Bringing Sherlock Holmes to Life in 2012

There’s no denying it: in the past few years, Sherlock Holmes has gathered up so much momentum that he’s blasted out into orbit. Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes and Steve Moffat & Mark Gatiss’s Sherlock became cultural phenomena overnight. The Arthur Conan Doyle Estate authorized Anthony Horowitz to write a new addition to the Canon. And now, with the advent of e-book publishing, there are more Sherlockian pastiches than ever.

Plus, his adventures just won’t stop being fantastic. He fights alleged witchcraft, faces off the Queen of Fairies, remains in combat with Dracula, fires off texts on his mobile… When you get right down to it, Sherlock Holmes is a very big action hero.

But.

There’s also a pervasive idea that one must reimagine the stories to get a Sherlock Holmes fit for the modern audience. After all, we’re a culture that’s been inundated with a Hollywood mindset. Two generations have grown up with Star Wars… and Star Wars’ fast pacing. Modern novels reflect that fast-paced mindset. Allow a film or a novel to ramble… and you run a definite risk of losing your audience.

What does that mean for the Great Detective? Guy Ritchie & Co. believed it means that you have to amp up the action, lose the “stuffiness” of the insidious iconic image—in their own words, “Reinvent Sherlock Holmes.” Steve Moffat and Mark Gatiss dreamt up a Sherlock Holmes set in modern London that would be as heavily influenced by the present day as the Canon was by its own era.

I’m not saying that either idea is actually wrong. I’m not here to say that.

But.

The fact remains that neither adaptation of Sherlock Holmes sticks very closely to the source material. In fact, very few adaptations have. Furthermore, out of the many dozens of actors that have portrayed the Great Detective since the 1890s, only Peter Cushing, Jeremy Brett, and Clive Merrison have actually portrayed Sherlock Holmes in the original stories (barring the numerous versions of The Hound of the Baskervilles).

So why don’t we ever get a fresh retelling of the Canon on screen? Did Granada raise the bar too high, or do people just want to do their own thing with Holmes? And why don’t we ever get a fresh retelling of the Canon in print?

A harder question to ask, I know. But with so many details that Sir ACD, ironically, messed up—including entire plot points and devices—one would think that some brave soul would try to tackle the Canon without going so far as to alienate the stories from the original material.

Now, to be entirely fair, I do know of two people who have done so. Michael Hardwick’s The Revenge of the Hound takes place in 1902, uses the story “The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax,” and serves to settle such points as Watson’s Edwardian marriage, Holmes’s refusal of knighthood, and his retirement. Marcia Wilson, known better to those of us on FF.N as aragonite, has her own cycle of books (only the “prequel,” You Buy Bones, published thus far) centered on Lestrade, his fellow Yarders, and Watson that fills in quite a lot of blanks in the Moriarty/Great Hiatus story arc in the Canon. Best of all, these two authors are magnificently faithful to the original stories.

And that’s where yours truly is working hard to be. You’ve seen me bandy around the terms “epic” and “saga” in conjunction with my series-in-progress, Deliver Us from Evil. I’ve also billed it as historical suspense/thriller, because these books are in no way actual mysteries. It’s the influence of Hollywood rearing its head, but it’s Hollywood with a distinct twist—I’m not veering away from the source material. In fact, I’m in bed with it.

Deliver Us from Evil, Book I: Mortality starts out with the beginning of the Culverton Smith Case. We meet Victor Savage, we watch him die, we watch Holmes himself fall prey to Smith’s cunning. We get that awful conversation between Holmes and Smith from Holmes’s point-of-view. And then we find out that Smith was being backed by Moriarty.

Behold—Mortality’s tie-in to the events of “The Final Problem.” At the outset of the novel, Holmes and Watson are less than seven months away from Reichenbach. Book II will cover Reichenbach and hopefully clear up some problems with the original story. Books III and IV will go into the trials and tribulations of Holmes, Watson, and Scotland Yard during the Great Hiatus. Book V will deliver a modified “Empty House” as well as a clearing-up of the mysterious figure known as Colonel Moriarty.

In regards to what I’m doing with Deliver Us from Evil, I like to think of Sherlock Holmes himself as an antique watch. The watch needs some dusting, some polish, has some parts that don’t work and need replacing… Sherlock Holmes is like that. He just needs a little TLC to shine brighter than ever—in his original glory. No steampunk tales or 21^st century retellings need apply to make Sherlock Holmes an action hero… or antihero, as the case may be.

There’s a reason why Sherlock Holmes has endured, why millions have loved him for one hundred and twenty years. There’s nothing wrong with falling in love with Rathbone’s WWII-era Holmes, RDJ’s steampunk Holmes, Cumberbatch’s modern Holmes… but understand that you’re not falling in love with the original. Because the original awaits adventure in a sitting room that’s gaslit and protected from Victorian smog…

Because the original lives in a world that is, for the most part, always 1895. And that, dear reader, is where Sherlock Holmes’s greatest adventures will always be.

Remember, Remember the Fifth of November!

