I receive a reasonable amount of fanmail, but only once in a while do I get a letter as challenging as this one. In those cases, I motivate myself to answer by writing a blog at the same time: So here we go! Q is the letter and A is dear me.

Dear Mrs Springer, I love the Enola Holmes series. I also like the first book of the Rowan Hood series (couldn't get my hands on the rest). I read it after Enola Holmes, though, and it made me wonder,

Q: since Rowan pretends to be a boy, when you came up with the idea of a girl not disguising herself as a boy?

A: Enola Holmes herself, with my fullest approval, came up with the idea as she was planning her escape. She knew that, because runaway girls traditionally cut their hair and dressed as boys, and also because she had been in the habit of wearing knickerbockers, her brothers Sherlock and Mycroft would almost certainly search for a “male” runaway. Therefore she would outwit them by being female, and she conceived the rather brilliant idea of dressing as a widow concealed head to toe in black, thereby adding years to her age.

Q: It's a wonderful idea, very novel and interesting,

(A: Thank you!)

and I haven't been able to find any other books working with the same premise. How do you write clues in?

A: I was just about to squall that I don’t, I don’t, I never plant clues, when I realized that I do. Writing the Enola Holmes stories, I included clues such as the bizarre bouquet, things that Sherlock would overlook but Enola would figure out. I did an unspeakable amount of research to understand the feminine subculture of late Victorian England and its subversive means of communications. The languages of fans, of flowers, of postage stamps, of sealing wax, calling cards and on and on.... But unlike many mystery writers, I do not stick in “red herrings,” ever, and I do not work out the whole plot beforehand. Mostly, I let the characters react. (Red herrings, by the way, were smoked fish dragged on the ground to lay a strong trail to lead the hounds astray, thus ruining the fox hunt.)

Q: Do you write the story first, with the characters not knowing what's happening, or do you write what really happened first?

A: Neither of the above. When I start to write, I don’t know what’s going on, or perhaps I have only the faintest inkling more than the characters do. I know, for instance, that Enola must rescue Mrs. Tupper or Dr. Watson or whoever my chosen victim is, but I don’t know how she will do it. She will show me.
However, it is critically important that I must have a fully conceived opening scene with the right tone and tension to get the book rolling.

Q. How do you come up with new codes and secrets? How do you find old ones?

A: Aaak, the codes, the codes, the codes! How foolish of me to include secret code in the first book when, like Enola, I didn’t particularly enjoy codes! I should have known that my editors would want codes in every book thereafter!
I was fortunate to acquire a lightweight, straightforward book, Codes, Ciphers and Secret Writing by Martin Gardner from Dover Publications, which helped me a great deal. Beyond that, I combined standard codes with the language of flowers to form Enola’s very own codes.
As for secrets, such as how to conceal a dagger in a corset, that was a matter of research, research and more research, plus imagination. (A poison-tipped parasol?)

Q: When did you first decide to write a book? Why do you write?

A: Age 22 was when I began to write my first book. After graduating from college, age 21, I had time and all the boredom in the world, but it took me a year to get through a lack of self-confidence, a mental blockade saying that I had no authority, no right, just the damn nerve thinking I could be a novelist. Keep in mind that, back when I was raised, girls were not expected to do exceptional things, and I had never in my life met an author. I thought they were all came from England and were anointed by the queen or something.
Why do I write? Because if I didn’t, I would probably need to be institutionalized.

Q: Did you ever have any other plans for your career?

A: All through college I played guitar and bluegrass fiddle, sang in coffeehouses and dreamed of being a folk music star. I love traditional ballads. But folk music was just a blip, an anomaly, in popular music history, and my dreams vanished when trends changed. Still, I hope you can hear music in my prose.

Q: How long do your books take you? Are you faster now than you used to be?

A: I’ve never kept track of my time spent writing lest I get discouraged. The first book took uncounted years and innumerable drafts. But after some experience I was routinely writing one fantasy novel and one children’s book per year in order to support my family, my horse and one-third of my mother. In 1995, I think it was, five different books of mine were published! I was writing so much I was competing against myself. But now, years later, I would no longer be able to do that; age has slowed me down. I used to write a minimum of six pages a day, but now five or six paragraphs will wear me out.

Q: How do you pick one idea to write out of all the ones you come up with? How much research do you do for your books? Do your ideas pop in your head fully formed, or are they based on news articles and other random stuff? (Or do you even know?)

A: I’ll tell you a secret: most of my book ideas are insanely bad, and I’m not very good at choosing among them. I’ve written at least as many unpublishable books as I have published ones – books about a pregnant man, an angel with butterfly wings, a feral cat’s quest for Tyger Tyger Burning Bright, a bird that laid cubical eggs and cried constantly in self-pity, and many more I’ve mercifully forgotten. Some of my best ideas have come as requests from editors. Some others, thank goodness, are my own. But there’s no way anything ever pops into my head fully formed, and news articles aren’t much help. I avoid research when I can. Random stuff from friends, conversations, and wacky things I’ve observed are much more likely to make their way into my fiction, and y’know, I don’t really know, y’know?

Q: Do you ever get tired of answering the same questions over and over again?

A: Yup. But luckily, yours are not exactly the same questions.

B: What was your favorite thing to do as a kid?

A: First I think singing, then reading, then being outside exploring all the way from the swamp to the hilltop, but all boiled together I think it comes down to learning and living in an oddly passive but intense way. Everything was extraordinarily important and deeply felt to me. I pretended I had a camera behind my eyes documenting for all time everything I saw.

Q: Why do you write for kids?

A: When I write for kids, I’m writing for everybody. An adult is not a child who died; an adult should be a child who lived and who has the good sense to continue to read kids’ books. I don’t have the patience to write merely for adults who have become too sophisticated for me.

Q: What kinds of things (besides writing) do you like to do now?

A: Horseback riding, fishing (catch and release), crafts, good conversations, telling subversive jokes, singing (but never karaoke) volunteering, being the one who’s willing to take in a stray cat or five or seven.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: A contemporary fantasy/mystery about a crotchety old woman haunted by the spirit of an abused child; she must discover the kid’s story in order to bring about justice and peace.

Q: Thank you very much for your time.

A: You’re welcome!