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.

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!”.

Review of RADIX OMNIUM MALUM

"Anyone who wants to spend time with the uncanny and horrific will find this volume contains gems"

Pauline Morgan has reviewed RADIX OMNIUM MALUM & OTHER INCURSIONS for both the SFCrowsnest website and the Birmingham SF Group's newsletter. With Pauline's permission, I happily repost the review.

Anyone who has heard of Mike Chinn will probably be familiar with either his steampunk versions of Sherlock Holmes or his Damian Paladin stories. Since the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle are now out of copyright, there have been a number of stories and novels (of varying degrees of competence) using this character. Mike Chinn’s rank in the higher echelons of the sub-genre but there is a danger of them being lost. Damian Paladin has, so far, two collections devoted to his exploits which are well worth hunting down. Mike, though, has written and had published a wide range of other stories, some of which are included in this new volume. From a man who keeps guinea pigs they are often surprisingly dark.

Devising ways to end the world, or at least human domination of it, is a favourite pastime of horror writers. ‘Radix Omnium Malus’ (loosely translates as ‘The Root of Evil’) is reminiscent of Brian Lumley’s ‘Fruiting Bodies’ but here the malicious growth has been magically invoked and is out of hand and is consuming everything. In ‘Blood of Eden’ instead of an indestructible plant it is Dracula threatening world domination using corporate means. ‘Cheechee’s Out’ is the start of an alien invasion, with Cthulhu-type creatures taking over men in high positions. Inevitably, there will be collateral damage.

Monsters of several varieties occur within a number of these stories. The trick is doing something new with them. In ‘Sons of the Dragon’ the road builders in Romania encounter vampire worms and ‘Considering the Dead’ relates the history of Cthulhu, but the biggest monsters are human. ‘Kittens’ begins as an urban myth, this time the story of kittens being dumped in a glass recycling bin and morphs into serial killer nastiness.  In ‘Only the Lonely’ the monster is a female sexual predator. Instead of being a warning for young girls it is the middle-aged man that needs to beware.

One of the causes of people believing they have had supernatural encounters is anxiety. ‘Two Weeks From Saturday’ is one of those stories that anyone who has been reluctantly included in an event will understand. For Cliff it is the impossibility of writing a decent story for the writers’ meeting run by his boss’s son that creates nightmares. Grief, too, is an emotion that can affect the mind. ‘The Streets Of Crazy Cities’ demonstrates an extreme reaction that Martyn has after the death of wife, child and several other people that he knows. It is a story that initially misleads and shows the skill of the author in its construction.

These and the others stories in this volume challenge the reader. They meld folklore and myth into, mostly, modern settings. There is one historical story there, ‘Suffer A Witch’ which demonstrates petty human jealousy and the danger of drawing conclusions. Like the characters it is unwise to assume that you have all the knowledge needed to understand the situation. In ‘The Pygmalion Conjuration’ both Dennis, who finds a conjuration to bring to life photographs of desirable women for sex, and Miss Grant, the librarian who pointed him towards the relevant book, find to their cost that they have missing information.

Folklore doesn’t have to have an ancient pedigree. The urban myth behind ‘The Owl That Calls’ has a more recent genesis, but even these may have some reality behind them as Tomas Ullerden discovers when expecting to debunk the sighting of a Mothman on Bodmin Moor. While many myths have their roots in a pagan or superstitious past, the coming of the steam age has imbued trains with a degree of mysticism, often involving death. Two train stories are included here. ‘Rescheduled’ sees Graeme having to go home to fetch the office keys and having distinct problems with trains, while in ‘The Mercy Seat’ Jim catches up with two friends from his youth. The memories revolve around the railway bridge by the station and the trains that run over it

Some of the stories in this volume need to be read more than once to find the subtleties in the story telling, but for anyone who wants to spend time with the uncanny and horrific they will find this volume contains gems.

That Was The Year That Was

A new year, and inevitably thoughts turn to what’s going to happen over the forthcoming months, as well as back at what was achieved in 2017.

I had two books out – treading on each others’ heels, it felt like – quite early on. Radix Omnium Malum & Other Incursions was a collection of horror tales from Parallel Universe Publications, while Damian Paladin – my 1930s, New York based occult detective and monster hunter – reappeared on the scene in the collection (or portmanteau novel, if you prefer), Walkers in Shadow, courtesy of Pro Se Productions. Paladin also made his presence felt in issue two of Occult Detective Quarterly in “The Black Tarot”; which was a backdoor way of introducing a new masked character to my fictional universe: the eponymous Black Tarot. Expect to see more of him in the future.

