We’ve ended up in a lot of discussions about classic authors of the supernatural recently. Which is nice. And we do love them, dear listener. Here at greydogtales we especially like to dig out (no, NOT dig up) some of the lesser known ghost and weird story writers. However, we often can’t find our own articles on these folk, due to the appalling lack of proper indexing and tagging on the site.
So here’s a reminder of what we’ve said about some of these fascinating authors. We hope that you might be tempted by some, if you don’t already know them, and enjoy the styles, peculiarities and occasional bizarrities of the past…
(Oh, yeah – we owe everyone some lurcher and longdog stuff, but during August we spend more time walking and running them than writing about those little donkeys. They will return soon.)
Key writers covered in the articles linked below, in alphabetical order:
Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Sir Andrew Caldecott
F Marion Crawford
Amelia B Edwards
Mary E Wilkins Freeman
Katharine Fullerton Gerould
E and H Heron
Jerome K Jerome
Bessie Kyffin-Taylor
Sheridan Le Fanu
E Nesbit
Mrs. Oliphant
Ella M Scrymsour
E G Swain
Everil Worrell
That covers a few Victorians and other oldies from our vaults. As for the third bit…
The Shy Violet
“Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.”
Mark Twain
Viola Odorata by Fritz Geller-Grimm – Own work
If you want violet water, which was splashed over many a classic complexion, we suggest that you:
Fill a large jar with sweet violet flowers
Boil a pint of water, let it come off the boil and tip it in the jar
Cover the jar
Wait a couple of hours and filter the flowers out to leave the infusion
Add a large cup of gin, cider vinegar or similar preserving spirits
Bottle it
Voila, violet water! Good for the skin, apparently, and possibly for children in the early stages of the falling sickness – but we wouldn’t put money on that.
Sweet violets are also edible – but African violets and others variants may not be. Be careful out there!
The Vaults
Here are the links, with those key authors in bold.
The longdogs are flattened by the heat, as is your crumbling host, and walking them at the moment is like dragging bricks on a piece of string. So, O best beloveds, we make a quick and chaotic rush to the front line in the middle of much industry. Cathulhu, a feline RPG and fiction anthology campaign that’s over in around twenty four hours, in case you fancy it; a full review ofLavie Tidhar’sThe Bookman, which is only eighteen months late, and hasty home news. Cutting edge!
The hasty home news: Old greydog is at the final stages of completing his novel The Assassin’s Coin, about which more some other time, but it is due out from IFD Publishing in October. The ODQ Presents anthology of longer supernatural fiction has gone for formatting (preparing the galleys for a last proofing and so on), and should be out in August from Ulthar Press. A second expanded edition of greydog’s A Persistence of Geraniums collection is also coming in the Autumn, and the anthology Hell’s Empire is due November or December 2018. It’s a bit of a busy time.
Firstly, we wanted to mention Cathulhu: Tails of Valor and Terror – a collection of adventures for the Cathulhu Role Playing Game, with a companion short story collection of Cat horror stories, both from Golden Goblin Press.
‘From The Cats of Ulthar to those owned by Delapore in The Rats in the Walls, cats have held a special place of honor in the heart of H.P. Lovecraft. They are deeply embedded into the lore of the Cthulhu Mythos. We hope you’ll join us on our journey into the world of Cathulhu, cats battling mythos horrors. Cathulhu – Velvet Paws on Cthulhu’s Trail is a horror role playing game by Sixtystone Press, an offshoot of the Call of Cthulhu RPG where the players portray cats investigating the Cthulhu Mythos.’
This Kickstarter ends at teatime, by British clocks, on Sunday 29th July, so you have only a day or so to check it out – there’s loads more information on the writers and the scenarios on the campaign page below. It looks fun.
Meanwhile, in the fantasy and steampunk world, one of our intrepid reviewers, Matt Willis, kindly picked up something which kept slipping through our gnarled fingers. Other reviews have varied from describing the book as a wonderfully vivid alternate history of a Britain ruled by giant lizards to finding the plot over-packed and occasionally confusing. Let’s see what Matt made of it…
The Bookman, Lavie Tidhar
Angry Robot, 2016 (reissue)
Review by Matt Willis
“When his beloved is killed in a terrorist atrocity committed by the sinister Bookman, young poet Orphan becomes enmeshed in a web of secrets and lies. His quest to uncover the truth takes him from the hidden catacombs of a London on the brink of revolution, through pirate-infested seas, to the mysterious island that may hold the secret to the origin, not only of the shadowy Bookman, but of Orphan himself…”
This is the first in Lavie Tidhar’s Bookman Histories trilogy, originally published in 2010 but reissued by Angry Robot a couple of years ago. If you like your steampunk tropes coming at you thick and fast, you won’t go far wrong with The Bookman. Whether or not it’s technically steampunk is open to question, but the aesthetic is slap-bang in that territory – ‘Babbage Machines’ abound, alongside sophisticated automata, ‘baruch-landau’ steam cars, space guns and Edwardian Martian probes. A seedy London demi-monde gives way to fantastical Verne-esque landscapes.
