Nancy Springer's Blog: Last Seen Wandering Vaguely - Posts Tagged "conan-doyle"

You want to know the truth? When I get a brilliant book idea, write it as if my head were on fire, and send in what I think is a masterpiece, usually it won’t sell. In this way I’ve written books about a pregnant man, about the gillygaloo bird laying cubical eggs and weeping itself into a puddle of self pity, about feral cats in search of Tyger tyger burning bright, and angels with angle-wings (type of butterfly), and a swamp Sasquatch, and twins separated by faerie, and – and many more; can you understand why I don’t want to remember them all?

I mention this lest anyone be disappointed with the rather uninspired way the Enola Holmes books came about.

They started out being business as usual. For a decade I’d worked closely with a savvy editor at Penguin, starting with I AM MORDRED and I AM MORGAN LE FAY, after which I suggested the Rowan Hood series – five books, five years. But it was barely finished when my editor phoned me and said, approximately, “Nancy, what I want you to do for me next is a series set in darkest London at the time of Jack the Ripper. Children’s lit is getting darker and darker. I’d have you do Jack the Ripper only somebody else already is.”

Whaaaat? I’d never been to England, let alone London, I’d never written straight historical fiction, I felt no fondness for Jack the Ripper, and I had to remind myself seriously that this editor had guided me well so far.

Because of that, I knew I ought to give the idea some thought.

So I thought: as a child, I’d read my family’s King Arthur book to shreds; hence I AM MORDRED and I AM MORGAN LE FAY. I’d read the Robin Hood book to tatters; hence Rowan Hood. Now, had I compulsively read anything set in Victorian London?

Well, I had all but memorized my mother’s complete set of Sherlock Holmes.

Huh.

Still doubtful, I checked dates; was Jack the Ripper contemporary with Sherlock Holmes? Yes, I had a handle on the right era. So, regarding possible book premises, feminist that I am I thought: how about “daughter of Sherlock Holmes?”

But I didn’t think it more than a nanosecond before shaking my head. Sherlock Holmes, veritable Victorian monk of a bachelor, with a daughter, or any child? Inconceivable.

Okay, maybe "little sister of Sherlock Holmes?

A fiction premise began to form. I counted backwards and decided on the year of Enola’s birth. By now she was Enola, a name with which I’d been familiar for all the years I’d lived in Pennsylvania. There was a railroad town called Enola along the Susquehanna River, named after the founder’s mother. Curious about the moniker, I’d discovered that backwards it spelled “alone.” The Victorians sometimes gave their girls strangely melancholy names such as Perdita (“lost”) and Dolores (“sad”). Oscar Wilde’s sister was names Isola, “the isolated one.” Go figure.

I’ve always been a loner, so Enola began to take shape in my heart and mind as an extension of myself. Her provenance pointed toward a mystery series, and I’d won a couple of Edgar awards seemingly by mistake, so I decided to give mystery a try. But not murder mystery. This was supposed to be a children’s series, and anyway I had always preferred stories about missing persons.

I dove into research. Blast my mother for giving away her Annotated Sherlock Holmes books to someone else; those suckers are expensive. But I managed to find a first volume, which was all I needed, el cheapo. It affirmed what I had always thought: Conan Doyle's chronology is so messed up I couldn't do it any further harm. THE ANNOTATED SHERLOCK HOLMES blessedly included a map of London in the 1880s. I internalized the map by drawing and labeling it. After that, I researched every which way, but I especially needed visual reference. John Thomson’s VICTORIAN LONDON STREET LIFE IN HISTORIC PHOTOGRAPHS proved invaluable. So did coloring books from Dover Publications, whether dissecting Victorian houses (I had to be careful; these were different in England than in America), Victorian costume, Victorian hotels or Victorian flowers. Also, I sent away for videos of Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes, and I learned how to use the VCR player so I could watch them over and over, pausing to take notes on details of setting.

Before I could possibly finish all the research I needed, I had to write the first volume of the Enola Holmes series. I was very, very nervous about sending it in, even though I’d found out so much of London was destroyed during World War II that nobody would know I was fudging it. I was relieved that my editor liked the book, but I was joking when I suggested calling it The Case of the Missing Marquess, shades of Perry Mason. Duh. Never lock yourself into alliterative titles. Also, after the first book, the editor expected a code or cipher in each one. Ouch! Like Enola, I didn’t like ciphers, but I learned to.

So I was hobbled in ways, making the books parlous difficult to write. Each had three plots: Enola finding her mother, Enola finding a missing person, and Enola fooling her brothers. And I’m not a plotter; I’m a character-driven writer! I soooo did not write the Enola Holmes books as if my head were on fire. Usually, writing them felt more as if my head were being used to break rocks.

Writing volume two before the first one was published, I strove for that Darkest London setting, as I was originally directed. That’s why THE CASE OF THE LEFT-HANDED LADY is grimmer than the others. But by the time I got to volume three, THE CASE OF THE BIZARRE BOUQUETS, sales had boosted my confidence and Enola had taken over. Completely. She wanted to dress up. She no longer cared about Darkest London and she no longer cared that she was supposed to be for children. Vocabulary restrictions be hanged! Onward and upward, Excelsior!

Considering all the research I had done, I wanted to write maybe twenty Enola Holmes books, but she disagreed. She wanted character arc and resolution, not the usual slow death of most series. Necessarily I listened to her, and each of the books got better than the last. My only regret is that I didn’t find out until too late that Florence Nightingale owned seventy-six white Persian cats. (THE CASE OF THE CRYPTIC CRINOLINE.) What feline fun Enola and I could have had with them!

I love Enola; how can I not love Enola? In many ways she is a fictional incarnation of me. Yet I can’t help feeling irony: here am I, capital-F feminist, standing on the shoulders of a misogynist, namely Conan Doyle? Annoying. Even more annoying: One of my critics has been unkind enough to suggest that authors shouldn’t ride on the coattails of existing works, but should write their own stories, dammit.

Well, I did, dammit. And I still do. And some of them actually get published and do well. Nevertheless, I remain most gratified and truly honoured to have made the acquaintance of Enola Holmes.