Okay, why am I, an American, referencing Guy Fawkes Night now, at the end of June?  And what does the Halloween-esque English holiday have to do with Sherlock Holmes?

Oh, my goodness, you will not believe this…  It’s tied into the chronology of the Canon.  Seriously, it is.

1887, December: The first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet, is published in Beeton’s Christmas Annual.

1888, September: The events of The Sign of the Four take place.

1889, early: John Watson and Mary Morstan are wedded.  I have no concrete evidence for this assumption, but the stories that take place in the months following the wedding (e.g. “A Scandal in Bohemia,” “The Naval Treaty,” etc.) seem to place the happy event in early 1889 rather than late 1888.  ’89, then, is the first year of Watson’s marriage.

1890, October: “The Red-headed League.”

1890, November: “The Dying Detective.”  Watson places the event “in the second year of my married life,” which would be 1890 if it is true that he and Mary were wedded in ’89 and that the marriage referred to is his first rather than his second.  (No bringing up the 3+ wives, please—I’m sure Doyle meant for Watson to have had only two.)  Also, Mrs. Hudson informs Dr. Watson that Holmes cooped himself up in his room on Wednesday, three days before she came for Watson.

Now, here’s where it gets really cool.

My reason for DYIN being during Watson's marriage to Mary is twofold: one, the story potential of Culverton Smith working with Professor Moriarty is staggering; two (and far more importantly), Holmes would not have pulled such a stunt on Watson after all the consequences of Holmes’s faking his death.  He would not have fooled Watson so a second time.

That being said, can there be a specific date for DYIN?  Well, not actually, because we're never told whether it was early, middle, or late in the month.  Still, there’s no reason why DYIN could not have taken place early in November, no matter the year, and that got me thinking.  There’s a particular British special day that occurs early in November…

I checked out a calendar for the year 1890.  It was a normal year (non-leap year) starting on a Wednesday.  November 1^st that year was a Saturday.  Are you doing the math?

Guy Fawkes Night fell on a Wednesday in 1890.

When I saw that, I could have screamed my excitement.

Culverton Smith tried to infect Sherlock Holmes on November 5^th.

This is, of course, assuming the year is right and the events took place early in the month.  But what better day could Smith choose to defeat the Great Detective than a special day on the English calendar?  Especially one associated with the words:

Remember, remember, the Fifth of November.

Culverton Smith would have ever after heard that and smiled at his victory over Sherlock Holmes, had the detective not beaten him at his own game.  (And we already know it was in his character to gloat.)  It was perfect timing!

In the end, it really is mostly conjecture with only a little bit of deduction, which naturally goes against Holmes’s grain.  But if it were so, ah! if it were but so…

It’s certainly something neat to think about.

AMM and Deliver Us From Evil

I’m not even quite sure what sparked the idea for Deliver Us From Evil.  I was fixing up my hard drive copies of Aragonite's Sword for Defense series to transfer to my PDA (reading fanfic in bed all snuggled up under the covers is just about as decadent as it gets, peeps), and the idea was born sometime during that.  I’ve fallen in love with the FINA/EMPT/Moriarty story arch—what could be more natural than to create an epic around it?

So I opened a new MS Word document and started out the list that became last Friday’s blog post.  In fact, I’m rather iffy about that list; it might turn out to be 6 books rather than 5, with a book between To Take Up the Pen and When Cometh the Dawn—just because the Hiatus storyline might be too big to fit into two books only.  But I guess I’ll figure that out once I have a more definite plot.

And that, I don’t have… yet.  Major brainstorming will come later.  Right now, I’ll just record whatever little ideas trickle in.

I am nearly 80% finished with my AMM prompts table.  Once I’m done writing, polishing, sending it off to my beta reader (the lovely teenelizabeth), doing whatever polishing she recommends (hopefully not much), signing up with Amazon, converting the book to whatever format necessary, and getting it put through the Kindle program…  Did that tire you out?  It tired me out just typing it!

Anyway, once AMM is complete and available for you wonderful, voracious readers… I am taking a breather.  I do think I will have earned it—I mean, how many writers out there fill out a 100 prompts table in four months?!  It takes most people much longer than that—and really, I couldn’t have done it myself had it not been for the motivation of getting it done, out there, and making money.  As an unemployed, as-of-yet-unpublished young adult, the idea of finally making a living for myself is highly attractive.  Let’s see if I can get somewhere to Amanda Hocking’s level.  ^_^

Nah, I don’t expect it.  But wouldn’t it be loverly?

So, back to the topic at hand: breather.  I’m telling you: I can’t wait.  I’ll just sit here and bask in the raving reviews you guys leave me (be it here, on FF.N, or even on LJ or dA, if you link me to it).

…Okay, so I won’t be doing that, per se.  I have a college writing course from the Christian Writers Guild that I’m months behind on.  I got behind last summer and never got caught up—last summer.  And it only got worse.  So, I’m going to see if I can kamikaze and get my… eep, anywhere from 10 to 20 lessons caught up.  Holy cow.  Once that’s done and I’m (please, God?) back on schedule, I’ll take Sherlock Holmes back up again.

