Sherlock Holmes and Arthur Conan Doyle Books

Sherlock’s Home (Undershaw) - Final Weeks Before Judges Decision

Some wonderful coverage yesterday from several national newspapers and on national television for the fight to Save Undershaw.

A very visual symbol of the campaign has been Sherlock’s Home - the book put together in record time (under 3 weeks) with over 50 contributors including Stephen Fry, Mark Gatiss and Douglas Wilmer - and with more than 30 new Sherlock Holmes stories.

Fans drove the book up to #710 on Amazon UK and high also in the Kindle charts - we have a few weeks left before the judges decision, and the book royalties will provide much needed funds for the Undershaw Preservation Trust - and at the same time create lots of awareness.

For those of you that want to help - here are some very easy steps that in total take less than a minute to do;

1. Click ‘like’ on the Save Undershaw Facebook page.

2. Click ‘like’ on Sherlock’s Home on Amazon USA and Amazon UK., Amazon Kindle USA, Amazon Kindle UK, Book Depository (free worldwide delivery),Waterstones.

A huge thankyou to all the fans that have done this and especially to all the Holmes bloggers on tumblr for the amazing awareness you are all creating.

Sherlock’s Home (Undershaw) Decision in July

After hearing the case for and against destroying Undershaw, a really nice touch from the judge as he commended the Holmes supporters who had sat in silence for seven hours - every single seat in the public gallery was full with Save Undershaw supporters, led by Lynn Gale.

We understand the decision will be in July.

Watch out for articles in the Daily Express, Times and others who sent photographers to the High Court and on national TV any moment now as the reporter interviewed chairman of the trust John Gibson for the evening news.

You can still help - we’ve managed to Sherlock’s Home to number 726 on the bestseller list, I am sure we can get it higher.

1. Click ‘like’ on the Save Undershaw Facebook page.

2. Click ‘like’ on Sherlock’s Home on Amazon USA and Amazon UK.

Amazon Kindle USA, Amazon Kindle UK, Book Depository (free worldwide delivery),Waterstones.

All royalties go to the Undershaw Preservation Trust. 50 copies of the book were given out tofans who turned up at the High Court for the judicial review. Watch out for us all in the national newspapers (several nationals here this morning).

Share, reblog, tweet like mad while we have this important press coverage……

3 hours into the final fight for Sherlock’s Home

1. Click ‘like’ on the Save Undershaw Facebook page.

2. Click ‘like’ on Sherlock’s Home on Amazon USA and Amazon UK.

Amazon Kindle USA, Amazon Kindle UK, Book Depository (free worldwide delivery), Waterstones.

All royalties go to the Undershaw Preservation Trust. 50 copies of the book were given out tofans who turned up at the High Court for the judicial review. Watch out for us all in the national newspapers (several nationals here this morning).

Share, reblog, tweet like mad for the next 24 hours……

PK Jones reviews Sherlock Holmes and The Adventure of The Jacobite Rose

Sherlock Holmes is used in education all over the world, and today the first in a series of new Sherlock Holmes plays is launched. ‘Sherlock Holmes and The Jacobite Rose’ by Fiona-Jane Brown is a 2-Act play with eleven characters and ideal for schools and colleges for the classroom and for performance. Below is a detailed review from leading Holmes reviewer PK Jones who maintains the world’s largest database of Sherlock Holmes works (many thousands).

Information on the performance rights can be downloaded here.

“I would enjoy seeing a performance of this play, given a competent production company.  The author has a distinct view and the familiar characters, other than Mycroft, are handled well”.

The review in full:

“This over-sized Trade Paperback is actually a script for a 2-Act play.  To a reviewer, commenting on a play-script is a difficult task.  It takes a different mind-set and viewpoint to see and appreciate the possibilities presented by a script than it does to evaluate a book.   Books, after all, are complete presentations, but a play requires the artistic talents of a director, of set and costume designers and of a cast of individual actors to produce a complete experience for the audience.

Keeping those limitations in mind, I can only give an opinion of this work that comes from my own, limited artistic abilities and experiences with the world of the theater.  I read a script that has amusing points and a modest amount of action.  The characters were strongly described and the dialogue was mostly sensible and to the point.  No one seemed to be addressing the ages, but rather the lines all aided in telling a story and exposing the views and thoughts of interesting people.

The actual story told is fairly simple, as required to fit into a mere two acts.  The familiar characters, Holmes, Watson and Mrs. Hudson all seemed to fit their pictures as presented in the Canon.  The Mycroft presented here was a bit strange.  His tongue may have been tied by orders from above or he may have been flummoxed by the situation (how???) but he seemed to be separated from the action by more than his professional viewpoint.  One gets the feeling that the situation, for Mycroft, is artificial, and that more is actually in process than is revealed in the play.  Either that, or Mycroft has suffered a stroke or memory loss of some sort and is not functioning at anywhere near his normal level.

The Irish Peer and his family and the various agents and commons involved all do their jobs and the events proceed in sensible and logical fashion.  Holmes makes the necessary deductions and events seem to fall into logical patterns.  Again, the anomaly seems to be Mycroft.  His actions are difficult to understand and his attitudes seem concentrated elsewhere.

I would enjoy seeing a performance of this play, given a competent production company.  The author has a distinct view and the familiar characters, other than Mycroft, are handled well.  There may be reasons for Mycroft’s eccentricities, but they do not show up in the script.”