On the short story scene I had a Sherlock Holmes tale, “The Adventure of the Haunted Room”, published in the The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories Part VII: Eliminate the Impossible, and a science fiction short, “More Than Meets” in Nebula Rift vol.4 #11.

The middle of the year saw me drifting further into the world of Pulp fiction when I wrote a digest novel, The Griffon: Renaissance, for Pro Se. An updating (and well ahead of Doctor Who, a sex change) of the Arch Whitehouse character into a modern, shared universe, it involves plenty of intrigue, air battles and fire fights (all with technology just a shade more advanced than our own – well, it is Pulp adventure stuff). Great fun to write and, I hope, to read, when it’s published.

And for 2018? The above novel, fingers crossed, along with two more from Pro Se. There’s a post Civil War Western, Revenge is a Cold Pistol and if all goes well, a revised and expanded reprint of the first Paladin book, The Paladin Mandates. There are a couple more short stories due to see print – one SF, one Lovecraftian – and partway through a new Paladin story I realised that the experimental US submarine and crew I’d created would definitely be back in a later adventure, maybe even spun off into their own series. The Paladin universe expands apace. I also have a Holmes novella to finish – one set in the same Steampunk universe as Vallis Timoris – and a Fantasy novella to rewrite and update (which already got put back last year, so I need to focus), tentatively entitled Warriors of the Endless.

I’m sure that won’t be the end of it: life takes odd, unpredictable turns (this time last year, if you’d said I’d be writing a Griffon adventure, I’d have patted you on the head and advised taking more water with it). But for now, it’ll do.

Happy New Year.

VALLIS TIMORIS Reviewed

Pauline Morgan has recently reviewed VALLIS TIMORIS for the Birmingham SF Group's newsletter, and she has very kindly allowed me to reproduce it here.

VALLIS TIMORIS by Mike Chinn and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Fringeworks, Kindle edition £3.86, £11.99 paperback, 289 pages.

ISBN: 978-1-909573-24-6

Copyright is a tricky minefield to navigate. Different countries interpret it differently. Once an author dies, there is a period of time before their works become out of copyright. It means that the publications can be reprinted without any royalties paid or permission required from the estate. It also means that characters created by the out-of-copyright author become available for further adventures involving them to be penned. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is out of copyright and his most celebrated character, Sherlock Holmes, is in the public domain. As a result, the BBC have created a modern version of Holmes which worked brilliantly.

Adrian Middleton has taken advantage of the situation by creating a series of books under the general heading of the Moriarty Paradigm. The brief for his authors includes using the original Doyle text and not only adding to improve the flow for a modern reader but to place the story in a parallel universe. The basis for this treatment by Mike Chinn is THE VALLEY OF FEAR.

The first thing to note is that this alternative Holmes is set against a steampunk background with a network of aerostats (dirigibles) across the world. Man has also reached the moon. Otherwise, it sticks very closely to the original concept for the first two sections of the book.

In both VALLIS TIMORIS and THE VALLEY OF FEAR, Holmes receives a mysterious letter from one Porlock. This is a coded warning which actually arrives too late since Holmes and Watson are shortly summoned to investigate the death of John Douglas of Birlstone Manor House. In both books, this investigation takes up the first part of the book. Chinn, however, deviates from the original script by adding a race across the English countryside between a train and an aerostat.

The next section in both is an account of how Douglas made the enemies who pursued his from America to his English retreat in order to seek revenge for a perceived betrayal. While Doyle’s account is set in a god-forsaken corner of America, Chinn has transposed the action to the moon. Same story, different place. Doyle finished his short novel with an epilogue. Chinn takes that and folds inside it an expedition by Holmes to the moon to seek the missing pieces of the puzzle.

The question is not whether this book is well written – it is – but whether it enhances the body of work that already surrounds Doyle and Holmes. The steampunk development works well and since the movement has its roots in Victorian technology it is entirely possible to envisage Holmes and Watson inhabiting this universe. For those who are not intimately familiar with Doyle’s stories, then his version is enjoyable. The purists may wonder why, since almost the whole of Doyle’s text has been incorporated into this volume. I have yet to be convinced that this is a worthwhile approach. Having said that, I did enjoy Mike Chinn’s additions.