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Lurking Musings

~ Musings of a newly published writer

Lurking Musings

Tag Archives: Sherlock Holmes

[Vampire Month] Aaron Smith Interview

04 Monday Mar 2013

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Vampire Month

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Tags

000 Midnights, 100, Aaron Smith, Arthur Conan Doyle, Batman, Blood Oath, Bram Stoker, Chicago, Christopher Farnsworth, Dracula, Gene Colan, Jeremy Brett, Kim Newman, New Jersey, New York, Roger Zelazny, Sherlock Holmes, The President's Vampire, Thundarr the Barbarian, Vampire, Vampires


The first Vampire month victim for this year is Aaron Smith

Aaron Smith can’t stand to go a day without writing. He’s the author of more than twenty-five published stories in genres including mystery, horror, science fiction, and fantasy. He has written stories featuring well-known characters such as Sherlock Holmes and Allan Quatermain. His novels include Gods and Galaxies, Season of Madness, and, most recently, 100,000 Midnights.DSC00358

Information about his work can be found on his blog or his Amazon page.

1) What is the earliest memory you have of writing? What did you write about?

I seem to have always had this habit of wanting to participate in whatever fictional world I was enjoying at any particular time. When I was a kid, even a very small boy of 5 or 6, and I discovered characters that I liked, I wasn’t satisfied that a book or movie or series of stories was all there was. I had to continue the story, so I started to write my own versions of those characters. I remember being in the second grade and not paying attention to what the teacher was saying and sitting there trying to write an Indiana Jones novel. I made my own comic books, writing Batman or Spider-Man stories and drawing them. I spent hours and hours of my childhood writing fan fiction (although at the time I didn’t know it was called that) about Star Wars and Sherlock Holmes and James Bond. When I was in the Cub Scouts, which would have made me about 8 or 9 at the time, we had to do a skit in front of all the parents and I wrote a Star Trek episode for the project. Of course, I cast myself as Captain Kirk!

2) When did you decide to become a professional writer? Why did you take this step?

Looking back on it now, it seems ridiculous that it took me until about five years ago to decide to really push myself to pursue writing as a career. I started writing for my own satisfaction very early in life, but kept leaning toward other creative endeavours through my teenage years and my twenties. I tried visual art, music, acting, and had fun with all those things but none of them were quite right for me. In my late twenties, I rediscovered comics, which is a medium that I loved as a child. I tried to get work writing them and while I enjoyed it I found that it’s an industry that’s very, very difficult to break into. My getting back to prose writing was an offshoot of that, and the main reason I ended up sticking with writing and taking it more seriously is that I had a wonderful early success that encouraged me. I discovered a company called Airship 27 Productions {http://robmdavis.com/Airship27Hangar/airship27hangar.html} that published new stories (in novels and anthologies) featuring classic characters from old pulp fiction. I sent them a writing sample and they liked it and wanted me to write for them. I had just started my first story for them, about an old pulp vigilante called the Black Bat, when the editor contacted me and asked if I’d want to put the Black Bat on hold and do something for a Sherlock Holmes anthology instead. I was stunned, in the best possible way, and I said yes. Sherlock Holmes is my all-time favourite fictional character and to have a Holmes story as my first published work really was a dream come true. That book came out and had some nice reviews and sold well. After an amazing experience like that, I knew I could never turn back. Writing was what I would do for the rest of my life. That was about five years ago and I’m happy I stuck with it. Of course, it hasn’t all been as easy as that first step. Writing, for anybody, has its ups and downs. I’ve had my share of rejections, every review hasn’t been great, and some books sell better than others. Writing can have you high and happy one minute and drop you into a pit of despair the next, but it’s what I do now and I’m glad I took that step when I did.

3) What would you consider to be your greatest strength as a writer? What about your greatest weakness? How do you overcome this weakness?

