Part XI – Some Untold Cases (1880-1891)

Part XI: 1880-1891 includes contributions from:
Jayantika Ganguly, Will Murray, Tracy Revels, Hugh Ashton, Matthew Simmonds, David Ruffle, Paul W. Nash, Mike Hogan, Craig Stephen Copland, Gayle Lange Puhl, Deanna Baran, Leslie Charteris and Denis Green, Roger Riccard, Robert Perret, Kevin P. Thornton, Stephen Herczeg, and M.A. Wilson and Richard Dean Starr, and a poem by Arlene Mantin Levy and Mark Levy.

Buying Link: viewbook.at/MXHolmesStoriesPartXI

The Stories

• The Most Repellant Man – Jayantika Ganguly
• The Singular Adventure of the Extinguished Wicks – Will Murray
• Mrs Forrester’s Complication – Roger Riccard
• The Adventure of Vittoria, the Circus belle – Tracy Revels
• The Adventure of the Silver Skull – Hugh Ashton
• The Pimlico Poisoner – Matthew Simmonds
• The Grosvenor Squae Furniture Van – David Ruffle
• The Adventure of the Paradol Chamber – Paul W. Nash
• The Bishopgate Affair – Mike Hogan
• The Singular Tragedy of the Atkinson rothers at Trincomalee – Craig Stephen Copland
• Colonel Warburton’s Madness – Gayle Lange Puhl
• The Adventure at Bellingbeck Park – Deanna Baran
• The Giant Rat of Sumatra – Leslie Charteris & Denis Green
• The Vatican Cameos – Kevin P. Thornton
• The Case of the Gila Monster – Stephen Herczeg
• The Bogus Laundry Affair – Robert Perret
• Inspector Lestrade and the Molesey Mystery – M.A. Wilson and Richard Dean Starr

About The Contributors:

Hugh Ashton was born in the U.K., and moved to Japan in 1988, where he remained until 2016, living with his wife Yoshiko in the historic city of Kamakura, a little to the south of Yokohama. He and Yoshiko have now moved to Lichfield, a small cathedral city in the Midlands of the U.K., the birthplace of Samuel Johnson, and one-time home of Erasmus Darwin. In the past, he has worked in the technology and financial services industries, which have provided him with material for some of his books set in the 21st century. He currently works as a writer: Novelist, freelance editor, and copywriter, (his work for large Japanese corporations has appeared in international business journals), and journalist, as well as producing industry reports on various aspects of the financial services industry. Recently, however, his lifelong interest in Sherlock Holmes has developed into an acclaimed series of adventures featuring the world’s most famous detective, written in the style of the originals, and published by Inknbeans Press. In addition to these, he has also published historical and alternate historical novels, short stories, and thrillers. Together with artist Andy Boerger, he has produced the Sherlock Ferret series of stories for children, featuring the world’s cutest detective.

Deanna Baran lives in a remote part of Texas where cowboys may still be seen in their natural habitat. A librarian and former museum curator, she writes in between cups of tea, playing Go, and trading postcards with people around the world. This is her latest venture into the foggy streets of gaslit London.

Brian Belanger is a publisher and editor, but is best known for his freelance illustration and cover design work. His distinctive style can be seen on several MX Publishing covers, including Silent Meridian by Elizabeth Crowen, Sherlock Holmes and the Menacing Melbournian by Allan Mitchell, Sherlock Holmes and A Quantity of Debt by David Marcum, Welcome to Undershaw by Luke Benjamen Kuhns, and many more. Brian is the co-founder of Belanger Books LLC, where he illustrates the popular MacDougall Twins with Sherlock Holmes young reader series (#1 bestsellers on Amazon.com UK). A prolific creator, he also designs t-shirts, mugs, stickers, and other merchandise on his personal art site: http://www.redbubble.com/people/zhahadun.

Leslie Charteris was born in Singapore on May 12th, 1907. With his mother and brother, he moved to England in 1919 and attended Rossall School in Lancashire before moving on to Cambridge University to study law. His studies there came to a halt when a publisher accepted his first novel. His third one, entitled Meet the Tiger, was written when he was twenty years old and published in September 1928. It introduced the world to Simon Templar, aka The Saint. He continued to write about The Saint until 1983 when the last book, Salvage for The Saint, was published. The books, which have been translated into over thirty languages, number nearly a hundred and have sold over fortymillion copies around the world. They’ve inspired, to date, fifteen feature films, three television series, ten radio series, and a comic strip that was written by Charteris and syndicated around the world for over a decade. He enjoyed travelling, but settled for long periods in Hollywood, Florida, and finally in Surrey, England. He was awarded the Cartier Diamond Dagger by the Crime Writers’ Association in 1992, in recognition of a lifetime of achievement. He died the following year.

