Whew! Project Finished!

Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson here, breathing a sigh of relief that a post-retirement project started way back in September of 2021 is finally complete. That was when I embarked on the task of editing my Face Down series of historical mysteries in order to self-publish e-book omnibus editions that would offer not only the ten novels featuring Susanna, Lady Appleton (sixteenth-century gentlewoman, herbalist, and sleuth), but also all the short stories featuring Susanna and other characters from the books. It turned into a lot more.

For one thing, some of my writing needed more tweaking than I anticipated. I intended all along to get rid of words like ’tis (which can become annoying, even if it is accurate for the times) but I soon found many (far too many) passages that, on rereading, struck me as awkward or unnecessarily wordy or simply in need of being shifted to another location in the text. Then I kind of got into the whole revising thing. I mean, why not make the new editions as good as possible, right?

The Face Down Collection One was published as an e-book that December, with Two following in mid-January of 2022 and Three available at the end of February. There things stayed until March of last year, when I decided to make print-on-demand paperbacks available of all ten titles. This required another proofread of the text I’d published in the omnibus editions, and more tweaking, although fortunately not too much more. After my husband and I designed covers for all the books in the series, I brought out Face Down in the Marrow-Bone Pie in mid-April and launched one book a month after that until all ten were available. There was a small hitch, in that single-title e-books, the older versions, were still being offered through a handshake agreement I entered into nearly twenty years ago. It has been slow going to get them taken down, even though they were supposed to be withdrawn at once if, at any point, I asked that they be discontinued. They are gone from Amazon and Apple, but still up at Barnes and Noble and Kobo, so at present the only way to read the new versions in electronic format is still in the omnibus editions, texts that have been updated to agree with the text of the paperbacks. That’s one of the things about self-publishing that I really like. Corrections are not just possible, they’re easy to make.

But wait—there’s more! As soon as I scheduled #10, Face Down O’er the Border, it occurred to me that I ought to bring out a separate paperback with all the Face Down short stories. There are sixteen in all and they had never been collected in one volume. Lady Appleton’s World came out in February.

By then the first of the three spin-offs from the series, the Mistress Jaffrey Mysteries, was about to revert to me. I contacted the publisher to confirm that and indicated that I would be wanting rights back on the other two when their contracts expired. To my surprise and pleasure, they were willing to revert all three now. Of course, the reason is a bit painful—poor sales—but since the books weren’t selling all that well anyway, I figured I’d just as soon have control back in my own hands.

So that brings me to the title of this post. Today is the release date for the print-on-demand trade paperback of the third and last of the three spin-offs, Murder in a Cornish Alehouse, and there is a bonus. Because the spin-off publisher was really good about taking down their editions, I have been able to publish revised single-title e-book editions of all three at the same time as the paperbacks.

Whew! I can finally say “mission accomplished!” You aren’t likely to find the paperbacks on bookstore shelves, but they are easy for any bookstore (online or brick and mortar) or library to order. And should anyone want autographed copies of the complete set of thirteen novels and one collection of short stories, I just happen to have a supply on hand.

Now back to my other “revise and reissue” projects.

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.