I’d have to say that my greatest strength as a writer is my versatility. I love all forms of storytelling and I refuse to stick to just one genre. This has allowed me to try writing about many different things and I’m equally comfortable with most of them. I’ve written Victorian-era mysteries and modern police procedurals, science fiction, fantasy, superheroes, spy stories, World War I aviation stories, a western. And even within a genre, I like to try different styles. For example, my vampire novel 100,000 Midnights, while containing some pretty gruesome scenes, is also, I hope, a fun experience for the reader with some humour and romance in the story to balance all the blood and fear; but I’ve also written some horror that’s made me a little queasy while writing it, some brutally nasty splatterpunk-level stuff. I don’t think there’s any genre I wouldn’t be willing to try writing in if given the opportunity.

As for a weakness in my writing, a very bad habit I used to have (and hopefully have conquered) was being too verbose, going on for too long while explaining the way a character felt, or inserting too much background information all at once. I had a brutally honest editor help me with this and I’ll always be grateful for that. What I had to do to fix this habit was learn to trust my ability to get the point across efficiently, and learn to trust the intelligence of the reader and their ability to get the point without having to be hit over the head with it a dozen times! Once I let go of the insecurity of not fully trusting my skills, I could see the difference by watching the word count drop as I trimmed away excess clutter in a story. It was amazing to see how much fat could be cut away and still leave a good story in place.

4) Tell us about the place where you live. Have you ever derived any inspiration from your home or from anywhere you have visited?

I live in Ringwood, New Jersey, which is a beautiful quiet area with mountains and woods but still close enough to the major highways to not be too out of the way. It’s a perfect place for a writer to live because it’s so peaceful. I’ve lived my whole life in Passaic County, which has amazing variety. I grew up in the city of Paterson, which is very urban with both good sections and bad areas, so I learned what city life is like. Then I lived a few years in the town of Wayne, which is more suburban, then went back to the city and life in a small apartment when I got married, and then finally bought the house I live in now where it’s more a country environment. That’s the great thing about New Jersey: so many different kinds of areas so close together. Any kind of inspiration is only a short drive away. As far as being inspired by other places I’ve visited, sure. I’m close to New York City, but I dislike going there as it’s too crowded and expensive to get in and out of. As far as major U.S. cities go, I really prefer Chicago, which is big but not so congested. I’ve been inspired, in one way or another, by almost any place I’ve visited. There are always things to see and people to observe. The changes are the best thing. When I was growing up or later living in that small apartment, there was rarely a moment when I couldn’t hear people outside or car horns honking. Now it’s quiet here in the mountains and if I look out the back door there’s a good chance I’ll see a deer walking by.

5) Which book, if any, would you consider to be your greatest influence and inspiration?

51hKI8Sq6DL._SS500_I’m going to cheat on this question and name three books because each one means something different to me in a very important way and each has had an influence on my writing. The first would be The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I first found Holmes via the wonderful Jeremy Brett TV adaptations. When my grandfather heard I’d developed an interest in the great detective, he dug out his personal copy of the complete Holmes and gave it to me for Christmas. It’s a beautiful edition printed in 1938 and it’s still the copy I reach for when I want to reread those stories or do some research. Since Holmes is my favourite character of all and I’ve done some published work about him, that book obviously had an impact.

Second would be Roger Zelazny’s Creatures of Light and Darkness. That book just blew me away. I don’t think any other book has been written in quite that style. It really showed me that an author doesn’t necessarily have to follow the rules to successfully tell a great story. It was inspirational in that way, though I could never write anything similar to that since my style is too straightforward and I prefer to just tell the story rather than try literary acrobatics or mind-bending tricks.

And third, since this interview focuses quite a bit on vampires, would have to be the one great vampire classic, Dracula by Bram Stoker. None of the vampire novels since would probably have been written without Stoker’s work and the novel is still chilling today. One thing that annoys me is that there still hasn’t been a completely faithful film adaptation of the book. Don’t get me wrong; I like many of the screen Draculas, including the movies starring Christopher Lee and Bela Lugosi, but they’ve never done a proper version. The closest, I think, was the 1977 BBC version with Louis Jourdan as the count, but even that one made some major changes to the story and its characters. To anyone who hasn’t read the novel, I’d advise them to put aside what they think they know about Dracula, forget the movies, and allow Stoker’s words to carry them deeper and deeper into one of the best nightmares ever put on paper.

