What is a Sherlock Holmes story, what is pastiche, and was Watson a secret agent of the Freemasons*? Is writing new Holmes stories restrictive or liberating, and if you add the supernatural or steam airships, should you be shot? Today we venture into our sideline of classic detective fiction (which is often very weird in its own right), and talk to author Hugh Ashton, who has been there in the trenches.
Sharp-eared listeners – assuming they are not dark elves or Vulcans – will have noticed that the old greydog John Linwood Grant writes Holmesian fiction. And he has a tendency to go for the canon (with occasional, very slight diversions). That is to say, rooting stories firmly in the timeline, settings and characterisations of Arthur Conan Doyle’s original stories.
Later this year should see the publication of greydog’s ‘The Musgrave Burden’, a substantial canonical sequel to ‘The Musgrave Ritual’ which looks at the possible interpretations and consequences of the original without ever breaking the rules. Also, ‘The Curious Case of the Two Coptic Patriarchs’, based on historical events and a mention in Conan Doyle’s ‘The Retired Colourman’ (in Beyond the Canon from Belanger Books, and the MX Book of Untold Tales respectively).
Completing these tales put us in mind of another writer, Hugh Ashton, who has also Holmesed (amongst other literary ventures) so we thought it might be interesting to chat to Hugh about the whole business. And it was, so here we go…
*No, he probably wasn’t.
AN INTERVIEW WITH HUGH ASHTON
Hugh Ashton left the UK in 1988 for Japan on a two-year contract. Twenty-eight years later he returned with a Japanese wife. While in Japan, he started writing fiction seriously (he was already writing instruction manuals and the like, which some might classify as fiction).
His alternative history book, Beneath Gray Skies, looked at a world where the American Civil War was not fought, but the Confederacy continued to exist until the 1920s, when it formed an alliance with Germany’s National Socialist German Worker’s Party. One review of this suggested that the author (described as a “flaming liberal”) be burned in effigy and pay-per-view tickets sold to help solve the US national debt.
Later titles included At the Sharpe End, a thriller set in 2008 Tokyo, and Red Wheels Turning, another alternative history book set in pre-revolutionary Russia, before he signed a deal with Inknbeans Press of California and started to produce Sherlock Holmes adventures (and many other books, including children’s stories about Sherlock Ferret and his friend Watson Mouse who battle the nefarious Moriarty Magpie) until the death of the founder of Inknbeans in December 2017 and the closure of the publisher. He is now published by j-views Publishing, having returned to live in Lichfield, Staffordshire in July 2016. He keeps no lurchers, or indeed any pets, other than a potted palm, which never needs to go walkies, and is impeccably house-trained.
greydog: Thanks for joining us, Hugh. Just as a general introduction, how did you get into writing Sherlock Holmes stories in the first place?
hugh: I was in Japan on January 2, 2012, playing Cluedo with a friend and his daughters, and someone made the remark “We all know about Sherlock Holmes’ smarter older brother, Mycroft, but what about his smarter younger sister?” So when I got home, I thought about this, and wrote ‘The Odessa Business’, basically finishing this short story in one day. I put it up on Smashwords, followed soon afterwards by ‘The Mystery of the Missing Matchbox’ (the case of Isadora Persano, the well-known duellist and journalist, who was found stark staring mad with a matchbox on the table in front of him containing a remarkable worm, said to be unknown to science).
These were well-liked, and my then publisher, Inknbeans Press, asked me to write another one, and Inknbeans would then put it out as a book of three stories. From start to publication the whole thing took less than a month – the paperback was on sale on Amazon before the end of January. I have a friend who’s published by Simon & Schuster – it takes 18 months between manuscript submission and publication. Since then I’ve written two Holmes novellas and about 30 more Holmes shorts of about 8,000 words each. They’ve been very well received.
greydog: The terminology of post-Conan Doyle Holmes stories is complex. Homage, tribute, parody, fan-fiction, pastiche and so on. Many who write the more hard-core, more canonical pieces would, we suppose, accept ‘pastiche’. Where do you stand on this?
hugh: I’ll settle for ‘pastiche’. It annoyed me when I first put out my stories, but I’ve since come to accept it. Quite a few reviews have hailed me as “today’s Arthur Conan Doyle” and said my pastiches are indistinguishable from the real thing. I beg to differ. Every time I feel I have a nice turn of phrase, I go back to the Canon, and find the Doyle work to be rather different. But I do flatter myself that I write in a style which doesn’t jar with the originals, and which is factually accurate with regard to places and real people, and the society within which Holmes operates.