Ian Dickerson was just nine years old when he discovered The Saint. Shortly after that, he discovered Sherlock Holmes. The Saint won, for a while anyway. He struck up a friendship with The Saint’s creator, Leslie Charteris and his family. With their permission, he spent six weeks studying the Leslie Charteris collection at Boston University and went on to write, direct, and produce documentaries on the making of The Saint and Return of The Saint, which have been released on DVD. He oversaw the recent reprints of almost fifty of the original Saint books in both the US and UK, and was a coproducer on the 2017 TV movie of The Saint. When he discovered that Charteris had written Sherlock Holmes stories as well – well, there was the excuse he needed to revisit The Canon. He’s consequently written and edited three books on Holmes’ radio adventures. For the sake of what little sanity he has, Ian has also written about a wide range of subjects, none of which come with a halo, including talking mashed potatoes, Lord Grade, and satellite links. Ian lives in Hampshire with his wife and two children. And an awful lot of books by Leslie Charteris. Not quite so many by Conan Doyle, though.

Craig Stephen Copland confesses that he discovered Sherlock Holmes when, sometime in the muddled early 1960’s, he pinched his older brother’s copy of the immortal stories and was forever afterward thoroughly hooked. He is very grateful to his high school English teachers in Toronto who inculcated in him a love of literature and writing, and even inspired him to be an English major at the University of Toronto. There he was blessed to sit at the feet of both Northrup Frye and Marshall McLuhan, and other great literary professors, who led him to believe that he was called to be a high school English teacher. It was his good fortune to come to his pecuniary senses, abandon that goal, and pursue a varied professional career that took him to over one-hundred countries and endless adventures. He considers himself to have been and to continue to be one of the luckiest men on God’s good earth. A few years back he took a step in the direction of Sherlockian studies and joined the Sherlock Holmes Society of Canada – also known as The Toronto Bootmakers. In May of 2014, this esteemed group of scholars announced a contest for the writing of a new Sherlock Holmes mystery. Although he had never tried his hand at fiction before, Craig entered and was pleasantly surprised to be selected as one of the winners. Having enjoyed the experience, he decided to write more of the same, and is now on a mission to write a new Sherlock Holmes mystery that is related to and inspired by each of the sixty stories in the original Canon. He currently lives and writes in Toronto, Buenos Aires, New York, and the Okanagan Valley and looks forward to finally settling down when he turns ninety.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) Holmes Chronicler Emeritus. If not for him, this anthology would not exist. Author, physician, patriot, sportsman, spiritualist, husband and father, and advocate for the oppressed. He is remembered and honored for the purposes of this collection by being the man who introduced Sherlock Holmes to the world. Through fifty-six Holmes short stories, four novels, and additional Apocryphal entries, Doyle revolutionized mystery stories and also greatly influenced and improved police forensic methods and techniques for the betterment of all. Steel True Blade Straight.

Steve Emecz’s main field is technology, in which he has been working for about twenty years. Following multiple senior roles at Xerox, where he grew their European eCommerce from $6m to $200m, Steve joined platform provider Venda, and moved across to Powa in 2010. Today, Steve is CCO at collectAI in Hamburg, a German fintech company using Artificial Intelligence to help companies with their debt collection. Steve is a regular trade show speaker on the subject of eCommerce, and his tech career has taken him to more than fifty countries – so he’s no stranger to planes and airports. He wrote two novels (one a bestseller) in the 1990’s, and a screenplay in 2001. Shortly after, he set up MX Publishing, specialising in NLP books. In 2008, MX published its first Sherlock Holmes book, and MX has gone on to become the largest specialist Holmes publisher in the world. MX is a social enterprise and supports two main causes. The first is Happy Life, a children’s rescue project in Nairobi, Kenya, where he and his wife, Sharon, spend every Christmas at the rescue centre in Kasarani. In 2014, they wrote a short book about the project, The Happy Life Story. The second is the Stepping Stones School, of which Steve is a patron. Stepping Stones is located at Undershaw, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s former home.

