to the overuse of Fala and Barney for Scottish terriers. Then it came to her—the perfect nickname for an animal that had narrowly escaped being run over by a car. “For now, we’re going to call this pooch Lucky,” she informed her feline housemates. “Be polite to her. She’s a guest.”      

            All high spirits and friendliness, Lucky danced up to the two cats. Glenora bristled and spat. Lumpkin’s ears went back. That was the only warning before he struck out, slashing at Lucky’s nose. The Scottie backpedaled so fast that she tumbled ass over teakettle.

            “That’s enough!” Liss grabbed for Lucky, meaning to lift her out of harm’s way, but the crisis had already passed.

            Lumpkin sat down and began to wash his nether regions. Glenora turned her back, flicked her tail, and stalked out of the room. Trailing her leash, Lucky discovered a dish containing leftover dry cat food and chowed down. Liss collapsed onto one of the kitchen chairs.

            “That went well,” she muttered.

I’d love to hear real-life stories of the 

first meetings between dogs and cats and how their owners coped while their pets adjusted to sharing. In this case, of 

course, the Scottie already has a home 

and returning her to it is what involves 

Liss in murder and mayhem.

HANK: So Reds? Do yours fight like cats and...well, you know. Do they?  Or can there be dog détente?

Kathy Lynn Emerson/Kaitlyn Dunnett is the author of over fifty books written under several names. She won the Agatha Award in 2008 for best mystery nonfiction for How to Write Killer Historical Mysteries and was an Agatha Award finalist in 2014 in the best mystery short story category for “The Blessing Witch.” Currently she writes the contemporary Liss MacCrimmon Mysteries (The Scottie Barked at Midnight) as Kaitlyn and the historical Mistress Jaffrey Mysteries as Kathy (Murder in the Merchant’s Hall). The latter series is a spin-off from her earlier “Face Down” series and is set in Elizabethan England. Her websites are www.KaitlynDunnett.com and www.KathyLynnEmerson.com