Katy Cooper's debut novel, Prince of Hearts, introduces readers to a Tudor England that might have been. Fans of Tudor romances, alternate history, and particularly charming heroes will find a definite keeper here. I had the pleasure of meeting Katy Cooper at a multi-author signing, and found her to be every bit as entertaining as her wonderful novel.

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What are the best and worst things about being a writer?
The best thing is that no matter how much you learn and how much you improve, there's always more to learn, more ways to improve. The bar always rises. As someone who thrives on challenges (and keeps writing stories with funky bits just to make it a little more difficult), this is a wonderful thing. The other thing that I love about it is that it lets me use all the things I'd realized were strengths. I didn't think there was anything that would flex my interest in history, human nature, the English language and my imagination.

When did you know you were a writer?
Although I've written my whole life and have been writing seriously for six years now, it's only recently that being a writer has become part of my idea of myself, a piece of this is who I am. I've been saying it a lot lately, half-teasing, and people in the day job are turning to me more and more to proofread and help polish stuff. Which I find very cool, since English is my favorite toy.

How does writing fit into your family life and/or day job?
I'm lucky in that I can write in bursts. Once I know what I'm going to do, writing the first draft of the scene or part of a scene doesn't take that long. I can write 5-6 pages in a couple of hours. If I know what I'm going to write--that's the catch. If I don't know what I'm going to write I can sit there for five hours and write one page. I usually revise on my lunch break--I don't have to focus as intensely as when I'm writing the first shot. Actually, not being able to narrow my focus and concentrate quite so intensely makes it easier to detach from the work so I can edit it with something approaching objectivity.

I'm also lucky in that I don't have children to take care of. I'm also blessed in my husband: he's completely supportive of my writing and always has been.

Did you always know you would write historical romance, or did you experiment with other genres/forms first?
When I was younger--my teens--I wrote fantasy. Very bad, very derivative fantasy. It was so bad and so derivative that it made me quit writing, over and over again. I've since looked back at it--some parts are truly awful, but the writing's decent and the kernel of the idea has possibilities.

I didn't really write again for a long time and then, when I started again, writing romance was a conscious choice. I didn't think I knew enough about science to write science fiction, I didn't think I had enough imagination to write fantasy, I didn't think I was twisty enough to write mystery (all those red herrings). And the last thing I thought I could write was literary fiction--I couldn't be that abstruse <g>, I couldn't think up strange and startling symbols, and I knew I wasn't nearly ironic enough. But romance....Well, it's about people and relationships and emotion, three things that interest me endlessly, three things I thought I could write about with some authority.

Having made the decision to write romance, it was a no-brainer to write historicals, mainly because romance was historicals in my formative years. Contemporaries had barely made my radar. I chose the Tudor period because I already knew a great deal about it--I'd been fascinated by the period for *years.*

I will say, now that I'm writing all the time, my confidence has blossomed a bit. I have a couple of fantasy ideas on the back burner, simmering away--we'll see what happens with them...

What do you read for research, and for pleasure? Do the two overlap?
I read social history and general biographies for research. Biographies are less to teach me about a particular period than to help me understand human nature. A lot of my research at this point is to chase down particular bits of information when they're important, or to feed my imagination so I can put myself in the scene.

For pleasure, I will read anything that's well-written. I am no respecter of genres and have very little preference for types of stories, particular locales or eras, etc. Having said all that, I will admit that I tend not to read historical romances set in the Tudor period. When I do, one of two things happens: either I can't enjoy the story because the author has presented a vision of the period that I completely disagree with; or she does what I want to do so much better than I could ever do it that I'm immediately consumed with jealousy. It's a case of knowing too much...

Where do you write? Home, office, legal pad while hiding in the women's room? <g>
I write all over the place. At Au Bon Pain with a pad of paper and one of my beloved pens--fountain pens are my great vice after books; at my desk at home on my PC; in the food court in the mall; in the car with my husband. I can write anywhere. The only thing I can't do is type on a standard keyboard. I've used a wave keyboard for too long.

If you could give only one piece of advice to aspiring writers of historical romance, what would that be?
Only one, huh? Good pacing is not the same thing as rushing through your scenes. Sometimes good pacing means taking your time with a scene, letting it develop fully. The example I always use is from the first Alien movie.

