Stories

In 2011 my participation in the Hardcastle & McCormick fan forum on Yahoo led to me teaming up with a writer there whom I admired, and we began producing fan fiction for the BBC television series Sherlock, which starred Benedict Cumberbatch as the detective and Martin Freeman as John Watson. We eventually posted nine co-credited Sherlock stories on www.fanfiction.net and Archive of Our Own (AO3), most of which followed the template established in the televised series of loosely adapting Arthur Conan Doyle “canon” stories to the modern day. The very successful division of labor (for all but the first story we posted, which I haven’t included here) was that my co-author conceived the main plot ideas and I’d execute them. This was our take on The Blue Carbuncle, one of my favorite canon stories.

The Highgrove Ritual got its inspiration from the canon Holmes story The Musgrave Ritual. It was intended to showcase John Watson and establish some background about his military service: how he came to be injured and sent home. It also sets out why he hangs around with Sherlock Holmes. Pro-tip: It’s not because he “misses the war,” as Sherlock comes to realize here, and contra the “canon” of the series. A major goal of these Sherlock fanfics was to remedy the short shrift given to John Watson in far too many depictions of him, so John’s a more active, equal partner in this story and all the subsequent ones.

Highgrove is the first of three somewhat related stories, the others being The Icebreaker, which follows immediately after it, and The Adventure of the Trained Politician, which for the characters takes place about two weeks after The Icebreaker. All three are set after the timeline established in the TV series ended but were written well before the series itself concluded. In re-reading Highgrove now I recall finding the research required for it pretty tedious, so if any of the Celtic and druidic history is depicted accurately it’s most likely an oversight.

The Ice Breaker was intended as a character study rather than a mystery or adventure: an examination of the relationship between John and Mycroft, especially from Mycroft’s perspective. It takes place immediately after The Highgrove Ritual. Actually, from the characters’ point of view it begins seconds after John hangs up on Mycroft in the penultimate scene of Highgrove. It can be read as a stand-alone story, though, and Highgrove’s not a prerequisite to reading it.

This Sherlock story stands out to me because it epitomizes the effectiveness of the arrangement my writing partner and I had at the time. My partner would propose an idea for a plot point that I’d never have thought of myself, and I’d then either run with it in that form or be inspired to propose something based on it. The particular example in this story is the idea of a dog with a message tied to its collar and the dog in turn tied out to a tree in the woods for the recipient to find. Awesome, I thought instantly. On further examination, though, my question was, “If the bad guys can tie a dog to a tree, why not just save a step and tie the message directly to the tree? What’s the point of the dog?” But if you make the dog a trained one, one that will show enough initiative to race through the woods carrying untraceable messages between the baddies and play a role in helping Sherlock identify their confederate, then you have something. It’s a pretty typical example of how we worked effectively on the Sherlock fanfics.

The Colour of Wine is one of the Sherlock fanfics that doesn’t follow the TV program’s format of adapting a canon story, although it does contain a few references for Doyle fans. It was intended to deal definitively with Sherlock’s drug use, which we disliked as a character trait in canon and in the BBC program.

It’s also the first story to which Dr. D.P. Lyle, MD (www.dplylemd.com) lent his technical knowledge to our efforts, but not the last. Dr. Lyle has more writing credits than I could possibly list here, but I was hooked when I read his fascinating books Forensics & Fiction and More Forensics & Fiction, described as“crime writers’ morbidly curious questions expertly answered.” He’s also the best-selling author of the Jake Longly and Dub Walker novel series. Dr. Lyle is a practicing cardiologist and generously and patiently answers questions submitted by writers who want to ensure the authenticity of the forensics and medicine in their stories. The Colour of Wine and most of our other Sherlock stories benefited enormously from his guidance.

It’s been a while, but if I recall the main goal of this story was to consider the Sherlock/John relationship from the perspective of some of the other characters. Like all these Sherlock fanfics, it was also intended to depict the friendship between Sherlock and John as more respectful and understanding than that which appeared on screen in the series, because despite the underlying chemistry between the actors, Sherlock often treated John poorly and John often seemed not to understand Sherlock very well. One reason nearly all of these fanfics are set well after the show’s timeline ended was to give both characters time to gain enough maturity to conduct themselves and their friendship in a more compelling and engaging way.

The central crime in The Devil’s Heart is very loosely based on the Doyle canon story The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot.

This story takes its title from one of the many ACD canon adventures that John Watson teases but never elaborates on, so it’s more of an imagining than an adaptation. It’s distantly related to The Devil’s Heart, but in contrast to that story, I wanted Eddie Ricoletti And His Abominable Life to take a much darker direction. The real aim of writing it, though, was to depict Sherlock’s growth into a better friend to John. It’s set, as all but one of these Sherlock stories are, well after the events of the TV series, and over time even Sherlock Holmes can be expected to grow up a little.

Medium Dark had its genesis in a debate that arose between my writing partner and a friend who promoted homeopathic remedies. It’s set, like nearly all of these Sherlock stories, well after the events depicted in the televised series. It soon expanded from a treatment of homeopathy to include mysticism in general, so Sherlock has something to say about everything from seances to cold readings to Disney’s Haunted Mansion attraction. He’s got something to say about the murder he solves, too. Medium Dark is yet another story to which Dr. D.P. Lyle generously contributed his expertise.

This story is wishful thinking. It’s rewriting canon, not building on it. The third season of Sherlock appalled me for the violence it did to the characters’ integrity, so I rewrote it. I thought it was unforgivable for any depiction of Sherlock Holmes, the man who lives by his mind, to portray him as a murderer. I argued incessantly on fan forums not only that murder was all wrong for Sherlock, but that forgiving Mary for being a serial killer and staying married to her was all wrong for John. I think that the show strayed from its original focus on one of the great friendships in all of literature. Given that, and having been challenged to propose an alternative way to end Season Three and solve the Magnussen problem, I wrote this story. As so often happened with these Sherlock stories, Dr. D.P. Lyle patiently answered my medical and science questions. Go buy his books.

“True friendship between man and man is infinite and immortal.” — Plato

Inspired by the “epilogophilia” of three of the better fan fiction writers out there, this was my first stab at fan fiction. It’s an epilogue-after-the-epilogue for the Hardcastle & McCormick episode If You Could See What I See.

This was written in response to a “story starter” challenge on a Hardcastle & McCormick fan forum. The theme was “trust” and the story had to involve an example of one of the main characters demonstrating trust in the other. The story was not supposed to be “angsty” and brevity was considered preferable to length.