Baker Street Irregulars discussion

A few months ago, I was asked to contribute a short story to MX Publishing's next volume of new Sherlockian fiction. The volume (Volume XII) is over 450 pages, short stories based on the "other cases" mentioned in the Canon. The release date is 11/29 and proceeds go to support a former home of Conan Doyle, now a school for disabled children

The cases had to be based on a reference to a case, and set in the years 1894-1902. Mine - Another Case of Identity - opens at the time of Queen Victoria's death, and is taken from Holmes' reference in The Priory School to the Abergavenny trial and the Ferrers documents. Here's a link: https://www.amazon.com/Book-New-Sherl...

I am bringing the one up again because I was able to go through 4 of these anthologies lately and liked them a lot. Some of them have more than short stories - essays, poems, plays, etc - and of course some stories are going to be better than others. The ones I liked best had a theme - one was stories that started out as supernatural, another was a Christmas anthology.Biggest negative I would say is the price. The profits go to a couple charities, one of them to support Conan Doyle's former home which is now a school, but still might be more than a lot of average buyers can afford. But maybe you can nag your library to get copies.

Just saw that this publisher will be putting out their 25th (!!) volume of these anthologies later this month. Looks like they are putting out two a year - I didn't realize there were so many. Certainly an ambitious project.

I posted a Goodreads review of the latest of these anthologies from MX Publishing - number XXX - More Christmas Adventures (they put out a Christmas themed anthology a few years ago.) Overall, I'm really enjoying the ones I can get my hands on and think that there are quite a few writers out there who do a good job of turning out an authentic sounding "new adventures."

go online amazon and you will find a lot of sherlock holmes new books

Yes there are a lot of books, both anthologies and full novels. I'm finding that I like the idea of a novel more than I'm liking many of the novels, and finding more authentic sounding prose in the short stories.
Over the past year I put up reviews of a. couple novels - I thought the Eliza Doolittle one and the one called "The Spider's Web" did a pretty good job of getting Conan Doyle's "voice" down, which is something I look for in pastiches.

the house of silk by anthony horowitz ihave read a dozen times...he writes just as good or better than doyle...

I've heard good things about that but personally, I can't deal with another Moriarty. The point of the "voice" being a distinguishing factor is key. As I've been reading (and reviewing) more Holmes pastiches, that's a really important marker between good and eh.

I agree that the "voice" is important. For me, that's what makes a pastiche and not just a good detective story starring a guy named Sherlock Holmes. It seems to me that the point is to have a reader think it sounds just as if it were written by Conan Doyle.
I also prefer stories that keep within the Holmes time frame, the 1880s to the first decades of the 1900s.

like the house of silk

As a writer working on his third Holmes pastiche, I agree that voice is all-important, (though my second book has a different narrator than Watson) and for that reason I generally avoid reading most other pastiches, because I need to keep Watson's voice pure in my ear. I make an exception for Nicholas Meyer and Lyndsay Faye.

Thinking of making a list of my favorite pastiche writers because a couple of them that I think are the best are ones that don't usually make other lists - and some of the more famous ones don't really jell for me - John Dickson Carr and Adrian Conan Doyle for example.

you were correct holmes said the most inticing woman he ever new killed her 3 children for the insurance THE SIGN OF FOUR

My latest short story, "A Touch of the Dramatic" appears in Part XXXIX of the MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories. It's a tragi-comic sequel to "Charles Augustus Milverton."

It was a great story J! Now one of my favorite pastiches.

I have a story in the latest MX volume (I think it's 43 ( keep messing up on the Roman numerals) - anyway, it's called "The Case of Warburton's Madness", about an old army colleague of Watson's who commits an act of public violence, apparently in an episode of what we now call PTSD.

Barbara wrote: "I agree that the "voice" is important. For me, that's what makes a pastiche and not just a good detective story starring a guy named Sherlock Holmes. It seems to me that the point is to have a read..."
Absolutely. SH out of time is not SH to me - keep the London particular in the frame !

I also struggle with Holmes taken out of his sphere - it's one thing for him to talk about where he was during the Great Hiatus, but another for him to be running all around the globe. I also struggle with stories that are more than a few years into the 20th century.

The next volumes from MX will be out at the end of November. This time, the hook was to bring back a character from a previous story, so mine is "The Romance of Reginald Musgrave," a sort of Cinderella-esque encounter that incorporates an introduction to a distant cousin of Holmes (on the Vernet side.)