Towards the end, Sigourney Weaver as Ripley is trying to get to the escape pod. However, she fears that the creature has gotten there before her. As the alarm blares and the strobe flashes, she creeps along the hallway toward the corridor leading to the pod. The scene moves with nerve-racking slowness, the tension ratcheting higher as the scene goes on.

The slowness of the action makes the scene tighter and more compelling. If the director had rushed, showing what happens snap, snap, snap, the scene wouldn't have had nearly the same impact. Faster is not necessarily better and rushing through a scene doesn't necessarily make your story more compelling.

How did you choose where to submit Prince Of Hearts?
Basically, I stared by submitted it to print publishers who took unagented, multiple submissions. There were print publishers at the time that would take unagented submissions, but they wouldn't take multiples--those guys I was saving for the last. I sold before I got to them.

What is writing for Harlequin Historicals like?
My editor is wonderful--warm and smart and very supportive. She loves what I do, which is very cool, and she gets what I'm trying to do, which is even better. She gives me a lot of space and room to do my thing, which I like. She may not always buy the result, but that's fine with me.

The thing that I like about Harlequin Historicals is, believe it or not, the book club. Royalties are lower for book club sales, but my book gets sent to people who might not otherwise pick it up. Not everyone who gets it is going to like it...but, hopefully, some people will.

And I love their covers.

Prince Of Hearts is a wonderful alternate history historical. Can you share how you built this Tudor era that wasn't?
As I said, I've been reading about the Tudors since I was very young--it's been over 25 years. When I decided to write a historical romance, I knew I had to set it in the 16th century, mainly because I wouldn't have to start from scratch. I chose the early part of the 16th century because I wasn't prepared to tackle the Elizabethans and because I was heartily sick of stories set in the latter part of Henry VIII's reign, after he'd decided to ditch Katherine of Aragon. I thought the early years of his reign, when he reveled in being the handsomest, richest prince in Christendom, were a lot of glamorous fun, so why not set a story in those years?

However, in the course of doing some refresher reading to begin building my plot, I came across something that posited that Henry's older brother, Arthur, hadn't been tubercular, that he had died of something like the flu. The fact that other people at Ludlow (where Arthur died) got sick and recovered was all it took to make my imagination start spinning. I started thinking about what would have happened if Arthur had lived. How would things have been different? And what if, as I've often thought, the problem with Henry's lack of sons lay with Henry himself (and not the Tudors in general, though that was a serious stretch)? What if Arthur had sons? What would have happened to the Reformation? I thought, No Armada, no war with Spain, no Book of Common Prayer...

So I started writing a historical set about a decade after Arthur succeeded to the throne. And I made my hero Henry VIII's younger brother, who in history died before he was two. Why not? Why not revive Edmund if I'd already revived Arthur?

The Tudor era is a big favourite of mine, and several writer friends. What might entice a reader who's not familiar with the era to try it?
The drama, the language. It was a tricky time that bridged the middle ages and the modern world, so you see bits of both. Some of the seeds of the British Empire were planted in this period-to me, one of the things that distinguishes the Tudor period from the earlier period is the growing sense that England would rise to greatness not through the conquest of land, but through mastery of the seas. Another is that the rules were changing all around people and that produced both great excitement and great anxiety.

I see from other interviews that there is a Prince Of Hearts spin-off in the works. I, personally, plan to buy multiple copies. I loved Sebastian and Beatrice, and can't wait to see their own story. Can you tell us a bit about that?
My goodness! Thank you! Yes, Sebastian and Beatrice's story is called Lord Sebastian's Wife and will be out in the fall of 2002. I certainly hope it lives up to expectations...

Anyone who's been a part of the online romance community has surely heard the complaints about the dreaded Big Misunderstanding--when the hero and heroine are parted by a misunderstanding that could be cleared up if they spent half an hour talking to one another. Usually in the Big Misunderstanding, the hero or heroine hears or sees something that calls the other's behavior or motives into question, and instead of asking the other what it means, assumes the worst.

In writing LSW, I wanted to explore how misunderstandings can happen, what it takes to work through them when they've been complicated by hurtful behavior, and what happens when fragile trust is put to the test.

