Last Tuesday I hosted a stop on the blog tour for the latest Enola Holmes book, Enola Holmes and the Black Barouche. In that stop I gave you my honest thoughts on the book as well as an excerpt provided by the publisher.
As part of this tour I was given the opportunity to interview Nancy Springer, author of the Enola Holmes series.
I am ecstatic! Guys! She answered my questions!
Why am I doing a separate post for this interview? Well, Tuesday’s post was already quite long, and a Q&A this FANtastic, deserves its own post.
FANtastic Interview with Nancy Springer
Q: Which did you create first, the name Enola, or the idea of Sherlock Holmes little sister?
NS: First came the idea of giving Sherlock Holmes a kid sister, and then, within a nanosecond, I knew her name. I’d been interested in the name “Enola” for years because I lived not far from a railroad town of that name along the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania. Just curious, I found out the town was named after the founder’s wife, and that backwards it spelled “alone,” and that women in Victorian times were oddly given such names.
Q: The last book in the Enola Holmes series came out eleven years ago. The Movie came out last year. My question is: How long have you been sitting on The Black Barouche waiting for a publisher to be open to publishing more Enola Stories?
NS: You guess well! I don’t remember, exactly, because I don’t keep track of when I write what, but I think I wrote Enola Holmes and the Black Barouche eight or nine years ago.
Q: Each of your Enola novels highlights a different injustice that women had to overcome in Victorian society. How much research do you typically do before you start writing?
NS: I do a ton of research, and it’s not exactly “before” I start writing; it’s all the time. It’s constant.
Q: I loved that Sherlock played a bigger role in this book. It’s a different dynamic from the previous books where Sherlock serves as more of an antagonist. Was it more fun writing The Black Barouche where Sherlock is a help to Enola, or was it more fun writing a Sherlock that Enola needed to outsmart?
NS: I have to admit that, throughout writing the Enola Holmes novels, I had the most fun when Enola got to make a bit of a fool out of the famous Sherlock Holmes.
Q: Are there plans for more Enola Holmes novels?
NS: I’m working right now on another Enola Holmes novel. I don’t yet have a title for it, and who knows whether it will ever be published? There’s no way I can tell at this point whether it will be good enough.
A huge thank you to author Nancy Springer for answering my questions. I am very excited to hear that another Enola is in progress. Hopefully the publisher is smart and keeps the books coming out as long as you are willing to keep writing them.
NANCY SPRINGER is the author of the nationally bestselling Enola Holmes novels, including The Case of the Missing Marquess, which was made into the hit Netflix movie, Enola Holmes. She is the author of more than 50 other books for children and adults. She has won many awards, including two Edgar Awards, and has been published in more than thirty countries. She lives in Florida.
● Author’s Twitter: @NancySpringer
About the Book:
“A young girl who is empowered, capable, and smart…the Enola Holmes book series convey an impactful message that you can do anything if you set your mind to it, and it does so in an exciting and adventurous way.”–Millie Bobby Brown
Enola Holmes is back! Nancy Springer’s nationally bestselling series and breakout Netflix sensation returns to beguile readers young and old in Enola Holmes and the Black Barouche.
Enola Holmes is the much younger sister of her more famous brothers, Sherlock and Mycroft. But she has all the wits, skills, and sleuthing inclinations of them both. At fifteen, she’s an independent young woman–after all, her name spelled backwards reads ‘alone’–and living on her own in London. When a young professional woman, Miss Letitia Glover, shows up on Sherlock’s doorstep, desperate to learn more about the fate of her twin sister, it is Enola who steps up. It seems her sister, the former Felicity Glover, married the Earl of Dunhench and per a curt note from the Earl, has died. But Letitia Glover is convinced this isn’t the truth, that she’d know–she’d feel–if her twin had died.
The Earl’s note is suspiciously vague and the death certificate is even more dubious, signed it seems by a John H. Watson, M.D. (who denies any knowledge of such). The only way forward is for Enola to go undercover–or so Enola decides at the vehement objection of her brother. And she soon finds out that this is not the first of the Earl’s wives to die suddenly and vaguely–and that the secret to the fate of the missing Felicity is tied to a mysterious black barouche that arrived at the Earl’s home in the middle of the night. To uncover the secrets held tightly within the Earl’s hall, Enola is going to require help–from Sherlock, from the twin sister of the missing woman, and from an old friend, the young Viscount Tewkesbury, Marquess of Basilwether!
Enola Holmes returns in her first adventure since the hit Netflix movie brought her back on the national bestseller lists, introducing a new generation to this beloved character and series.
● Link to pre-order/order links: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250822963
C. O. Bonham 