The richness of the world is seen no less in its cast, where real historical figures rub shoulders with minor and major characters from dozens of novels, plays and poems – in some cases leading to the bizarre situation of authors interacting with characters they created. Not to mention the fact that some of those figures with familiar names appear in a distinctly unfamiliar form… Characters created by Conan Doyle mix with those from Thomas Hughes and the paranoid fantasies of David Icke, and they with real life actors, writers, astronomers-Royal, celebrity recipe-book creators and body-snatchers, in a world where pods of whales swim in the Thames and the ruling class is distinctly scaly.
All in all, the worldbuilding of The Bookman is a glorious mishmash, a gothic cathedral of a book drawing its influences from as many quarters as possible and wearing them proudly for all to see. I feel as though I failed to pick up half of the references, and as a student of English and American literature and a long-time fan of SF, weird fiction and historical fiction, I feel that is saying something. Not that you need to be completely familiar with everything from Wells to Wilde to follow the book, far from it, but the dramatic scenery will undoubtedly give an extra reward to those whose reading tastes are prolific and catholic.
This is no prose ‘League of Extraordinary Gentlemen’, mind you. While The Bookman is undoubtedly an adventure, and a rollicking one at that, it’s a bit more than the stitched together carcass of 19th century scientific romances and animated with a galvanic charge. The narrative is nuanced and has plenty to say about the nature of the differences between us, between man and machine, of authority and security, myth and reality. It is unashamedly postmodernist (I mean that in the proper sense of the word, not in the conspiracy-fantasist, Jordan Peterson sense) but it does not lack heart.
Although it’s perhaps in that heart that The Bookman finds its one aspect that lacks nuance – Orphan, the central character. This is not necessarily a shortcoming – he is something of an Everyman onto which readers can impose themselves, and indeed, an absence onto which agencies in the book can impose their agendas. He has one straightforward goal, which is to recover his lost love, Lucy, and around him labyrinthine conspiracies, plots and counter-plots swirl. The narrative will constantly keep the reader guessing as to who is on whose side and if those distinctions have any real meaning. Not to mention who or what The Bookman is, and what he wants. It’s also unclear until the end not just what the broad outcome will be, but which outcome we might want to take place. Perhaps under those circumstances it’s entirely appropriate that Orphan’s greatest flaw is passivity in the face of the vast machinery driving events (or perhaps occasionally a surfeit of earnestness). A metaphor throughout the book is a game of chess, and Orphan is frequently, to his annoyance, likened to a pawn. It’s an irony that he turns out to be quite a different piece.
The reissued edition has an additional story – ‘A Murder In The Cathedral!’ – placed after the main narrative concludes, which is self-contained but takes place during the period of the book itself. The reason for presenting this episode separately becomes clear on reading it. There are moments of humour in The Bookman, and generally it stays just on the right side of taking itself too seriously, but ‘A Murder In The Cathedral!’ is far more light-hearted and satirical in tone. Here we meet a phalanx of late-19th century scribes all journeying to Paris for Le Convention du Monde, where they vie for the (Victor) Hugo awards. It’s amusing and sharp, and would have seemed very out of place in the main narrative, not to mention slowing the pace to a crawl. As it is, it’s a fine Easter Egg for the dedicated reader. The Bookman itself is a delightful read and highly recommended. I suspect, had it only included more longdogs, it could have been written especially for a greydogtales’ audience.
Do return in a few days, when The Assassin’s Coin’ will have gone to the publisher and we have a bit more time. We might even get a proper Lurchers for Beginners post done this Summer!
Deluged under projects, news and reviews, we interrupt this broadcast to mention a few weird things circling overhead at the moment – such as Maniac Gods by Rich Hawkins; a review of Ed Erdelac’sTerovolas, to mark a new release of his; a historical novel concerning William the Conqueror; a brand new horror anthology from Crystal Lake, and a sale about to start at a small press. Yes, it’s one of our Mid-Week Medleys, but on the wrong day. Huzzah!
by francois vaillancourt, from crystal lake’s ‘lost highways’ – see later below
It’s admittedly a bit of a boys bash today, author-wise, but that’s how the dice fell (only J A Ironside of the ‘Oath & Crown’ saga holds the female fort below). However, we’re going to be covering the forthcoming debut novel from Gwendolyn Kiste, The Rust Maidens, later in the summer, and work from lots of other stonking women writers. We just need to read faster.
