Today, I welcome Karen Heenan to my blog for an interview! While you're here, check out her book!
A Wider World (The Tudor Court, Book II)
By Karen Heenan
Memories are all he has…now they could save his life.
Returning to England after almost five years in exile, Robin Lewis is arrested and charged with heresy by the dying Queen Mary. As he is escorted to the Tower of London, Robin spins a tale for his captor, revisiting his life under three Tudor monarchs and wondering how he will be judged—not just by the queen, but by the God he stopped serving long ago.
When every moment counts, will his stories last long enough for him to be saved by Mary's heir, the young Queen Elizabeth?
Returning to England after almost five years in exile, Robin Lewis is arrested and charged with heresy by the dying Queen Mary. As he is escorted to the Tower of London, Robin spins a tale for his captor, revisiting his life under three Tudor monarchs and wondering how he will be judged—not just by the queen, but by the God he stopped serving long ago.
When every moment counts, will his stories last long enough for him to be saved by Mary's heir, the young Queen Elizabeth?
Grab a copy HERE!
INTERVIEW
Writing Interview questions.
Why did you choose to write your book in this era?
A Wider World is the second book in my Tudor Court series, so I didn’t have much choice. Robin Lewis, the main character, was a secondary character in Songbird, my first book. When I finished that, I thought I was done with the 16th century, but he spoke up – with the same line that now begins the book – and I had to listen.
Why I started in this era goes much further back – my mom let me stay up and watch The Six Wives of Henry VIII with her when I was just 6 or 7, and the time period and the history and personalities got their hooks into me young, and I never got over it. I’ve been a historical fiction reader ever since.
Did you find researching this era particularly difficult? What was the hardest thing to find out, and did you come across anything particularly surprising?
After 40-plus years of interest, it surprises me that there are always new books to acquire and new facts to be absorbed, but there always are. The hardest things are the bits that give good historical fiction its depth – the minute details of daily life, the clothing, the food, how to get from place to place. Historical events are well-documented, but people didn’t always write down the interesting everyday details.
The hardest thing to deal with was all the travel that takes place during the book. Trying to figure out how long it would take to go from Yorkshire to London, on horseback, in a rainy November, was difficult. And then knowing that it was a journey on a deadline, with stopping places, changes of horse, etc. –that gave me a headache. The same goes for crossing the channel (size of boat, season, weather). Everything travel-related was weather-dependent.
Can you share something about the book that isn’t covered in the blurb?
Robin’s journey to the Tower takes place over a week in November, 1558. His captor is the son of an old acquaintance from his days at the court of Henry VIII, and Robin regales him with stories of fifty years of service to the crown in an attempt to slow their journey and remind his captor of his humanity.
If you had to describe your protagonist(s), in three words, what would those three words be and why?
Prickly, intelligent, ambitious.
Robin’s intelligence and ambition define him. Coming from nothing, he knows that the only way he can rise in a world of influence and connections is by sheer hard work and knowing the right people. His prickliness is his weak point. He’s just not good with people, and he doesn’t have the skills to be superficially social. Thankfully, he acquires a few close companions who can cover for his lapses and look out for him.
What was the most challenging part about writing your book?
The dual timeline tripped me up more than a few times. While there are still headers on the “present” portion of the book – Robin’s journey to the Tower is very time-specific – originally every chapter had its own heading so I could keep track of the chronology. I cut those headings in the final draft because the “past” chapters are the stories that Robin tells to his captor and I wanted them to flow like stories, without the specificity of time/location.
The other challenging aspect was Robin himself. He’s not the most sympathetic character, and quite a few readers have told me that they had difficulty warming to him. I find that hard to believe, but then I created him, so of course I find him fascinating, even when I too want to beat him about the head for being his own worst enemy.
Robin’s sexuality was another aspect, which I’ll cover in the next question.
Was there anything that you edited out of this book that would have drastically affected the story, should it be left in?
It wasn’t so much edited out as re-thought. Robin is bisexual, which I didn’t known until I began writing and he informed me. But he’s aromantic, too – he doesn’t want to have much to do with people in general, not on a close, personal level. When someone does reach him, their gender is not a factor in his attraction.
I wanted to explore this a bit more – attitudes toward homosexuality in Tudor England were pretty draconian, if you got caught – but I couldn’t make Robin be someone he wasn’t. His sexuality wasn’t a major part of his personality, so I couldn’t give him relationships or adventures just because I wanted to see what happened next, and I couldn’t find a way to include the hilariously named Buggery Act of 1533 into the book at all.
What are you currently working on?
I’m currently working on a story set during the Great Depression of the 1930s, which is the book I started after Songbird, and which got derailed by A Wider World and its sequel, Lady, in Waiting. It’s the story of two very different sisters, and a child who means everything to both of them.
I’m discovering that it’s actually easier for me to maneuver in the distant past than in a time so close to my own. The location of the book is not all that far from where I live, but because of Covid, the historical society and research library which I would otherwise be able to visit is still closed. I have a very long list of questions and things to look up if/when it opens again.
What would you tell an aspiring author who had some doubts about their writing abilities?
We all doubt, and we do it anyway. I reach the same point in every book and doubt that it’s every going to be finished, much less readable, and then I remember that it always happens.
The best advice I have is to be as kind to your own efforts as you would be to a good friend who shows you their writing. Understand that your first draft is very unlikely to look anything like the bright, shiny idea that started you off – and that’s okay. Your best work will almost always be done in revision, once you’ve gone through writing that first draft and really understand what the book is about, and what it needs to make it better.
As an only child, Karen Heenan learned early that boredom was the enemy. Shortly after she discovered perpetual motion, and has rarely been seen holding still since.
She lives in Lansdowne, PA, just outside Philadelphia, where she grows much of her own food and makes her own clothes. She is accompanied on her quest for self-sufficiency by a very patient husband and an ever-changing number of cats.
One constant: she is always writing her next book.
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