Out of touchy pride, Sebastian and Beatrice failed to honor the promise they made to marry, each believing the other had been the one to betray the vow. Pride kept them from asking key questions, demanding explanations; hurt pride led them both to stupid, hurtful behavior. When the story opens, Sebastian and Beatrice learn that the promise they made when they were younger tied them to one another as tightly as if they'd married before a priest. Now they will have to face all they've avoided for the last five years; now they will have to come to terms with everything they've done to one another.

And it's not easy to do. Trust between them has been grievously damaged, to the point that neither can be completely vulnerable and open. The story is about how they reach the point where they can understand the past and build a foundation for the future.

I said earlier that there are funky bits in all my stories. In POH, it was alternate history. In LSW, it's in the way I flirt with the dreaded Big Misunderstanding. I hope that what I tried to do-to show how misunderstandings can take on a life of their own and how it sometimes takes great courage and daring to repair the rifts they cause--comes through.

What else can we expect to see from you in the future?
Right now, I'm working on another Coleville book, the story of Jasper, the eldest of the Coleville children. He hasn't made an appearance in the books yet, but he does get mentioned in each. He's several years older than his siblings and is more reserved, more contained...and lonelier. A widower, he meets a strong-minded, strong-willed widow who takes shelter with him in the middle of a fierce autumn storm. Unlike the demure maidens he meets, Elizabeth is not afraid to speak her mind, disagree with him...or desire him. Physical passion explodes between them, but Elizabeth is barren and Jasper must marry to get an heir for Wednesfield.

I also have an idea for a spin-off from that story, as well as a pair of straight fantasy novels. One is set in modern-day Massachusetts; the other is set in a world I'm in the process of building.

Covers are a hot issue in the romance (novel) industry. If you could design your ideal cover, what would that be? (People, flowers, clinch/no clinch, plain brown wrapper, cover made of Superglue, so nobody could put it down, literally?)
As a reader, I tend to buy by A) name; and B) by the recommendations of people whose taste is like mine, whether they're friends, online buddies or website reviewers. So my taste in covers tends to be away from clinches, unless the clinch gives a feel for the story, and toward some kind of representational thing. For example, I completely adored the cover of Elizabeth Grayson's So Wide The Sky. Something about that cover just evoked the wide open spaces of the West, which is where the story is set.

If I was designing the cover for Lord Sebastian's Wife, I would put an open, diamond paned window opening on a green, sunny garden in the background, with a table covered by folds of blue velvet in the foreground. On the velvet, a small chest would rest, its lid open. In front of the chest would be a heron made of diamonds and jet, and a pendant 'B' set with sapphires, darker than the velvet. All those things are important in the story. I don't know how well they would entice a reader, but that's what I would like to see.

Where would you like to see the romance industry in the next ten years of so? Could alternate history be the next big thing? Or might the Tudor era bump the Regency out of first place? Peer into the future and give us your view, if you will.
I'd like to see different locales become popular--France, Italy, Germany--and different eras as well. I have a selfish reason for that--I'd like to write and sell John and Lucia Coleville's story, but since it takes place in France and Italy, that's unlikely to happen (unless I can figure out a way around that, which I haven't been able to do). Less selfishly, as a reader, I'd like to see some variety.

I'd also like to see room for stronger secondary characters. I read a lot of mysteries, in part because there are usually a lot of interesting secondary characters. After all, you need more than one viable suspect for the crime <g>. But I think romances would be stronger for taking place in well-developed and defined communities, whether that community is the workplace, the neighborhood or high society.

As for different eras, who knows whether the Tudor era will become popular. The popularity of the movies Elizabeth and Shakespeare In Love might well translate into renewed interest in the period--but it's hard to predict.

Having said that, my own feeling is that the Victorian era is about to become very popular. It's actually an era that interests me and one that I think I could probably write (having spent some of my formative years reading Victorian literature). However, I have a lot of research to do before that <g>.

What would you like to say to people who don't consider romance novels to be real books?
I would say, Define 'real books'--what do you mean by that term? What makes romance not real, that doesn't also make mystery not real, science fiction not real, magic realism not real?

And finally, what would you say to the person you spy in the bookstore, their hand hovering over a copy of Prince Of Hearts?
I'm the world's worst self-promoter, so this is a tough one. In fact, I can't
answer it, except to say that I had fun writing it, so I hope you'll have fun reading it.

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