Lyndsay Faye BSI, ASH is the author of a number of critically acclaimed books, including the Sherlockian volumes Dust and Shadow, about Sherlock Holmes’s attempt to hunt down Jack the Ripper, and The Whole Art of Detection, containing fifteen Holmes adventures. Additionally, she has written The Gods of Gotham, which was nominated for the Edgar Award for Best Novel, Seven for a Secret, The Fatal Flame, Jane Steele, and the forthcoming The Paragon Hotel. Faye, a true New Yorker in the sense that she was born elsewhere, lives in New York city with her husband, Gabriel.

Mark A. Gagen BSI is co-founder of Wessex Press, sponsor of the popular From Gillette to Brett conferences, and publisher of The Sherlock Holmes Reference Library and many other fine Sherlockian titles. A life-long Holmes enthusiast, he is a member of The Baker Street Irregulars and The Illustrious Clients of Indianapolis. A graphic artist by profession, his work is often seen on the covers of The Baker Street Journal and various BSI books.

Jayantika Ganguly BSI is the General Secretary and Editor of the Sherlock Holmes Society of India, a member of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London, and the Czech Sherlock Holmes Society. She is the author of The Holmes Sutra (MX 2014). She is a corporate lawyer working with one of the Big Six law firms.

Melissa Granger, Executive Head Teacher of Stepping Stones School, is driven by a passion to open the doors to learners with complex and layered special needs that just make society feel two steps too far away. Based on the Surrey/Hampshire border in England, her time is spent between relocating a great school into the prestigious home of Conan Doyle, and her two children, dogs, and horses, so there never a dull moment.

Denis Green was born in London, England in April 1905. He grew up mostly in London’s Savoy Theatre where his father, Richard Green, was a principal in many Gilbert and Sullivan productions, A Flying Officer with RAF until 1924, he then spent four years managing a tea estate in North India before making his stage debut in Hamlet with Leslie Howard in 1928. He made his first visit to America in 1931 and established a respectable stage career before appearing in films – including minor roles in the first two Rathbone and Bruce Holmes films – and developing a career in front of and behind the microphone during the golden age of radio. Green and Leslie Charteris met in 1938 and struck up a lifelong friendship. Always busy, be it on stage, radio, film or television, Green passed away at the age of fifty in New York.

John Atkinson Grimshaw (1836-1893) was born in Leeds, England. His amazing paintings, usually featuring twilight or night scenes illuminated by gas-lamps or moonlight, are easily recognizable, and are often used on the covers of books about The Great Detective to set the mood, as shadowy figures move in the distance through misty mysterious settings and over rain-slicked streets.

Stephen Herczeg is an IT Geek, writer, actor, and film-maker based in Canberra Australia. He has been writing for over twenty years and has completed a couple of dodgy novels, sixteen feature length screenplays, and numerous short stories and scripts.  Stephen was very successful in 2017’s International Horror Hotel screenplay competition, with his scripts TITAN winning the Sci-Fi category and Dark are the Woods placing second in the horror category. His work has featured in Sproutlings – A Compendium of Little Fictions from Hunter Anthologies, the Hells Bells Christmas horror anthology published by the Australasian Horror Writers Association, and the Below the Stairs, Trickster’s Treats, Shades of Santa, Behind the Mask, and Beyond the Infinite anthologies from OzHorror.Con, The Body Horror Book, Anemone Enemy, and Petrified Punks from Oscillate Wildly Press, and Sherlock Holmes In the Realms of H.G. Wells and Sherlock Holmes: Adventures Beyond the Canon from Belanger Books.

Mike Hogan (with a story in Part XII as well!) writes mostly historical novels and short stories, many set in Victorian London and featuring Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson. He read the Conan Doyle stories at school with great enjoyment, but hadn’t thought much about Sherlock Holmes until, having missed the Granada/Jeremy Brett TV series when it was originally shown in the eighties, he came across a box set of videos in a street market and was hooked on Holmes again. He started writing Sherlock Holmes pastiches several years ago, having great fun re-imagining situations for the Conan Doyle characters to act in. The relationship between Holmes and Watson fascinates him as one of the great literary friendships. (He’s also a huge admirer of Patrick O’Brian’s AubreyMaturin novels). Like Captain Aubrey and Doctor Maturin, Holmes and Watson are an odd couple, differing in almost every facet of their characters, but sharing a common sense of decency and a common humanity. Living with Sherlock Holmes can’t have been easy, and Mike enjoys adding a stronger vein of “pawky humour” into the Conan Doyle mix, even letting Watson have the second-to-last word on occasions. His books include Sherlock Holmes and the Scottish Question, the forthcoming The Gory Season – Sherlock Holmes, Jack the Ripper and the Thames Torso Murders and the Sherlock Holmes & Young Winston 1887 Trilogy (The Deadwood Stage; The Jubilee Plot; and The Giant Moles), He has also written the following short story collections: Sherlock Holmes: Murder at the Savoy and Other Stories, Sherlock Holmes: The Skull of Kohada Koheiji and Other Stories, and Sherlock Holmes: Murder on the Brighton Line and Other Stories. http://www.mikehoganbooks.com