greydog: Do you favour the Cerebral Holmes – ‘His shirt cuffs tell us everything’ – or the Action Holmes – ‘Quickly, your revolver, Watson’- in your own work?
hugh: I like the cerebral Holmes, but I introduce action as well. I try not to turn Holmes into a Bulldog Drummond or Richard Hannay, though – he is much more than either of these, and he has some delightful character flaws which make him so much more fun to write about than a square-jawed Boys’ Own Paper hero, even when he is fighting for his life. I like Holmes working for the government, using his skills to defeat the beastly Hun’s foul tricks, or the Fenians and Home Rule, or the Okhrana versus the anarchists in London. I have an interest in that period, as well as the Royal Navy in the early 20th century, so the Navy makes its appearance at times.
I never forget the saying that “Other detectives have cases; Sherlock Holmes has adventures”. I also attempt to slip in little quotable quotes – though I’ve not yet come up with anything as good as the curious behaviour of the dog in the night, or “that is what you may expect to see when I follow you”.
greydog: And do you find the existing canon at all restrictive for a writer?
hugh: Actually, I think that ACD left us with just enough there to add to the Canon, and more importantly, to add to the characters of both Holmes and Watson, without breaking the chain of continuity. Of course we can go off at tangents and turn them into a gay couple, or make the seven per cent solution a little stronger (it’s one of the more frequent myths about Holmes from those who haven’t read the Canon – “Wasn’t he a drug addict?”) or turn Watson into a cartoonish comic, but that’s not my approach.
Playing the Great Game (i.e., working on the assumption that Holmes and Watson actually existed and ACD was no more than Watson’s literary agent), I would claim that Watson’s Canonical adventures were intended as advertising for Holmes’ services. They therefore tend to downplay Watson’s role in the adventures, and to obfuscate some of Holmes’ methods. There is just enough hinted there to imply that the truth is a little stranger and more complex than Watson cared to put in print, and there may well be some details that are not intended for contemporary consumption. Hence the appeal of the Untolds (those stories mentioned in the Canon but never told), which allow us to get a more rounded picture of the occupants of 221b.
I expand the characters, building firmly on the foundation of the originals, listening to Jeremy Brett speak my words as I write. One of my favourite reviews of my first Holmes book came from Philip Jones, the world’s leading pastiche archivist and cataloguer. He wrote “These stories are deceptive. They look like familiar Canonical tales and yet they are more personal and, in some ways, more satisfying. The reader is taken more into the lives of Holmes and Watson than in the published tales. Both men seem more real and more interesting as people than they do in the Canonical tales. Holmes and Watson bicker and argue and are alive and human. The surrounding world also seems more `up close and personal’ than that presented in the Canon. … This is a human world and the detectives are also people.” So I am free to make my Watson a little more of a person than in the Canon and to describe the Holmes/Watson relationship a little more fully, including some squabbling and bickering, but without the absurdity of the RDJ (Robert Downey Jr)/Jude Law characters.
greydog: Given that Conan Doyle became an ardent – and sometimes credulous – spiritualist, do you think it odd for the Great Detective to conclude that the supernatural is none of his business, if it exists at all?
hugh: Definitely odd, yes. But when you read some of ACD’s other material, there is a semi-mystical element there. He did write some ghost/paranormal stories, which are not great, but there are hints of some supernatural forces in the historical romances (White Company and Sir Nigel). I suppose we can psychoanalyse ACD in Jungian terms and see Holmes as his rational animus, and the away with the fairies side as his emotional anima, but that’s just slapping labels on things, and doesn’t really explain anything, does it?
One thing I do share with Conan Doyle, by the way, is the wish that people would start to read and recognise my non-Sherlock Holmes work. I don’t necessarily want a knighthood for writing a war history, but I would like it to be known that my other work is imaginative and pretty well-written. I’ve ventured into the historical and thriller genres, like ACD, and there is a non-material (I hesitate to call it paranormal or spiritual) aspect to some of my other stories.
greydog: We quite like the idea of Holmes as Doyle’s rational animus. How far away from the canonical material is too far – steampunk, Lovecraftian, horror, Holmes in Space etc.? All have been tried, with wildly varying degree of success.
