This book received very good reviews. The irony of it is that although I took great care to not reference Lovecraft or the Cthulhu Mythos in any way, most people still viewed it as having that connection. In fact, one reviewer went as far to state, “A great Cthulhu Mythos themed book, although Cthulhu is not mentioned once during the story.” Such is the influence, I suppose, that Lovecraft continues to have on literature.
Which brings us to the last of the Holmes books – there were other crossovers, but they did not involve Holmes – a story published as Sherlock Holmes & the Coils of Time.
I wanted to write another book and Gary wanted me to write another, but I had no story idea trying to force its way out of my mind and onto paper. However, I had lately read Conan Doyle’s The Adventure of the Empty House, the tale that ended the Great Hiatus and returned Holmes to the land of the living.
It’s a good story, no doubt about that, but as I re-read it, I was again troubled by certain plot elements. Why did a murder bring Holmes back from exile when, no doubt, there had been other, just as perplexing murders in the ensuing three years? Colonel Sebastian Moran had been a scoundrel all his life, and his crimes were legion, so why now? And since Moran knew Holmes was back in London, and would have surely posted a guard to watch his old lodgings on Baker Street, how could a wax bust fool him? There is always the temptation to blame Watson when elements of a Holmes story don’t make sense (after all, he could not keep his dates, his wives or the location of his bullet-wound straight), but I wondered if there was not something else going on, something behind the scenes. What if, I thought, the story is nothing more than a façade for other events, a theme used in Philip Jose Farmer’s The Other Log of Phileas Fogg. It seemed to me that for Conan Doyle’s story to work out Holmes would have to be in two places at once. And then I had my story…
Sherlock Holmes had to be involved with the Time Traveller from H.G. Wells’ famous novel. In an instant, as so often happens with me, I had my story; and, as so often also happens to me, it took more than half a year to set that flash of inspiration on paper, much of that time spent researching the times, places and peoples.
In this book, as with the previous two, much of my time was devoted to research. I’ve always felt that though no one should go to fiction for facts, no one should expect errors either. The streets, the buildings, the addresses…all are depicted as they were in 1893. But, thankfully, there were no Morlocks then…as far as we know.
So, why reprint this new edition? The blame rests on Hurricane Sandy. When it struck New England in 2012, one of the places flooded was Gary Lovisi’s basement in Brooklyn, where he stored all Gryphon publications. With everything destroyed and no money for reprints (the government was quick to pay off unions and dole out money to cronies, but nothing for a great American institution), Gary was hard pressed just to pick up things and carry on with future books, and all my work was suddenly out of print.
Silver lining time: revise it, reformat it, add some new work, and bring it back into print, safe from everything short of an EMP.
Once again, the game is afoot!
Note to the Reader
Thanks very much for reading Sherlock Holmes: The Coils of Time & Other Stories. I hope you enjoyed the title story as well as the other tales which examined not only the character of Sherlock Holmes, but the concept and influence of the Great Detective. Please consider leaving a review on Amazon and, perhaps, other sites you may frequent, such as Good Reads or Kindle Reviews. If you are interested in following my work, please subscribe to my author’s page on Amazon, track my reviews on Good Reads, like my pages on Facebook, or follow me on Twitter.
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Sherlock Holmes: The Coils of Time & Other Stories (Sherlock Holmes Adventures Book 1) Page 21