DISEASE & DISORDER IN DEVON
And in quite a few other lovely English places as well. We interviewed the rare, nocturnal West Country author Rich Hawkins on greydogtales a while back, but he kept writing despite that experience. Rich, known for his bleak landscapes of threat, horror and infection, has a new novella out, Maniac Gods. This is his latest incursion into the realm of cosmic horror and the Weird, where gods and monsters lurk in the thin places and await the call of their disciples.
From the British Fantasy Award nominated writer of BLACK STAR BLACK SUN and THE LAST PLAGUE…
One rainy night in Penbrook, Albie Samways’ family disappeared along with the rest of the village’s population, spirited away by unknown forces. In those abandoned streets and houses he encountered hellish creatures, madness and death, ending in a confrontation with the sadistic Doctor Ridings and his cultists.
He barely made it out alive.
Five years later, he lives in a squalid bedsit, miserable and heartbroken, suffering from nightmares and visions of monstrous things. He mourns. He mourns for his daughter, Milly, most of all.
Then one day she returns. However she is not the same girl he once knew, and tells him about terrible places, thin places, where gods and monsters reside in the darkness, waiting to enter our world.
But there is worse to come. Doctor Ridings and his followers are back, and they have plans for her. Horrific plans of black magic and sacrifice.
With no other option, Albie and Milly are forced to go on the run, beginning an epic chase across the country. He is all that stands between the monsters and his little girl.’
If you think fiction is weird and scary, try real history. Last year saw the release of the first part of ‘Oath and Crown’, a two book set covering the build up to the Norman invasion of England in 1066 and the event itself, led by Guillaume the Bastard, often called William the Conqueror.
An Argument of Blood (Penmore Press 2017) set the scene for the fate of England. Now writers Matt Willis and J A Ironsideare back with the guile and bloodshed of the consequences, in their new novel entitled A Black Matter for the King. Not fantasy, but as gripping as most imagined dynastic struggles (and better than some of those, let’s be honest).
‘The ambitions of two powerful men will decide the fates of rival cultures in a single battle at Hastings that will change England, Europe, and the world in this compelling conclusion to the ‘Oath & Crown’ series on the life and battles of William the Conqueror.’
Edward M Erdelac has re-released the first collection of his popular Merkabah Rider tales, with extra material.
‘A Hasidic gunslinger tracks the renegade teacher who betrayed his mystic Jewish order of astral travelers across the demon haunted American Southwest of 1879.
‘In this acclaimed first volume, four sequential novellas and one bonus short story chronicle the weird adventures of THE MERKABAH RIDER. This new edition includes the previously uncollected tale ‘The Shomer Express’. On a midnight train crossing the desert, a corpse turns up desecrated. Someone stalking the cars has assumed its shape, and only The Rider can stop it.’
As we were talking of Ed’s work, and had Matt ‘A Black Matter for the King’ Willis with us, we had Matt review Ed’s earlier Weird West book Terovolas for greydogtales as well. Good trick, eh?
Terovolas, by Edward M Erdelac
JournalStone, 2012
“I was somewhat familiar with Ed M Erdelac through his exciting and fun John Conquer stories published in Occult Detective Quarterly. These are a combination of Blaxploitation tropes and the supernatural and thoroughly enjoyable, so I was very happy to receive a review copy of that author’s Terovolas, which throws together characters from Bram Stoker’s Dracula against a different supernatural (or is it?) antagonist in a Western setting. Here’s the blurb:
The personal papers of the enigmatic Professor Abraham Van Helsing are collected and presented for the first time by his longtime colleague and defender, Dr. John Seward. Texas, 1891 Following the defeat of Count Dracula, Abraham Van Helsing – suffering from violent recurring fantasies – checks himself into Jack Seward’s Purfleet Asylum. Once discharged, he volunteers to return the ashes and personal effects of the late Quincey P. Morris (the American adventurer who died in battle with the nefarious Count) home to the Morris family ranch in Sorefoot, Texas. Van Helsing arrives to find Quincey’s brother, Cole Morris, embroiled in an escalating land dispute with a group of neighboring Norwegian ranchers led by the enigmatic Sig Skoll. When cattle and men start turning up slaughtered, the locals suspect a wild animal, but Van Helsing thinks a preternatural culprit is afoot. Is a shapeshifter stalking the Texas plains, or are the phantasms of his previously disordered mind returning? The intrepid professor must decide soon, for the life of Skoll’s beautiful new bride may hang in the balance.
