At the Mercy of the Mind

Sometimes, a great brain can be as much of a curse as a blessing.  And sometimes, great things come from little ideas.  Where do these two concepts unite?

In At the Mercy of the Mind.

It started when I felt the need to do some Holmes angst/torture.  Whilst in this frame of mind, I discovered the LiveJournal community “A Mere Appendix,” the sister community of the probably better-known “Watson’s Woes.”  I was thrilled (morbidly and perversely so, I guess), and copied the prompt tables (which are the same for both C2s).

Just three days later, I uploaded the first installment of a story collection I decided to call At the Mercy of the Mind (AMM)  The title came from the idea that a brilliant mind can sometimes be turned on its owner—over-imagination, vivid nightmares, inability to cope properly with emotions, etc.  I think that these ideas in association with Sherlock Holmes are really more fanon than Canon, but they’re such an entrenched part of fanon and they do make enough sense that I can’t work with his character with thinking of them.

The stories hit it off pretty well, and that got me thinking.  I had already had the idea before of writing a Sherlock Holmes book, set in World War I and dealing with Holmes’s exploits during the time.  However, that’s an idea that needs TONS of research.

Enter AMM, a rather popular collection of stories that I can write usually very quickly and easily.  I figured that I could turn AMM into a book, and people would buy it.  When I announced my intentions in an author’s note on February 25, some of my readers said that they would buy a book version.  And then my dad got involved, and very enthusiastically so.  Fired up with excitement, I actually churned out a record six installments in one day (bear in mind that these are all less than a thousand words each).

It’s decided now that once I’ve completed the book (and I’ll only be posting up half of the stories on FF.N, so that people do have to buy the book to read the rest), I’ll publish it through Amazon’s Kindle program.  Yes, it will be an e-book, and no, you don’t need a Kindle to read it—you can download a PC version of the Kindle software for free from Amazon.

I’m really very excited about this.  I can almost guarantee that the book will be available before summer, and when it is, I hope you’ll get it.  It’s a way for me to jumpstart (I hope) my career as an author, but it’s also a labor of love, all the way.  I’m alternately bouncing in my seat and crying as I work on these stories, and I hope you’ll enjoy reading them as much as I’m enjoying writing them.

Status: as of 3/7/11, 26 out of 100 complete—just over a FULL QUARTER!