Roger Johnson BSI, ASH is a retired librarian, now working as a volunteer assistant at the Essex Police Museum. In his spare time, he is commissioning editor of The Sherlock Holmes Journal, an occasional lecturer, and a frequent contributor to The Writings About the Writings. His sole work of Holmesian pastiche was published in 1997 in Mike Ashley’s anthology The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures, and he has the greatest respect for the many authors who have contributed new tales to the present mighty trilogy. Like his wife, Jean Upton, he is a member of both The Baker Street Irregulars and The Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes.

Arlene Mantin Levy RN retired to Colorado in 2015. She practiced as a Critical Care/Trauma Specialist for thirty-eight years in Miami, Florida. During the last four years in Florida, she was a member of the scion Tropical Deerstalkers, and since moving to Evergreen, she and husband Mark are members of the scion Dr. Watson’s Neglected Patients.

Mark Levy BSI is an intellectual property attorney and a member of the Baker Street Irregulars. He holds a B.S. degree in Physics from NYU Polytechnic University, a J.D. degree from New York Law School, and an M.A. degree in creative writing from Wilkes University. His passion is writing. He has contributed articles or letters to The Baker Street Journal, The New York Times, The Mensa Bulletin, The Skeptical Inquirer, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Videomaker Magazine, and The Journal of Irreproducible Results. His short, humorous essays are broadcast on the public radio show, Weekend Radio, and a collection of those polymathic essays, Trophy Envy.

David Marcum (who also has a story in Volume III) plays The Game with deadly seriousness. He first discovered Sherlock Holmes in 1975, at the age of ten, when he received an abridged version of The Adventures during a trade. Since that time, David has collected literally thousands of traditional Holmes pastiches in the form of novels, short stories, radio and television episodes, movies and scripts, comics, fan-fiction, and unpublished manuscripts. He is the author of The Papers of Sherlock Holmes Vol.’s I and II (2011, 2013), Sherlock Holmes and A Quantity of Debt (2013, 2016), Sherlock Holmes – Tangled Skeins (2015, 2017), and The Papers of Solar Pons (2017). Additionally, he is the editor of the three-volume set Sherlock Holmes in Montague Street (2014, recasting Arthur Morrison’s Martin Hewitt stories as early Holmes adventures,), the two-volume collection of Great Hiatus stories, Holmes Away From Home (2016), Sherlock Holmes: Before Baker Street (2017), Imagination Theatre’s Sherlock Holmes (2017), the authorized eight-volume reissues of the Solar Pons stories, the three-volume set of Canonical Sequels Sherlock Holmes: Adventures Beyond the Canon, and a number of forthcoming volumes including a Solar Anthology and the complete Dr. Thorndyke adventures. Additionally, he is the creator and editor of the ongoing collection, The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories (2015-   ), now at twelve volumes, with another in preparation as of this writing. He has contributed stories, essays, and scripts to The Baker Street Journal, The Strand Magazine, The Watsonian, Beyond Watson, Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, About Sixty, About Being a Sherlockian, The Solar Pons Gazette, Imagination Theater, The Proceedings of the Pondicherry Lodge, and The Gazette, the journal of the Nero Wolfe Wolfe Pack. He began his adult work life as a Federal Investigator for an obscure U.S. Government agency, before the organization was eliminated. He returned to school for a second degree, and is now a licensed Civil Engineer, living in Tennessee with his wife and son. He is a member of The Sherlock Holmes Society of London, The Nashville Scholars of the Three Pipe Problem (The Engineer’s Thumb”), The Occupants of the Full House, The Diogenes Club of Washington, D.C., The Tankerville Club (all Scions of The Baker Street Irregulars), The Sherlock Holmes Society of India (as a Patron), The John H. Watson Society (“Marker”), The Praed Street Irregulars (“The Obrisset Snuff Box”), The Solar Pons Society of London, and The Diogenes Club West (East Tennessee Annex), a curious and unofficial Scion of one. Since the age of nineteen, he has worn a deerstalker as his regular-and-only hat from autumn to spring. In 2013, he and his deerstalker were finally able make his first trip-of-a-lifetime Holmes Pilgrimage to England, with return Pilgrimages in 2015 and 2016, where you may have spotted him. If you ever run into him and his deerstalker out and about, feel free to say hello!

