Guest Post: Steampunk Holmes Interactive Story Project by Richard Monson-Haefel

Ms. Mycroft Holmes: Brilliant, Deadly, And Beautiful

Steampunk Holmes is a new series of books, produced by my entertainment company, Noble Beast. The series places Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Watson, and other 19^th Century characters in an alternative Victorian universe where society has been pushed into the information age 100 years early. In this world steam power burns clean, machines made of brass and iron run everything, chivalry is alive and well, and women run the country.

In the first book in the series, Steampunk Holmes: Legacy of the Nautilus, we meet Ms. Mycroft Holmes, the brilliant, deadly and beautiful sister of Sherlock Holmes.  Mycroft runs the British Secret Service leading an army of spies and commandos in a war to secure the future of Queen Victoria’s Empire.  Her brother Sherlock, the consulting detective, and his biographer, the bionic Doctor Watson, are unofficial agents of Mycroft’s who help unravel the mystery behind the theft of the most advanced weapon in history, the Nautilus submarine.  But that mystery is only the beginning of a seven book series that pits Mycroft, Sherlock, and the ruggedly handsome, Doctor Watson, against a nefarious plot of unworldly proportions.

How did Mycroft come to be?  It starts with Wonder Woman. Growing up I was probably one of the few boys who openly read Wonder Women comics and loved them. Yes, I had a crush on Wonder Woman but more than that I believed that female superheroes are as powerful and interesting as their male counterparts.  Wonder Woman was sexy but outrageously strong, sophisticated but also dangerous. In my 30’s my wife and I discovered “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” on television – it was the first season premier and it became a weekly tradition to turn off the phone and watch the series as it aired new episodes for seven seasons running.  Buffy can do no wrong. 

The last and most important influence are my three boys (ages 4, 6 and 10) and my eight-year-old daughter, Olivia. Olivia is a self professed girly-girl who dreams of one day “helping people put on make up and rescuing animals.”  My wife and I support her all the way and in every way possible we show her, and her brothers, a world filled with real world heroines like Ada Lovelace, Frida Kahlo, Amelia Earhart, and Laura Ingles Wilder.  When she is older I want her to discover Mycroft Holmes and know that her father played a part in the creation of that character.

When I decided to create the Steampunk Holmes book series, I knew that I needed to have a heroine. I owed that to Wonder Woman, Buffy, and my daughter. No universe of my making would be complete unless women commanded an equal role in both building and tearing apart society. Any other world just wouldn’t make sense to me. 

At first I thought about making Sherlock Holmes a woman, but that seemed too cliché. What about Watson? Well, Watson is an important character but he isn’t the intellectual equal of Sherlock and I didn’t want my heroine playing second fiddle to the Great Consulting Detective.  It had to be Moriarty, the archenemies of Sherlock Holmes, or Sherlock’s sibling, Mycroft: the only person Sherlock Holmes ever admitted was smarter than himself.  So I made Mycroft a Woman. In the original stories by Doyle, Mycroft-the-brother was considered to be critical to the security of the British Empire.  I made Mycroft-the-Sister the head of the Victorian British Secret Service.  The original Mycroft was Sherlock’s intellectual equal. So is the Sister.  Finally, the original Mycroft was strong and resourceful but also a bit reluctant to dirty his hands unless absolutely necessary. The Sister-Mycroft is a woman of poise and beauty who loves to dress up, turn heads, and finds physical labor distasteful. She is also deadly and armed.  A new heroine is born! 

The last thing I needed was to breath life into the Mycroft Holmes and the other characters. To do this right the author had to be a Woman. Not any Woman, but a women with a strong sense of self.  A Women who is secure in her femininity and strong enough to hold her own in world dominated by men.  Enter P.C. Martin the author of Steampunk Holmes: Legacy of the Nautilus and its sequels. 

P.C. grew up traveling the world with her parents and speaks four languages including English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese.  She happens to be very pretty and extremely metropolitan living in the “Paris of South America”, Buenos Aries, Argentina.  Although I set the stage for Steampunk Holmes, P.C. populated it with a world so real and characters so rounded that you’ll find yourself living in it.

P.C. and I want the whole world to discover Ms. Mycroft Holmes, Mr. Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson, and to share in their adventures over the course of seven books.  To make that possible we’ve started a fund raising project on Kickstarter.com, which will allow us to publish the first book and set a foundation for an entire series.  The money we raise on Kickstarter.com will help us establish an infrastructure that can be Leveraged over and over across all seven books.

We want as many people to have access to the stories as possible, so we are publishing each one in multiple formats including: eBooks, audiobooks, interactive Web books, enhanced iPad books, and illustrated paper books.  Our motto is “leave no reader behind”, especially young women.  

If you believe in the intrinsic power of women, then take a look at our project.  If you believe that women should be portrayed as strong, intelligent agents of their own destiny, then than this project is for you.  If you believe in Ms. Mycroft Holmes, then you can make her come alive by supporting this project on kickstarter.com.  We need your help to meet our funding goal so that we can bring Mycroft Holmes to the world for the benefit of little girls, young women, as well as the boys and men that surround them.

Kickstarter Campaign  | Website | Podcast | Press Release | Smashwords |