hugh: I would say that such material involves the adventures of a detective who shares the same name as Sherlock Holmes. This also applies to the BBC SHERLOCK (though I did enjoy the first two seasons, the third was silly, and I couldn’t be bothered to watch the fourth) and especially to the RDJ adventures – great steampunk action movies – and nothing to do with Sherlock Holmes. Though I confess that it would be interesting to see Holmes in contact with one of his contemporaries – I have sometimes thought of introducing him to Dorrington (the criminal detective – by which I mean he is a criminal – by Arthur Morrison). I’d also be interested to have him meet Carnacki (William Hope Hodgson).
greydog: If you were able to rewrite and re-interpret any one story in the existing canon, which would you go for? Or would that be sacrilegious?
hugh: Sacred cows make the best hamburger, don’t they? Actually, I have rewritten, to a large extent, The Red-Headed League, by telling it from the point of view of “the fourth smartest man in London”, John Clay. It formed the final episode in his autobiography, and I make it clear that Clay was never a murderer, or even a violent criminal. I also introduce Clay as a minor protagonist in other Holmes stories – after all, in the Canon, Holmes is well aware of the existence of John Clay, and of his reputation.
greydog: Which of your Holmes stories would you recommend as an introduction to your approach?
hugh: I like The Darlington Substitution – it’s a novella, and it owes a lot to The Hound of the Baskervilles in its general approach, without, I hope, being too derivative. My other longer Holmes story, The Death of Cardinal Tosca, involves quite a lot of intricate late 19th-century politics. Both books involve Holmes the thinker, as well as Holmes the man of action.
I also like “Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Hand of Glory” in The Last Notes from the Dispatch-Box of John H. Watson M.D. It takes Holmes and Watson to the Midlands, and it is a Canonical tale, though somewhat grisly and ghoulish, as of course are a couple of the Canon. I also like my second-ever adventure, “The Missing Matchbox”, in Tales from the Deed Box of John H. Watson M.D.
greydog: Finally, anything in the pipeline you’d care to share?
hugh: Since the death of my editor (who was more than just an editor and publisher, and her death hit me very hard on a personal level), I’ve been busy with the republication of my existing books, as well as helping others with their books, and I haven’t had enough time to write much. I am, however, engaged in the account of how Sherlock Holmes battled against Baron Maupertuis, and I really must resurrect my alternative history set in the Intervention in Russia post-Bolshevik Revolution. It’s been on the go on and off for about five years. I’m also getting into writing shorter pieces (less than 1,000 words), which is always an interesting exercise, and our local writing group is producing a thriller – each person producing one chapter. I have the job of killing off red herrings and stitching together the different parts.
greydog: Many thanks for joining us today. Where can readers find you?
hugh: Hugh@j-views.biz will reach me – right now I have no blog or book site, but www.j-views.biz advertises my book production services (I do my own covers and book interiors, which often get favourable mentions in reviews). I am also quite noisy on Facebook and sometimes on Twitter.
Most of these books below are available as ebook and paperback, but some are currently only in one format. Look for Hugh Ashton on Amazon. You should find me quite easily there or on Smashwords. If all else fails, order my books from your local bookstore – I don’t create my paperbacks through Amazon, so it should be possible for them to order them.
Sherlock Holmes Titles
- Tales from the Deed Box of John H. Watson M.D.
- More from the Deed Box of John H. Watson M.D.
- Secrets from the Deed Box of John H. Watson M.D.
- The Case of the Trepoff Murder
- The Bradfield Push
- The Darlington Substitution
- Notes from the Dispatch-Box of John H. Watson M.D.
- Further Notes from the Dispatch-Box of John H. Watson M.D.
- The Death of Cardinal Tosca
- The Last Notes from the Dispatch-Box of John H. Watson M.D.
- Without My Boswell
- 1894
- Some Singular Cases of Mr. Sherlock Holmes
- The Adventure of Vanaprastha
- The Lichfield Murder
General titles
- Tales of Old Japanese
- The Untime
- The Untime Revisited
- The Untime & The Untime Revisited (paperback)
- Balance of Powers
- Leo’s Luck
- Beneath Gray Skies
- Red Wheels Turning
- At the Sharpe End
- Angels Unawares
Titles for Children
- Sherlock Ferret and the Missing Necklace
- Sherlock Ferret and the Multiplying Masterpieces
- Sherlock Ferret and the Poisoned Pond
- Sherlock Ferret and the Phantom Photographer
- The Adventures of Sherlock Ferret (hard cover)
And there we must close – back as soon as possible with book-type news, a review or two, and our usual witterings on lurchers and life, probably…