Will Murray is the author of over seventy novels, including forty Destroyer novels and seven posthumous Doc Savage collaborations with Lester Dent, under the name Kenneth Robeson, for Bantam Books in the 1990’s. Since 2011, he has written fourteen additional Doc Savage adventures for Altus Press, two of which co-starred The Shadow, as well as a solo Pat Savage novel. His 2015 Tarzan novel, Return to Pal-Ul-Don, was followed by King Kong vs. Tarzan in 2016. Murray has written short stories featuring such classic characters as Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man, Ant-Man, the Hulk, Honey West, the Spider, the Avenger, the Green Hornet, the Phantom, and Cthulhu. A previous Murray Sherlock Holmes story appeared in Moonstone’s Sherlock Holmes: The Crossovers Casebook, and another is forthcoming in Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Was Not, involving H. P. Lovecraft’s Dr. Herbert West. Additionally, his “The Adventure of the Glassy Ghost” appeared in The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories Part VIII – Eliminate the Impossible: 1892-1905.

Paul W. Nash is a librarian, bibliographer, and printing historian. He has worked at the Royal Institute of British Architect’s Library in London and the Bodleian Library in Oxford, and is currently editor of The Journal of the Printing Historical Society. He writes fiction and composes music as a relaxation.

Sidney Paget (1860-1908), a few of whose illustrations are used within this anthology, was born in London, and like his two older brothers, became a famed illustrator and painter. He completed over three-hundred-and-fifty drawings for the Sherlock Holmes stories that were first published in The Strand magazine, defining Holmes’s image forever after in the public mind.

Robert Perret is a writer, librarian, and devout Sherlockian living on the Palouse. His Sherlockian publications include “The Canaries of Clee Hills Mine” in An Improbable Truth: The Paranormal Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, “For King and Country” in The Science of Deduction, and “How Hope Learned the Trick” in NonBinary Review. He considers himself to be a pan-Sherlockian and a one-man Scion out on the lonely moors of Idaho. Robert has recently authored a yet-unpublished scholarly article tentatively entitled “A Study in Scholarship: The Case of the Baker Street Journal’. More information is available at http://www.robertperret.com

Gayle Lange Puhl has been a Sherlockian since Christmas of 1965. She has had articles published in The Devon County Chronicle, The Baker Street Journal, and The Serpentine Muse, plus her local newspaper. She has created Sherlockian jewelry, a 2006 calendar entitled “If Watson Wrote For TV”, and has painted a limited series of Holmes-related nesting dolls. She co-founded the scion Friends of the Great Grimpen Mire and the Janesville, Wisconsin-based The Original Tree Worshipers. In January 2016, she was awarded the “Outstanding Creative Writer” award by the Janesville Art Alliance for her first book Sherlock Holmes and the Folk Tale Mysteries. She is semi-retired and lives in Evansville, Wisconsin. Ms. Puhl has one daughter, Gayla, and four grandchildren.

Tracy J. Revels, a Sherlockian from the age of eleven, is a professor of history at Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina. She is a member of The Survivors of the Gloria Scott and The Studious Scarlets Society, and is a past recipient of the Beacon Society Award. Almost every semester, she teaches a class that covers The Canon, either to college students or to senior citizens. She is also the author of three supernatural Sherlockian pastiches with MX (Shadowfall, Shadowblood, and Shadowwraith), and a regular contributor to her scion’s newsletter. She also has some notoriety as an author of very silly skits: For proof, see “The Adventure of the Adversarial Adventuress” and “Occupy Baker Street” on YouTube. When not studying Sherlock, she can be found researching the history of her native state, and has written books on Florida in the Civil War and on the development of Florida’s tourism industry.