6) What drove you to write about Vampires?

It was inevitable that I’d eventually write something about vampires, as they’ve been present in my imagination since I was very young. My grandmother told me bedtime stories about Dracula when I was four or five years old! That may have given me nightmares, but it did give a nice little spark to my imagination too, for which I’ll always be grateful. She also told me about Jack the Ripper at about the same time, gory details and all, though she left out the fact that his victims were prostitutes (it’s that old “violence is all right, but we can’t discuss sex” attitude!).

And after I understood what a vampire is, they seemed to show up all over the place when I was a kid. One of my first comic books was a Batman story, drawn by the incredible Gene Colan, which ended on a cliffhanger with Batman having been bitten by a vampire. Then there was the space vampires episode of the old Buck Rodgers TV show and I have vague memories of vampires being mentioned on an old cartoon called Thundarr the Barbarian. It always thrilled and frightened me to see or hear of vampires in any sort of fiction in those early years.

Later, as I got older, I always sought out vampire fiction. I read Dracula for the first time, tried some Anne Rice but wasn’t crazy about it, read the works of Kim Newman and other vampire writers, and discovered the Marvel Comics series Tomb of Dracula by the aforementioned Gene Colan. Eventually, I wrote two vampire stories for a magazine and those were later re-edited into the first few chapters of 100,000 Midnights.

7) What do you think is the attraction for Vampire fiction? Why is it such a popular topic?

I think vampire fiction works on two different levels. On one hand, vampires are, obviously, scary. They drink blood, violating the body by piercing the flesh with fangs. If you really think about that, it’s quite disturbing, although the trend toward heroic and sexy and nice vampires seems to have made some people forget about that.

On the other hand, I think we all sometimes fantasize about being a monster of some sort. There is a certain appeal to mythological creatures or monsters and we can’t help but dream of what it might be like to possess that power and live in that strange world of shadow and mystery. The vampire, of all the classic horror creatures, is probably the most appealing in that sense. Zombies are rotting and mindless, being a werewolf requires a dramatic change in appearance, Frankenstein’s monster is a collection of sewn-together pieces…but the vampire is still, more or less, humanoid in shape and possesses powers that could be, under the right circumstances, a lot of fun to have! So I think vampires can be either something we fear or something we’d like to be, or maybe both at the same time.

8) In a fight between all the greatest Vampires of fiction, who do you think would come out on top?

Recently, I read the first two books in an excellent new series by Christopher Farnsworth, Blood Oath and The President’s Vampire. These books feature a character named Nathaniel Cade who works as a secret agent for the United States government. The story behind how Farnsworth got the idea for the series is based on a real historical incident and is quite fascinating. President Andrew Johnson, in 1867, commuted the death sentence of a man accused of being a vampire! Farnsworth bases his novels on the idea that maybe the accused really was a vampire and he was put to work for the government. The series takes place in the modern age and Cade’s been working for the US presidents, one after another, for over 100 years, battling supernatural threats. I’d give Cade a good chance in a fight because in addition to having the strength, speed, and toughness of a vampire, he’s driven by an oath to protect his country, which makes him self-sacrificing enough that he’d have an edge over someone like Dracula who would tend to be more driven by the lust for power and self-preservation. Imagine the powers of the vampire, combine with the experience and skills of a warrior who’s been fighting for his country for over a century, and you have a pretty impressive combination.

9) What about in some other contest such as sexiness or dress sense? Who would win that one?

As far as dress sense goes, I’ve always thought it made more sense for a vampire to dress in clothing typical to whatever time period the story takes place in. Even if a vampire is, say, 500 years old, I think he or she, if intelligent, would adapt to changing styles in order to better blend in and survive, so I’m not a big fan of vampires who refuse to change with the times. On the topic of sexiness, some very attractive vampires that come to mind would be Deborah Ann Woll as Jessica on True Blood and Kate Beckinsale in the Underworld films.