“The danger in writing this kind of novel is that it comes off as a pastiche, feeling more like a caricature of the influencing elements than fully inhabiting them. I needn’t have worried, as Terovolas transports the Dracula ‘universe’ to the American Old West with care and respect and I felt instantly immersed in the world Erdelac paints. The voice of Van Helsing, with all his self-doubt and eccentricity was utterly convincing, and the Professor was surrounded by a cast of sympathetically drawn and authentic characters that could have come straight out of any Alan Le May or Zane Grey novel. These included a stoic rancher struggling to emerge from the shadow of his father and brother (Dracula’s Quincy P Morris), a nervy newspaperman, a world-weary Tonkawa native American, a mysterious and threatening Nordic newcomer, and his even more mysterious bride, the titular Callisto Terovolas.
“The narrative style of Dracula is also transported, which is to say a variation on the traditional epistolary format wherein the narrative is composed of a series of accounts written by the protagonists. This leaves no hiding place when it comes to command of the voice of a range of characters, but I found that each of the journal entries, letters and occasional editorial notes fitted together seamlessly and kept me fully engaged with the world of the novel.
“Something is preying on local livestock, and then local people. At the same time, the arrival of Sigmund Skoll with a group of taciturn ‘Norgies’ upsets the balance of the community in Sorefoot, Texas, where Van Helsing has travelled to bring the mortal remains of Quincy Morris back to the family home. Are the two factors connected? Is the cause of the slaughter supernatural or something more concrete (if no less threatening)? Is Van Helsing’s damaged mind up to the challenge? Or is his presence making a bad situation worse?
“Without giving too much away, Erdelac adeptly keeps the reader guessing as to the nature of the threat until the final denouement, and presents that rare thing, a worthy sequel to Dracula – though Terovolas is far more than simply a follow-up to Bram Stoker’s 1987 novel. I highly recommend Terovolas to anyone who enjoys their fiction fast-paced, amid thoroughly authentic historical settings. with a dash or more of weird.”
AUTHOR-Y NOTE: Ed Erdelac’s character John Conquer returns soon in the brand new ODQ Presents anthology, coming out over summer 2018, and Matt Willis provides the opening tale for the Hell’s Empire anthology, due later this year.
…AND WEIRD RIDES IN THE WEST
Finally for books today, out on 20th July is a new anthology from Crystal Lake Publishing – Lost Highways, edited by D Alexander Ward.
‘The highways, byways and backroads of America are teeming day and night with regular folks. Moms and dads making long commutes. Teenagers headed to the beach. Bands on their way to the next gig. Truckers pulling long hauls. Families driving cross country to visit their kin.
‘But there are others, too. The desperate and the lost. The cruel and the criminal.
‘Theirs is a world of roadside honky-tonks, truck stops, motels, and the empty miles between destinations. The unseen spaces. And there are even stranger things. Places that aren’t on any map. Wayfaring terrors and haunted legends about which seasoned and road-weary travelers only whisper.
‘But those are just stories. Aren’t they? Find out for yourself as you get behind the wheel with some of today’s finest authors of the dark and horrific as they bring you these harrowing tales from the road. Tales that could only be spawned by the endless miles of America’s lost highways.’
doungjai gam & Ed Kurtz — “Crossroads of Opportunity”
Matt Hayward — “Where the Wild Winds Blow”
Joe R. Lansdale — “Not from Detroit”
Kristi DeMeester — “A Life That is Not Mine”
Robert Ford — “Mr. Hugsy”
Lisa Kröger — “Swamp Dog”
Orrin Grey — “No Exit”
Michael Bailey — “The Long White Line”
Kelli Owen — “Jim’s Meats”
Bracken MacLeod — “Back Seat”
Jess Landry — “The Heart Stops at the End of Laurel Lane”
Jonathan Janz — “Titan, Tyger”
Nick Kolakowski — “Your Pound of Flesh”
Richard Thomas — “Requital”
Damien Angelica Walters — “That Pilgrims’ Hands Do Touch”
And as we slam this together we note that there’s a sale on at Gehenna and Hinnom, from 20th to 27th July 2018, allowing you to delve into their weird fiction magazine and other publications on the cheap. Which is always good.
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 greydogJohn 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
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…