Roger Riccard of Los Angeles, California, U.S.A., is a descendant of the Roses of Kilravock in Highland Scotland. He is the author of two previous Sherlock Holmes novels, The Case of the Poisoned Lilly and The Case of the Twain Papers, a series of short stories in two volumes, Sherlock Holmes: Adventures for the Twelve Days of Christmas and Further Adventures for the Twelve Days of Christmas, and the new series A Sherlock Holmes Alphabet of Cases, all of which are published by Baker Street Studios. He has another novel and a non-fiction Holmes reference work in various stages of completion. He became a Sherlock Holmes enthusiast as a teenager (many, many years ago), and, like all fans of The Great Detective, yearned for more stories after reading The Canon over and over. It was the Granada Television performances of Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke, and the encouragement of his wife, Rosilyn, that at last inspired him to write his own Holmes adventures, using the Granada actor portrayals as his guide. He has been called “The best pastiche writer since Val Andrews” by the Sherlockian ETimes.

David Ruffle was born in Northamptonshire in England a long, long time ago. He has lived in the beautiful town of Lyme Regis on the Dorset coast for the last twelve years. His first foray into writing was the 2009 self-published, Sherlock Holmes and the Lyme Regis Horror. This was swiftly followed by two more Holmes novellas set in Lyme, and a Holmes children’s book, Sherlock Holmes and the Missing Snowman. Since then, there has been four further Holmes novellas, including the critically acclaimed End Peace, three contemporary comedies, and a slim volume detailing the life of Jack the Ripper. When not writing, he can be found working in a local shop, ‘acting’ in local productions, and occasionally performing poetry locally. To come next year is Sherlock Holmes and the Scarborough Affair, a collaboration with Gill Stammers, in which David is very much the junior partner.

Hailing from Bedford, in the South East of England, Matthew Simmonds has been a confirmed devotee of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s most famous creation since first watching Jeremy Brett’s incomparable portrayal of the world’s first consulting detective, on a Tuesday evening in April, 1984, while curled up on the sofa with his father. He has written numerous short stories, and his first novel, Sherlock Holmes: The Adventure of The Pigtail Twist, was published in 2018. A sequel is nearly complete, which he hopes to publish in the near future. Matthew currently co-owns Harrison & Simmonds, the fifth generation family business, a renowned County tobacconist, pipe and gift shop on Bedford High Street.

Richard Dean Starr has written or edited more than two-hundred articles, columns, stories, books, comics, screenplays, and graphic novels since the age of seventeen. His original fiction and non-fiction has appeared in magazines and newspapers as varied as Cemetery Dance, Science Fiction Chronicle, The Southeast Georgian, The Camden County Tribune, Suspense Magazine, and Starlog. His licensed media tie-in stories have appeared in anthologies including Hellboy: Odder Jobs, Kolchak: The Night Stalker Casebook, Tales of Zorro, The Lone Ranger Chronicles, and The Green Hornet Casebook, just to name a few. In addition, Starr co-authored Unnaturally Normal, the first Kolchak: The Night Stalker/Dan Shamble: Zombie P.I. team up comic book with New York Times bestselling author Kevin J. Anderson, and co-edited the Captain Action comics line with Matthew Baugh. As a recognized film industry script consultant, Starr has contributed to feature motion pictures starring acclaimed actors including Malcolm McDowell, Tom Sizemore, Amber Tamblyn, Haley Joel Osment, Costas Mandylor, Robert Culp, Richmond Arquette, and Zach Galifianakis, among others.

Kevin P. Thornton has experienced a Taliban rocket attack in Kabul and a terrorist bombing in Johannesburg. He lives in Fort McMurray, Alberta, the town that burnt down in 2016. He has been shortlisted for the Crime Writers of Canada Unhanged writing award six times. He’s never won. He was also a finalist for best short story in 2014 – the year Margaret Atwood entered. We’re not saying he has luck issues, but don’t bet on his stock tips. Born in Kenya, Kevin was a child in New Zealand, a student and soldier in Africa, a military contractor in Afghanistan, a forklift driver in Ontario, and an oilfield worker in North Western Canada. He writes poems that start out just fine, but turn ruder and cruder over time. From limerick to doggerel, they earn less than bugger-all, even though they all manage to rhyme. He also likes writing about Sherlock Holmes and dislikes writing about himself in the third person.

Marcia Wilson is a freelance researcher and illustrator who likes to work in a style compatible for the color blind and visually impaired. She is Canon-centric, and her first MX offering, You Buy Bones, uses the point-of-view of Scotland Yard to show the unique talents of Dr. Watson. This continued with the publication of Test of the Professionals: The Adventure of the Flying Blue Pidgeon and The Peaceful Night Poisonings. She can be contacted at: gravelgirty.deviantart.com