10) How well do you think one of your characters would fare against the winner(s) of the above?

Well Siobhan, the main female vampire in 100,000 Midnights is just as sexy as the two characters I mentioned, at least as I see her when I write about her.

As far as a fight goes, Siobhan is tough, but she’s small and not as strong as some bigger, older vampires, so she’d have a hard time fighting Dracula or Nathaniel Cade. If any of my vampires would have a good chance in a fight against them, it would have to be Siobhan’s friend Phillip. He’s bigger, stronger, a little older, and has a serious mean streak when he needs it. He’s also had a very tough179269709 past, which will be revealed in the next book in the series.

11) Tell us the basic premise behind your latest novel.

100,000 Midnights focuses on a young man named Eric. He’s only in his early twenties, but he’s eccentric and fascinated by the past. He’s a loner, a bit of a hermit, working a dull job and not really going anywhere interesting in life. Then he meets Siobhan, a female vampire who looks about 18 but is really almost 300 years old. Siobhan is about to go through a coming of age called the Eldering, at which point a vampire matures and gains enhanced powers. The problem is, when a vampire reaches this point in their afterlife, they tend to be attacked by a strange race of artificial angels, created at some point in the past, designed to seek out and destroy young vampires. But these angels are, so the legend says, forbidden from harming humans. Siobhan finds Eric and asks him to help her survive the Eldering. That’s the beginning of the story and the rest follows the two of them through a month of events during which they face a number of supernatural threats. It’s a story of change, as Eric discovers that there are many things out there in the shadows, dangerous things of which most humans in the modern world know nothing. Eric has to learn, very quickly, to adapt in order to face some pretty horrible events. It’s also a story about two beings from very different worlds encountering each other and trying to figure out how their lives fit together.

Writing 100,000 Midnights was an exercise in putting together a lot of different influences and ideas that have been with me for a long time. Eric was based, at least at first, on my personality, but he grew into someone else the further I went into the story. And there are little tributes in the book too, elements that have similarities to some of the stories I’ve enjoyed reading over the years while still being different because they’re filtered through my particular style of writing. In many ways, the novel is my love letter to things like the Universal horror movies, some of the works of HG Wells, elements of the works of Bram Stoker and Mary Shelley, and even old Archie comics!

And I’m very happy to be able to report that there will be a sequel. The contract is signed, the book is written, and the editing process is about to begin any day now. So the second book in the series is tentatively scheduled for release in late summer of 2013.

What might have been…

25 Monday Feb 2013

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Musings

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Alternative Universes, David Tennant, Doctor Who, entertainment, Female Doctor Who, Hattie Jacques, honour blackman, joanna lumley, Matt Smith, Miranda Hart, Penelope Keith, Sherlock Holmes, Steve Moffat, Sue Perkins, Tom Baker


Not too long ago, this article was flashing about the internet.sue perkins

http://www.scifind.com/features/the-other-11-doctors/

It is an article with a single premise – what if the Doctor was female? It essentially takes each of the 11 incarnations of the Doctor and considers the most likely actor who might have played them based on who was around at the time and had approximately the same CV as the male version in our universe.

It is an interesting read and throws up a number of interesting choices. I would never, for example, have considered Hattie Jacques in the role. Her fame being largely based on her involvement with the Carry On franchise it never seemed to fit in my mind that she would be good for the role. However, the article gives a good argument for why she would have made a superlative second Doctor. Ditto Penelope Keith – I had never considered the star of To The Manor Born and The Good Life stepping into Tom Baker’s emormously large scarf but here again the article is convincing as to why she would be perfect.

It is unfair in other ways, I have to say. To tar Miriam Margoyles with the position as the sixth Doctor is unfortunate. Based on her other performances, I would have thought she would have done far better in the role regardless of script and production issues than is intimated here. Then again, I suppose that she can do loud and brash rather well so this may have been a way she would have taken the character.