That’s not to say I’ll be completely silent.  I’ll probably grace you with the occasional Study in Stardom update, though don’t expect them to be as regular as they once were.  A Time to Heal is, unfortunately, on indefinite hiatus due to complete lack of inspiration—I just might write a far-future tie-in just to try to rekindle my muse’s interest (and I warn you, it’ll be… a little shocking, probably).

Oh yeah, and I might finally finish my Star Wars/Grand Admiral Thrawn fic that’s gotten so much love.  I feel bad about that one—I haven’t updated since I got into the Sherlock Holmes fandom.  In September.  Do the math for yourself.  =(

So, anyway, where does Deliver Us From Evil fit into all this mess?  Well, quite simply, I’ll start on the series once I’m caught up with school.  I’ll be doing TONS of research, but I’ll start writing, anyway.  Maybe I’ll post tidbits up on FF.N as actual fics to keep your guys’ interest, and to snag new victims—I mean, readers.  =D  I think I will.  I’ve really already done so, technically, with “Unraveling the Truth”—a scene from either To Take Up the Pen or the aforementioned possible book between To Take Up the Pen and When the Dawn Cometh.

Where’d the series title come from, anyway?  …Well, y’know, I can’t quite answer that one.  Obviously, it’s from the Lord’s Prayer, but how did it get stuck in my head?  Hmm…  I’d bet anything God put it there.  Seriously, I would!

It does fit, though.  I mean, we’re talking about a hidden war the likes of which you generally don’t see without a lot of fantasy elements.  It’s not fantasy, it’s not urban fantasy, it’s not even sci-fi—it’s good, old adventure/historical (somewhat) fiction.  I would hesitate to call it mystery, because we all know who are the bad guys, and we all know where the bad guys end up.

What we don’t know, however, is what happened in-between the lines, in the background, etcetera.  That’s where I want to dig in and flesh out.  So it’s certainly much more adventure than mystery.

But it’s the story behind the mysteries (well, my own version, but hey).

Allow me to quote Aragonite, from the opening to A Sword for Defense: "And I submit to you-the fiction out there that deals with the allegedly glamorous life Sherlock Holmes led while he was avoiding Moran can be measured in hectacres. But there is not a single piece I can find that deals with those three years for Watson and Scotland Yard."

For me, it was a call to action, and now, not only am I going to be writing fiction that does deal with Watson and Scotland Yard during the Great Hiatus, but I’m also going to be dealing with the events before that!  In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that there is very little pre-FINA, non-parody fiction dealing with Moriarty, period.  There is some, but it doesn’t seem to be much.

Cue inspiration.

Aragonite’s marvelous Sword for Defense series dealt with the Hiatus on a two-front level: Watson and Scotland Yard combating Colonel Moriarty, and Holmes hiding from Colonel Moran.  KCS’s fantastic crossover with Star Trek: The Original Series, However Improbable, dealt with a surviving Professor Moriarty bent on controlling the twenty-third century.  Both stories are absolute epics.

But.

Nobody seems to have done a two-front (Holmes and Scotland Yard) epic dealing with the fight against Moriarty in the several months before FINA.  I want to see Moriarty as a running antagonist, as VALL seems to paint him.  There’s only one story comparable to this that I’ve seen thus far, and it’s Protector of the Gray Fortress’s  wonderfully-chilling, Granada-based AU Centre of the Web.  But even that is an AU of the events of FINA, and not an actual hashing-out of the months before.

Enter yours truly.

I’m rewinding the video to six months before the opening of FINA, and I’m starting the story from there.  November 1890.  Can anybody think of any significance to that setting?  Well, if Watson met Mary in 1888 and married her early the next year, DYIN (assuming that it’s Mary as his wife and not the unnamed second Mrs. Watson) falls exactly upon November 1890.  Culverton Smith.

And, being in that time period, Moriarty is involved.

In fact, included in this epic, in Book One to be exact, will be the whole “torture series”—or “Holmes-captured” arch—from AMM.  We’re going to see that captivity in greater detail—that might actually end up being a huge part of that first book.

What a way to kick off the series, eh?  Torture poor Sherlock.

The second book is currently very sketchy.  It starts with Holmes’s investigation in France and ends with a greatly enhanced version of FINA.  That’s about all I know at this point.

The other day, I was going through my AMM stories and tallying up how many would appear—in some shape or form—in Deliver Us From Evil (DUE—I don’t like DUFE).  Guess how many.  5?  10?  Maybe a dozen?

Erm, no.

Twenty.  TWENTY.

A full fifth of the collection.

And I’m not even finished yet.  There could still be more.  (Thus far, I have multiple introspects from Holmes before and after Reichenbach, and that’s only one category in all this FINA/EMPT glory.  One of the stories is actually another account of what happened at the Falls, and I love that installment to pieces.)

Okay, I’ll stop rambling now (and don’t worry, that BBC SH post is coming—just be patient).