Future Sherlockian Novels… Why Not

My mind is forever coming up with new fanfic ideas.  If I could get a dollar for every idea I ever cooked up—for any fandom—I would be a one wealthy woman.  The neat thing about being a Sherlockian is that you can make money out of your fanfic ideas, granted that either you stay out of Casebook material or that you ask the copyright holder for permission.

As for me, I plan to stay out of The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, much as I’d love to do something Holmes/Maud and make money off of it.  I’m afraid that, until 2023, any such stories will have to be confined to the world of fanfiction, unless I get very, very brave and ask the American copyright holder…

But that is presently neither here nor there.  Let’s talk about the Sherlockian book ideas that I have (and don’t expect me to churn these out like I produce AMM installments—I’m going to be up to my ears in research for… well, all of them).  All of these ideas will be called by their working titles, subject to future change.

Sherlock Holmes and the Great War

Here, we dive into the vastly unexplored potential of the experiences of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson during World War I.  Now, KCS and aragonite could probably do a much better job than I—already have done so, in fact, on FF.N: The Written Front and The Days of Our Years.  I highly recommend them.  But, someday, if I can get the time to research this thoroughly, I want to try my hand at it—I’ve already done so in short stories, and I very much want to collect those ideas into a novel.  Imagine Holmes working with Room 40 and British wartime intelligence.  Imagine Watson in the field hospitals and out on the trenches, perhaps even encountering a future beloved writer, 2^nd Lt. John R.R. Tolkien.  Imagine “His Last Bow” being Doyle’s misprint of the true facts of Holmes’s counterintelligence work.  Imagine Holmes going out to the trenches himself to find a missing friend.

The possibilities are endless.  That makes it so wonderfully appealing.  If you want to check out my WWI-era fics online:

—“The Doctor and the Storyteller”

—“Home at Last”

—“12. Helpless”

—“16. Embrace”

A Violin and a Test Tube

Sherlock Holmes’s early years, from birth to Cambridge.  His brotherly spats with Mycroft, the love of his half-French mother, his talent with the violin, his discovery of the world of chemistry, and more…  Sherlock’s childhood is neither abusive nor negligent.  He needs sunlight to grow into the hero championed by his future Boswell.

Hours Yet Till Dawn

A sequel to the above.  Sherlock’s parents die in a fire, and Sherlock knows it was deliberate.  A nineteen-year-old boy quits college to find his parents’ murderer, jump-starting his career as an independent detective.  From his very first murder case to his first case with Scotland Yard to the Jefferson Hope mystery, this novel covers the first four years of Sherlock Holmes’s career as the world’s first private consulting detective.

Collecting the Cases

A collection of previously posted and to-be-uploaded short stories by yours truly, sprucing up the one-shots on FF.N and throwing in others for a mix of angst, hurt/comfort, intensity, and good old humor.

Not a Marrying Man

There was more to Holmes’s relationship with Milverton’s housemaid Agatha than Watson ever published.  The good Doctor was protecting the one woman who ever laid a claim to the heart of the Great Detective.  …What can I say?—my romantic soul must have an outlet somewhere!  But it’s not all roses and sunshine, for in the midst of a whirlwind courtship, Sherlock Holmes stumbles across the distant remains of an empire that fractured when its kingpin died in a Swiss waterfall…

To Take Up the Pen

Watson wrote all two dozen installments of Adventures and Memoirs in the three years he thought his best friend dead.  What was going through his mind as he wrote them?  What was happening in his life as he wrote them?  And what was really going through Holmes’s mind as he read them?

An Irregular Point of View

Wiggins of the Baker Street Irregulars was a young man when “Mr. ‘Olmes” took on Professor Moriarty.  Early 1891 and onward, from the Irregulars’ most dangerous job ever in protecting the Detective and the Doctor to the 221B fire to Wiggins shadowing Holmes and Watson on the Continent.  Probably ending in Sherlock Holmes’s return in April ’94.

Breaking through the Darkness

Thanks ever so much to Mam'zelleCombeferre for pointing out what should have been obvious to me—“This could be an interesting whole story.”  This book takes “14. Blind” from AMM and turns it into a full-fledged novel.  When Sherlock Holmes suffers a bad concussion, the results are devastating.  Will the Great Detective be able to continue in his line of work when his world has been darkened forever?

Upcoming Future Posts…

—A mom’s review of the RDJ film

—A guide to my fanfiction

—Ravings on aragonite’s A Sword for the Defense series

—Some fangirling over Jeremy Brett’s Sherlock Holmes (sorry, it had to happen sooner or later :P)

…Stay tuned!