Update on the Face Downs

Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson here, today writing as Kathy. Face Down Under the Wych Elm released a week ago, meaning the first five books in the Face Down series are now available in newly edited, print-on-demand, trade paperback editions. The other five are edited, proofread, and scheduled to come out one each month from September through January. For those of you who read my last blog, I freely admit there may be typos I missed, most of them probably inserted when I was making a change to the earlier text or correcting an older typo. The nice thing about Indy publishing is that corrections really can be made as needed, so feel free to let me know if you spot anything in any of the versions I’ve revised and reissued during the last couple of years.

So what’s next? I’m glad you asked. The original plan was to go back to turning my paranormal historical romance, Firebrand, originally written in a rush in just three months and published in the 1990s, into a more cohesive novel retitled Treacherous Visions. I’ll still do that, and publish it in both e-book and trade paperback, but it occurred me me after editing Face Down #10 (Face Down O’er the Border) that I really should do a print-on-demand trade paperback edition of the Face Down short stories. They’ve been collected before, in the three-volume e-book omnibus editions of the Face Down novels (now updated to agree with the text in the new paperbacks) but there is no single e-book or book version that contains all seventeen of them. Several of them weren’t even imagined, let alone written when Murders and other Confusions, my first short story collection, was published by Crippen & Landru.

original artwork for Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine

So, on tap after a breather is editing and proofing what will be titled Lady Appleton’s World: The Complete Short Stories. I envision a February 2025 release date.

What do I plan when all ten Face Down novels and the short stories are available? Promotion for the “collector’s set” was the initial goal. Perhaps a special offer if purchased directly from the author. I doubt I’ll be doing signings or panels, even if I have a new knee by then, but I’ll do more than usual online. Since I’m not dependent on book sales to keep a roof over my head, and there’s no publisher breathing down my neck about self-promotion, I’m free to do as much or as little as I like. Thank goodness!

I may just keep on doing what I’ve discovered I really enjoy doing—revising and reissuing backlist titles. You see, the rights for two more of my sixteenth-century mysteries are due to revert to me within the next year, and another two will follow after that. And those, like the short story collection, can be reissued in both e-book and paperback formats because there won’t be any older versions out there to confuse the issue.

And after that? I’m sure I’ll think of something. I may not be writing any new fiction, but I’m far from ready to retire completely.

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 omnibus e-book editions of her backlist titles. Her website is www.KathyLynnEmerson.com.