I am, however, especially impressed with some of the casting. Honour Blackman as the third Doctor is a rather obvious one and Joanna Lumley was always one who was under consideration for the role should the Doctor ever have regenerated into a woman (and indeed was in Curse of the Fatal Death which also had Johnathon Pryce as one of the best Masters I have seen – watch the interviews on the DVD for true ‘method acting’) though putting her in the position of the sensitive and caring fifth Doctor rather than a more action oriented one is a stroke of genius. Sue Perkins wearing David Tennant’s ‘brainy specs’ is also absolutely spot on casting and part of me loves the idea of the love story between the Doctor and Rose still being there in that circumstance – an excellent piece of pro LGBT casting. Though I would also have liked to have seen the reversal in genders go further than that to the extent of more of the companions being male instead of remaining female.

In fact, this article has affected me so much that I have actually begun to re-imagine some of the stories with these actors in play. I rewatched the more recent Christmas special not long ago* and I could totally see Miranda Hart prancing around the big snow globe thing pretending to be Sherlock Holmes and Sue Perkins as a School Mistress** in 1913 or being grim and fatalistic with Bernard Cribbens.*** Obviously, the idea has legs and those legs are kicking.

So, the question has to be, can something be done with this concept? Yes, this is another ‘somebody make this happen’ post. Obviously, until the advent of safe and effective time travel we cannot go back in time and film new episiodes of Doctor Who only with the female counterpart, but there could be other ways. For example, I would love to see an anthology of short stories in the style of the old Doctor Who Short Trips series with a story per Doctor. I would also love some audio adventures and, maybe, in a universe where all my dreams came true, Steve Moffat might make a couple of shorts in the style of the Comic Relief/Children in Need sketches and the recent ‘Pond life’ web broadcast teasers. Were I a less lazy author, I’d get proactive and troll fan fic sites or lobby writers I know who are involved in Who in some manner to do something about it. I’d campaign Miranda Hart and Sue Perkins to agree to star in something linked to this, stand outside Steve Moffat’s house with placards, demand my MP did something about it and so on. However, I am lazy so none of this is going to happen. If any of you out there wish to do something about it, though, I’ve totally got your back. I might even submit a short story to an anthology or something. I can probably summon up enough proactivity to achieve that.

So, some questions…

What do you think about the selection of actors chosen here for a female Doctor?

Would you change any of them?

What already filmed Who story would you like to see redone with a female Doctor and do you think the story would be significantly changed by it?

Feel free to answer these in the comments….

* How many times has Richard E Grant been in Who now? Quite a few, I think. He played the Doctor in Curse of the Fatal Death, was also the Doctor in at least one online animation and now is here as a villain…

** And no, not in THAT way…

*** Another actor who seems to have been in Who multiple times.

The Avengers UK: Crossover universes

15 Friday Jun 2012

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Film, Musings, Wierdness

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

All the Geek, Anthony Stewart Head, Avengers Assemble, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Doctor Who, doctor who companions, Emma Peel, entertainment, geek culture, Gene Hunt, Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, James Bond, Joss Whedon, Judi Dench, Lara Croft, Nick Fury, River Song, Sarah Jane Smith, Sherlock Holmes, Steve Moffat, The Avengers, y chromosome, You Tube Fake Trailers


This particular photo-meme caught my eye the other day. It caused in me two almost simultaneous responses:

1) OMG someone should so make that film!!! Or at least make a fake trailer for it on You Tube by splicing together lots of bits of different shows in a way that makes it look as if they are all in the same plot!!!

2) There were no women in the group they had put together…

Before I discuss 2, let me just say that I really, really, REALLY want someone to make that trailer. Because I am sad like that. Such things really do amuse me. I went squee when I found this video done in celebration of Doctor Who’s 50th Anniversary. So if someone with the right skills could put together a video like that for the Avengers; United Kingdom I would be really pleased.*

Number 2… I was surprised at how much it concerned me. The fact that the purported fictional TV show was very Y chromosome heavy did make me wonder about the role of women in UK geek culture.

