Newspaper reporter Diana Spaulding is stuck on a train in the middle of a three-day blizzard.

It is, of course, her editor’s fault.

If Horatio Foxe were not so intent on publishing scandal in the Independent Intelligencer, she would not be stranded in “the great white hurricane of 1888.” The journalist also would not be following the mysterious writer Damon Bathory to Bangor, Maine, if the cigar-chomping Foxe were more interested in journalism than he was in besting his rival New York newspapers.

If only her editor would let the reporter pursue genuine stories like Nellie Bly’s expose on conditions in mental institutions, her work could make a difference. She would be willing to risk her life for a story like that. Instead, she is pursuing a possible killer who writes horror stories while the “Storm of the Century” rages outside the stranded railroad car.

Diana Spaulding is the latest creation of mystery writer Kathy Lynn Emerson. “Deadlier than the Pen” (Pemberly Press, $23.95) is the first of four books that will highlight the journalistic adventures of the young widow who supports herself as a reporter in New York when newspaper rivalry was fierce.

The Wilton author will launch the series at 2 p.m. Thursday at a book signing and lecture at the Bangor Public Library. She also will appear on a panel with her fellow mystery writers Julia Spencer-Fleming and Lea Wait at 6 p.m. Thursday at Fogler Library at the University of Maine.

Best known for her “Face Down” series featuring Elizabethan sleuth Lady Susanna Appleton, Emerson expands her literary reach forward in time from the 16th to the 19th century in her new mystery.

“I wanted to contrast what I was doing in the

Face Down series – following a character over many years – with a different time frame,” Emerson said last week in a phone interview. “All the Diana books take place in 1888 with a few weeks or months in between each book.”

Emerson peppers her plot with real events like the blizzard of 1888. The storm struck without warning on March 12 and paralyzed the East Coast from Chesapeake Bay to Boston. Telegraph service was out for two days. Twenty- to 30-foot high drifts immobilized trains full of passengers, stranding thousands, just like Diana Spaulding and her fellow travelers are stuck on the tracks in rural Connecticut.

The author, known for her meticulous research, picked that year for a very practical reason, she said. Several books were published in 1998, on the centennial of the blizzard that crippled the northeast and strands her heroine on a train with a killer.

Emerson also was familiar with the work of 19th century female reporters, having written a juvenile biography on Bly early in her career. The availability of 1888 editions of the New York Times and the Whig and Courier, a Bangor newspaper, on microfiche made her research easier, she said.

Emerson also was able to access the family tree of her husband, Sanford Emerson, as a historical resource.

The two were married in the Bates College chapel two weeks after graduation in 1969. His grandfather was Dr. Merritt Emerson, a physician who practiced in Bangor from 1919 until a year before his death at age 95 in 1982. The author remembers talking with the doctor about how medicine was practiced early in his career just 20 years after Diana Spaulding’s fateful train ride to Bangor.

Emerson also borrowed a few attributes from Bangor’s No. 1 celebrity. She admitted to “blatantly stealing” the wrought-iron gates from in front of Stephen King’s home on West Broadway and transporting them back in time nearly 120 years – to stand in front of Damon Bathory’s house.

The working title of what became the first Diana Spaulding mystery was referred to as “Nellie Bly Meets Stephen King” for a while, she said.

Emerson based her heroine on a real journalist, but it wasn’t Bly. Credited with being the first female investigative journalist, she was called a “stunt girl” for pretending to be mad to write about the appalling treatment of the insane.

Elizabeth Bisland, like Emerson’s heroine, wrote reviews for Cosmopolitan magazine. In 1890, when Bly set off on her trip around the world intent on beating Jules Verne’s fictional “record” of 80 days, Bisland set out in the opposite direction, to race Bly around the world. Both women made the trip in less than 80 days.

Emerson said that she has given Spaulding as much freedom as the social mores of the times would allow.

“As a widow, she has a lot more freedom than she would as a single woman,” said the writer. “And, she is a bit more respectable. That gives her the freedom to stay in a hotel by herself and travel alone. Things were not as prudish here in the United States as they were in Victorian London, but it was still a long way from the freedom women had in the latter 20th century.”

Emerson admitted that she does make her heroines more independent than the average woman most likely would have been during the time periods in which the books are set.

“They have to be the sort of women capable of solving mysteries and interesting to modern-day women,” she said. “I like to stay right on edge of how someone in that time would behave, but I believe that both Susanna and Diana are based on the way real people did behave.”

Emerson writes in the mornings, then spends her afternoons doing research, exercising and taking care of the nitty-gritty things that are part of the writing life – scheduling personal appearances, selling short stories or sending out her occasional newsletter to fans. The author also attends two or three national conferences a year, where she networks with other mystery writers. It is, she admits, a sedentary life.

“I write. I read. I research,” Emerson has said. “If there is any single theme running through my work, it concerns the dangers of jumping to conclusions about people. My protagonists frequently must learn to be more open-minded and fight unintentional prejudices they discover within themselves.”

“Fatal as a Fallen Woman,” the second in the Diana Spaulding series, is scheduled to be published in the fall of 2005. The next Susanna Appleton book, “Face Down Below the Banqueting House” is due out next spring.

For more information on Emerson’s books, visit her Web site at www.kathylynnemerson.com.

Excerpt from “Deadlier than the Pen”

Diana sent him a shy smile as she toyed with the last bite of the chocolate trifle she’d ordered for dessert. She found it easy to imagine sharing a lifetime of meals with him and never being bored.

Abruptly, Bathory pushed his chair away from the table and stood. “Shall we return to our suite?”

She readily agreed, although she did feel a bit nervous about being alone with him.

“You’re favoring that ankle,” he remarked as they left the dining room.

“It’s a little tender.”

“Let me take a look at it,” he insisted when they reached the small sitting room between their bedrooms. Diana obediently sank into one of the chairs.

He went down on one knee on the floor in front of her and lifted her foot until it rested atop the other knee. With a tender touch, he began to remove her boot – she’d refused the offer of dainty evening slippers to go with the gown. He took his time over the buttons.

She could always go back to asking questions, Diana thought a bit desperately. Conduct that interview. Had he not promised to cater to her every wish while they were in New Haven?

Then he swept away her stocking and touched her bare ankle and she felt the shock of that contact all the way to her womb.

All afternoon, all through their meal, he’d made her feel things she’d not experienced for a very long time.

Sorcerer, she thought. Demon.

Upcoming appearances

. March 18, 2 p.m., Bangor Public Library

. March 18, 6 p.m., Fogler Library, University of Maine

. March 24, 1:30 p.m., Waterville Public Library

. June 26, 2 p.m., Jesup Memorial Library, Bar Harbor