History Author Spotlight

Today's History Author Spotlight guest is Karen Heenan.

Tell us about yourself

I’m a writer with a passion for the past. Historical fiction has been my go-to reading since I was little, and I’ve written nearly as long. Though it took me literal decades to show my work, and still longer to publish. I just turned 58, and my first book came out in November, 2019. I started with a small press butt realized pretty quickly that I like being in control of all the moving parts, so I got my rights back in the fall of 2021 and have since reformatted and republished my first two books myself. I have every intention of staying an indie author.

In non-writing related information, I’m married to a good and patient man who knows more about Tudor England than he ever expected, and we live just outside Philadelphia with an 18-year-old cat named Harriet. I would like to get her a friend, but she says no.

I like to sew, garden, and cook, and like to think I could be self-sufficient if I had to, but you can’t grow coffee in Pennsylvania, and I don’t have the space for a vineyard. So I’d be without fuel, and that would be a problem.

Tell us about your books

I’ve been obsessed with Tudor England since I was a kid, and the third book in my Tudor Court series will be published on Valentine’s Day. The books aren’t about kings and queens (there’s enough of that out there), but instead about the everyday people in the vicinity of those in power, and how their placement in that world affects them. While the books are technically a series, they are linked standalones, with a different main character in each book (though they all appear in each other’s stories)

Songbird (book 1) was about a female minstrel, sold to the king as a child, and her life growing up in the court (that one’s based on fact, if you can believe it).

A Wider World (book 2) is about an orphan-made-good, who started life as a royal chorister, was sent to Oxford as a reward for services rendered, and returns to work with Thomas Cromwell during the dissolution of the monasteries. He’s Protestant now, but was raised in a Catholic monastery, so… conflict.

Lady, in Waiting (book 3) continues on directly from A Wider World. A young woman, raised in France during her family’s exile, contracts an unconventional marriage to bring them home. She ends up as lady-in-waiting to the queen, while she and her husband are still trying to figure out how to be married.

What projects are you currently working on?

For my next book, I’m stepping away from the 16^th century for a while. My Sister’s Child is set in Pennsylvania during the early years of the Great Depression, and explores the lengths a woman will go to in order to keep her family together. I grew up with family stories of the Great Depression and I think it’s a very underserved era in fiction.

Where can we buy your books?

My books are wide, so you can find them everywhere ebooks and paperbacks are sold! (Songbird is also in audiobook, but turning the next two books into audio is still on the list of things to do).

Books2read.com/tudorsongbird

Books2read.com/awiderworld

Books2read.com/tudorlady

Where you can find Karen Heenan:

Website: www.karenheenan.com

Twitter: www.twitter.com/karen_heenan

Instagram: www.instagram.com/karen.heenan

Facebook: www.facebook.com/karenheenanwriter