Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Unpleasant Attic
I’ve had reason of late to be crawling around in my late mother’s attic, looking in boxes untouched since she and my father moved into the house twenty-five-ish years ago. Amidst last century’s tax records, boxes (and boxes) of photographs, and random collections of post-retirement desk-drawer contents, there are many, many boxes of books. (I come by the book-hoarder habit honestly.) Some interesting volumes, but mostly nothing of note. Except in one crumbling cardboard box I found my childhood copy of the Sherlock Holmes stories:
Sherlock Holmes and Adventure of the Time Traveler
Reading this book (this actual object, which I can now hold in my hands!) as a third grader inspired me to be a writer. No one falls into “the fictive dream” as easily as a child, but most people, unfortunately, recover. I’ve written before about the experience of reading the book and its effect on me, but crouched in that hot, dark, cramped, dusty attic I held not just a memento of my past, but also the most inspirational object of my life. What a prize! It even smelled like I remember it. To me, this is the most valuable thing in the house.
Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Precocious Primer
The book is exactly as I remember it, and isn’t in terrible condition, particularly considering it lived in a cardboard box in an alternately blazing hot/freezing cold attic for at least twenty-five years. (And likely damp basement conditions at their previous house.) It was published in St. Louis, 1947, by Webster Publishing Company, and is an adaption of the stories for children by William Kottmeyer of the St. Louis Reading Clinic. Joseph Camana provided marvelous linocut-style illustrations.
I can only thank my daughter who insisted that “we need to at least look in the boxes to know what’s there” before we set the estate sale people loose on the house contents.
Haunted woman claws her way back to reality by reconnecting with her magical powers to solve a murder and protect a community from a supernatural predator.
Coming later this year from Montag Press: The Talking Cure. The next novel-length Sean Joye investigation, The Talking Cure follows a catatonic Violet Arwald Humphrey, one of Sean Joye’s antagonists in The Big Cinch, to her incarceration at an upscale facility for the mentally ill. Isolated on the Illinois prairie with only her own thoughts and a new voice in her head, Violet’s distress magically summons Sean Joye, her former employee. Together they must solve a murder and face an eldritch horror lurking on the property.
Don’t miss The Big Cinch from Montag Press, an award-winning supernatural noir adventure by Kathy L. Brown. Sean Joye, a fae-touched young veteran of 1922’s Irish Civil War, aims to atone for his assassin past and make a clean, new life in America. Until he asks the wrong questions…
Are you lucky enough to have a childhood touchstone object in your life? How does it influence your grown-up self? Comment on the blog. Navigate to my website, click the blog title, and complete the dialogue box that will open at the end of the post.
If you enjoyed this journal entry, you might like to read about hoarding fountain pens.
I started this blog thread on the gritty details of the writing process over on my Facebook Author page, @kbkathylbrown, but think I might be better served putting it over here. If you’re interest in following my writing process in an informal way, you’ll find a few posts on Facebook that might interest you. You can subscribe to the blog from the website landing page (scroll down).
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Wolfhearted is also available as an Audible audiobook, here.
St. Louis Writers Guild just published Weird STL, an anthology celebrate the strange, spooky, and just plain wonderful stories of our hometown. This volume of short stories, poems, a play, and essays includes a Sean Joye universe short story, “Big Magick.” Joseph Arwald, one of the baddies from The Big Cinch, tells us what really happened to the Ferris Wheel from the St. Louis 1904 World’s Fair.
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The direct link to review Wolfhearted on Amazon is here, The Resurrectionist, here, and Water of Life, here. Thanks in advance.