Now, don’t get me wrong. There are strong women in UK Geekdom. What concerned me was the fact that all the examples I could think of off the top of my head were supporting characters and many of them were already involved in the franchises represented by characters in that line up. Hermione Granger, various Doctor Who companions (Sarah Jane Smith and River Song being the two that spring most readily to mind), Judi Dench’s portrayal of M in James Bond… the UK just did not seem to have a straight up Geek lead character who was female (unlike the US where there are a few, though many of them are Whedon creations like Buffy). I was so concerned I expressed my opinion on Facebook and did get a couple of suggestions for strong female characters who were not involved in the franchises already mentioned (Emma Peel being one who I had somehow forgotten…) or who were sole leads (Lara Croft) but it does seem as if UK geekdom is a little thin on the ground. Plus, my concerns were not so much with the state of the feminist credentials of UK geekdom but rather with my own inability to think of some. I mean, I can be excused not thinking of Lara Croft because I have never played the game** nor watched the films but I used to watch the Avengers (the UK TV drama) all the time as a child*** so Emma Peel should have leapt out at me…

Maybe I am overthinking this, of course. It was, after all, just a fun bit of photo-manipulation that someone did. However, I think the discussion on facebook did come up with the following concept…

 – Ditch Harry Potter and replace him with Hermione. Her competence far exceeds his and it means we can have a couple of love scenes with Ron, who can also get jealous when Bond makes a move on her somewhere in the middle of the film (she’ll rebuff him, cos she’s not an idiot, though there may be some flirting, but Ron doesn’t know that…)

 – Chuck in Emma Peel in the Black Widow role. She fits the stereotype of that part perfectly, albeit with more English poise…

“I recognise the council has made a decision, but given that it’s a stupid-ass decision, I’ve elected to ignore it.”
Come on, you can so see her delivering that line as well as Samuel L Jackson did 🙂

– The team needs a Nick Fury. Someone to be all tough and shouty and manly and sarcastic at all the team members when they mess up. Which UK character suits this role best? Why, only Judi Dench’s M has the sheer brass balls to step into Samuel L Jackson’s shoes.

 – There has to be a role in this for Rupert Giles. Ok, technically Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a US show but Giles is so very British and there are few things that cannot be improved by the addition of Anthony Head. He could be the team’s librarian and be having an understated and typically British affair with M.

 – An enemy. In Avengers Assemble (or The Avengers as we still call it in the UK despite the rename…) that enemy was Loki who is devious and entertaining and malicious. There is really only one enemy that fits this mould in UK geekdom to my mind – The Master.

Of course there were other more outre suggestions for this film. Someone suggested that, since The Doctor is involved, in theory no time period is restricted. This means that we could have some other rather cool UK TV characters turning up. He suggested Richard Sharpe but we could also have Cadfael, the medieval mystery solving monk, Miss Marple and several others. Plus it might explain why Gene Hunt is there in 2012 (almost 30 years after the events of Ashes to Ashes and possibly in an alternate universe created by the minds of Sam Tyler and Alex Drake) and why Emma Peel is there (being, as she is, a character intrinsicly tied to the 1960s). In fact, in my head, this plot involves a centuries spanning plot spotted in several different time periods by different characters…

Hmmm, maybe I am overthinking this. Time to stop for now, I think. Before I start writing fan fic (and I have enough trouble finding time to write the characters I have created never mind taking on someone else’s intellectual property…)

What this does reveal is the appeal of crossover universes. Even though such things are ludicrous in concept and are likely to be done badly in fan fic and similar, they can be the cause of squee. They can also be done rather well in the right circumstances, as evidenced by the Wold Newton family created by Philip José Farmer  which ties many ficitonal characters (including Sherlock Holmes and James Bond) together into one family tree (making them all descendents of a group of people exposed to a radioactive meteorite near the North Yorkshire village of Wold Newton). There is also Alan Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen**** which has a similar concept. In fact, in the 1969 version of this series there is a very cool cameo by a certain Mr Tom Marvolo Riddle.

So, for discussion purposes, feel free to comment to add ideas for UK genre characters you would add to our Avengers team or for plot ideas for things that the team can face. Also comment if you have any other ideas for crossovers or actual crossovers that you have seen (whether they are well done or not).

