Displacement Activity: David Marcum

Wednesday, 30 September 2020

MORE HOLMES, GARDENS, AND SINGULAR WORMS

As I mentioned in my previous post, where I mused on some of my published Sherlockian pieces, I briefly mentioned my contributions to the long-running MX series of charity anthologies which are compiled for the restoration of Undershaw – the former home of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and now a Stepping Stones school.

The first was “The Adventure of the Vanishing Man” which saw print in The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories Part V: Christmas Adventures in 2016. This has the honour of being the first canon Holmes story I ever wrote – since the Steampunk mashup Vallis Timoris certainly doesn’t count. Next came “The Adventure of the Haunted Room” in The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories Part VII: Eliminate the Impossible, 1880-1891 the following year – investigations of possibly supernatural events which always have a rational explanation. A third – “The Adventure of the Singular Worm” – will debut in The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories Part XXIII: Some More Untold Cases, 1887-1894, the middle volume in a trilogy exploring the references Watson makes to some of Holmes’s undocumented cases over the years 1877 to 1903.

If you’d like to contribute to the Kickstarter for those books, the link’s here.

Tuesday, 4 August 2020

HOLMES IS WHERE THE HEART IS

Many years ago there was an independent bookshop in Birmingham by the name of Hudsons. During its declining years they introduced a bargain basement (no doubt to get rid of odd items of stock) where all sorts of goodies could be found. One time I came across a thin coffee table edition entitled THE SHERLOCK HOLMES SCRAPBOOK (dated 1973), edited by none other than Peter Haining, with a foreword by the one and only Peter Cushing.

It was a fascinating book, filled with articles, artwork, ads – in fact any kind of Sherlockian ephemera you can imagine. And it also mentioned new Holmes fiction had continued to be published after Conan Doyle’s death in 1930. That made me sad because I quite fancied the idea of writing a Holmes pastiche, but imagined the day for such things was gone (and I wouldn’t have known where to find a possible market at the time, anyway).

Fast forward to the 21st century, and that daydream finally came true. Not only did I end up writing that Holmes pastiche, I somehow managed a mash-up novel (VALLIS TIMORIS, Fringeworks, 2015), and a couple of shorts for David Marcum’s MX series of anthologies besides (“The Adventure of the Vanishing Man”, “The Adventure of the Haunted Room”) with a third – “The Adventure of the Singular Worm” – due out later in 2020. I even sold a Professor Moriarty story, “A Function of Probability” to Maxim Jakubowski’s THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF THE ADVENTURES OF PROFESSOR MORIARTY (Skyhorse, 2016). And did I stop there? Oh no. The latest to see print is in Belanger Press’s second volume of SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE OCCULT DETECTIVES anthologies, edited by John Linwood Grant: “The Direction of Sunbeams”. Once again proving, it’s never too late.

And if I’d told that impressionable younger person as he bought that original Haining book, I wonder if he’d consider the idea “Incredible!” or “Elementary!”.

Displacement Activity

Wednesday, 30 September 2020

MORE HOLMES, GARDENS, AND SINGULAR WORMS

Tuesday, 4 August 2020

HOLMES IS WHERE THE HEART IS

2024 IN REVIEW

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