In this exclusive interview, Thomas A Burns gives readers an inside look into his newest and most ambitious project yet – Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson: Ten Steps from Baker Street: A New Collection of Untold Stories. This collection features never-before-seen tales that explore the depths of the iconic duo’s adventures in London during the Victorian era. Drawing from a deep well of research, Burns has created a modern extension to Doyle’s original stories that is sure to delight fans old and new alike. Read on for more details about this exciting release!
Tell us about your book? Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson: Ten Steps from Baker Street is a collection of new, canonical tales of the Great Detective and his biographer and companion. If you have come to love these two as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle intended them to be, reading my stories will take you back to the first time you discovered them.
Many books about Holmes and Watson are published each month—the reading public simply cannot get enough of them. However, unlike many, my stories realistically portray Holmes’s life and times as well as his great intelligence, his facility for deductive reasoning, and his noble principles and character. In short, my book showcases Holmes and Watson as heroes, not as the awkward, flawed personalities that have become so common in modern portrayals of them.
The book contains ten stories arranged chronologically, beginning with Holmes’s arrival in London as a green investigator, and running up to the turn of the new century just before his retirement. I have tried to show the depth as well as the breadth of the Great Detective’s career, as well as the innovative forensic methods he pioneered. Click to Purchase on AMAZON
Did your environment or upbringing play a major role in your writing and did you use it to your advantage? As a child, my mom always read to me and encouraged me to read as soon as I was able. I remember discovering Holmes and Watson through picture books and comic books, then I graduated to Sir Arthur’s stories in grade school. The Holmes canon can be somewhat daunting for an eight-year-old with its large words, complex sentences and the depiction of times and mores quite foreign to our own, but armed with a dictionary, I persevered and worked my way through the sixty-two stories. I was sad when I discovered that there were no more of Doyle’s tales to be had, but that’s when I discovered the writings about the writings, that is, the wealth of Sherlockian commentary, criticism and pastiches produced by the detective’s legion of fans. I was happy to join their ranks. I also fell in love with the movies starring Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes and the loveable Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson. Even though most of these were contemporary and had Holmes and Watson riding in motorcars and fighting Nazis, they were still the characters I had come to know and love. Click to Purchase on AMAZON
How would you describe your writing style? My writing style is whatever it needs to be for the piece I am writing. For the Holmes stories, I have done my best to mimic Conan Doyle’s style, which is quite different from the contemporary voice I employ in my Natalie McMasters Mysteries. I have also written a H.P. Lovecraft pastiche, The Legacy of the Unborn, that employs multiple voices for its dual protagonists—a verbose Lovecraftian style for a mature, educated physician as wells as a 1930s cinematic voice for a brassy girl reporter.
Are you more of a character artist or a plot-driven writer? I am a dedicated pantser—that is, I begin a story with only a hazy idea of the plot and the denouement and make it all up as I write. I must have a deep understanding of my characters to write this way, for it is they who tell me what comes next, and what constitutes a fitting ending to a tale.
What do you hope to accomplish with your book other than selling it? I want to give joy to those who crave more stories about Holmes and Watson as they remember them, not how some opportunistic and exploitive panderers choose to present them today. I want to demonstrate that the classic characters need no updates or modifications—they are cultural icons about whom many more interesting and satisfying tales are just waiting to be told.
About the Author – Thomas A Burns
Thomas A. Burns, Jr. is the author of the Natalie McMasters Mysteries. He was born and grew up in New Jersey, attended Xavier High School in Manhattan, earned B.S degrees in Zoology and Microbiology at Michigan State University and a M.S. in Microbiology at North Carolina State University. He currently resides in Wendell, North Carolina. As a kid, Tom started reading mysteries with the Hardy Boys, Ken Holt and Rick Brant, and graduated to the classic stories by authors such as A. Conan Doyle, Dorothy Sayers, John Dickson Carr, Erle Stanley Gardner and Rex Stout, to name a few. Tom has written fiction as a hobby all of his life, starting with Man from U.N.C.L.E. stories in marble-backed copybooks in grade school. He built a career as technical, science and medical writer and editor for nearly thirty years in industry and government. Now that he’s truly on his own as a novelist, he’s excited to publish his own mystery series, as well as to contribute stories about his second most favorite detective to the MX anthology of New Sherlock Holmes Stories.
How can our readers get in touch with you?
The 3M Detective Agency website
Nattie’s Readers Facebook Group
Where can our readers purchase your book?
Ten Steps from Baker Street is available at:
Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson: Ten Steps from Baker Street