*And if you could persuade Steve Moffat to actually make it, even better… having first made sure you have sacrificed to the gods of litigation to prevent various companies suiing him for Copyright… And if Moffat does want the gig and can sort out the copyright for the franchises he doesn’t own in that selection I have some plot ideas for him… 🙂

** No, really. I have never played Tomb Raider. I don’t tend to play computer games much. It’s ok, though. I checked. I don’t need to hand in my Geek card unless I also stop roleplaying and reading, watching and writing science fiction and fantasy.

*** And this had nothing to do with Emma Peel, leather catsuits and particular hormonal imbalances that occur around the age of 11. Absolutely nothing at all. I only ever watched it for the articles.

**** The graphic novel version not the film which was sort of OK (for, as Obi Wan Kenobi would say, a given value of OK which some may translate as ‘awful’) but had nothing on the graphic novel in terms of Victorian sleaze, drugs and nastiness and made Alan Quartermain not a drug addict and Mina Harker a vampire instead of the traumatised victim of a Vampire.

[Review] Baker Street Beat

22 Sunday Apr 2012

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Reviews

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

books, Dan Andriacco, Essays, guest posts, reviews, Sherlock Holmes, sherlock holmes books, Short Fiction


This is the third and final of the MX Publishing Sherlock Holmes books I have reviewed…

http://www.cultbritannia.co.uk/2012/04/22/book-review-baker-street-beat/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=facebook

It is an entertaining collection of essays and fiction that is well worth a read…

A busy few days in blogging land…

20 Friday Apr 2012

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Musings, Reviews

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Tags

Absolute Write, books, City of Roses, Dr Watson, ghost photos, Ghost Pics, guest blogging, Kieran McMullen, Kip Manley, productivity, raynham hall ghost, self publishers, Self Publishing, Sherlock Holmes, Watson's Afgham Adventure, writing


This is what my study looks like at the moment...

I’ve not posted here much since the end of Vampire Month (apologies for that, I’ve been distracted) and you were probably expecting a post linked to the AW Blog Chain here about now as I was signed up for it this month. However, I opted out last week for personal reasons. I do intend to do next month’s blog chain, however, so look out for that in May…

In the meantime, I have been a busy bunny on the reviewing front. School Easter holidays provided me with plenty of time for reading and writing so I managed to clear some books off the big pile of ‘books to be reviewed’.

First up we have Watson’s Afghan Adventure, another MX Publishing offer set in the Sherlock Holmes universe:

http://www.cultbritannia.co.uk/2012/04/18/book-review-watsons-afghan-adventure/

This follows the exploits of Dr Watson during his pre-Holmes days in the army. Please excuse the missing ‘of’ in the first sentence…

Secondly, I have also reviewed Wake up, volume one of the City of Roses series:

http://www.epublishabook.com/2012/04/20/book-review/#axzz1sZN6l3ZI

A strange and mystical story of faerie courts in modern urban cities, somewhat akin to Gaiman’s Neverwhere.

Finally, not a review but a commentary on a photograph:

http://newsfromthespiritworld.com/2012/04/18/ghostly-pics-the-raynham-hall-ghost/

Here I talk about another famous ghost photograph – the Raynham Hall ghost, also known as the Brown Lady – another of the shots labelled as one of the ’10 greatest ghost photos ever’ in numerous blog posts.

There is a lot more to come because the ‘big pile of books to be reviewed’ is a very big ‘big pile of books to be reviewed’ and there are a lot more ghost photos out there…

 

[Review] Shadowfall by Tracy Revels

30 Friday Mar 2012

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Reviews

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Benedict Cumberbatch, Cult Britannia, Faeries, guest blogging, guest posts, Magic, reviews, shadowfall, Sherlock, Sherlock Holmes


I review a book (and an actual physical book at that!) by Tracy Revels and starring a rather unusual variation of everyone’s favourite detective… yes, even more unusual than the one played by Benedict Cumberbatch…

http://www.cultbritannia.co.uk/2012/03/30/book-review-sherlock-holmes-shadowfall/

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