The book is available from today from all good bookstores including Amazon UK and Amazon Kindle. Coming soon in the USA.

A special ‘Classroom Pack’ containing 12 copies with a saving of £45 is available for schools direct from the publishers - Classroom Pack.

Passion for Sherlock Holmes leads to breaking all publishing records for Save Undershaw

A month ago we met with Sherlockology who told us of an idea to support the Save Undershaw campaign - to create a book containing stories written by fans, authors and celebrities to show their support for the preservation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s home. The campaign is being led by the chairman of the trust John Gibson (a Doyle scholar and author of 5 books on ACD).

We said that a deadline for the submission of stories of the end of the month would open a slim chance to get the book out in time for the judicial review on 23rd May. Modern publishing is fast, but get Sherlock’s Home: The Empty House out in less than a month from scratch? A step too far?

To put the size of the challenge into context, in just a month the team had to:

- Collect at least 50+ stories and contributions so we could get 20 good ones for the book

- Read and score all the stories with a ranking system

- Contact key reknowned members of the Holmesian world for their messages of support (emails flying around with assistants, agents etc)

- Compile and format the book

- Get permission to use actors on the cover (we wanted for the first, and perhaps last time, to have 4 generations of Holmes feature on a book cover)

- Format and load all the book systems including all the metadata creation

- Re-format the book into eBook format for Kindle etc

- Print the books and have them delivered to the book distributors, books tores and importantly to the campaigners ahead of the 23rd May review.

We agreed to give it a go, and Sherlockology promoted the competition to their fans, as did Save Undershaw and many of the fan groups on Facebook etc. We had lots of support from blogs like Dollymix , The Baker Street Babes, and The Radio Times, and many specialist Holmes bloggers on tumblr - so much support in fact that we hit a major issue.

There were nearly 400 serious entries by the end of April - ranging from short poems to comprehensive stories of a dozen pages. The team were amazed by the response, and as we had received several entries from our own MX Publishing authors we couldn’t take part in the judging. We’re very grateful to leading Holmes actors that took time out of their busy schedules to write pieces - Giles Brandreth, Robert Lewellwyn, Nick Briggs, Douglas Wilmer and many more, plus permission from Mark Gatiss and Stephen Fry to use their previous words of support. Roger Johnson from the Sherlock Holmes Society of London was a huge help liaising and connecting the team with lots of key people in the Holmes world.

Somehow the Sherlockology judging team ably assisted by Jacquelynn Morris and Alistair Duncan - Jacquelynn in particular reading and marking a staggering 200+ stories - working mornings and evenings, and on several occaisions through the night, managed to read and score all the entries and with 10 days to go, we had the ingredients for the book. Two 20-hour days of compiling and editing, again largely by the Sherlockology team, and we had a book, but we were still up against it.

With a week left we still had to set up and print book. Normally it takes several days to proof and process the files for books, but the wonderful team at our distributors on hearing about the cause turned around the digital files in 24 hours (thanks Julie), as did the ebook team (thanks Matt) and the files were in.

6 days to go and we still were cutting it fine as we had to get the physical books printed and for the team at Amazon to process the Kindle files. Once again the wholehearted support for the Save Undershaw cause won through as the printers expedited everything and by Friday night copies of the books were beginning to wing their way out to bookstores and distributors in the UK and USA - hopefully they will arrive on Tuesday with 1 day spare. Kudos to the team at Amazon too who put the Kindle version live in record time.

We believe in agile publishing and in 2012 books certainly can be turned around much faster than the 6-9 months it took in traditional publishing - but the immense achievement of such a complex book with more than 40 contributors, being turned from dream to reality in under a month is something quite special.

In a week where Sherlock Holmes won the Guiness Book of Records record for being the most performed literary character in history, the team broke many records themselves to get the book out - Sherlockology should be rightly proud.

Lets hope on Wednesday that the right decision is made to preserve Undershaw. What this experience has proved beyond a shadow of a doubt is that everyone believes that Undershaw should be saved. You can do your bit by liking the Save Undershaw Facebook page and encouraging as many of your friends to do the same.

Please also click ‘like’ on the book on Amazon UK, Amazon USA, The Book Depository, Waterstones, Amazon Kindle USA and Amazon Kindle UK.

Philip K Jones reviews The Secret Journal of Dr Watson

Extract from Philip K Jones detailed review of The Secret Journal of Dr Watson;

“This is a difficult book to review.  The fantastic nature of the story told makes it almost unbelievable.  Unfortunately, the events recounted occurred in a century of unprecedented espionage and trickery that began with the appointment of an enemy agent as head of intelligence services for the Austro-Hungarian Empire and ended with the routine computer monitoring of all cell phone conversations across the world by the NSA.  During that century, such intelligence ‘coups’ as the Zimmerman Telegram, the Coventry air raid non-warning and the routine killing of marked individuals by umbrellas that shoot tiny, poisoned balls have become commonplace.  Further, from my extensive readings in Twentieth Century history, I must conclude that, however fantastic the details of this adventure, all of the persons involved could  have performed their reported roles, especially those of historical note. 

The book begins with Sherlock and Dr. Watson being escorted to a meeting with Prime Minister David Lloyd George and then with King Edward V.  They are charged with an intensely secret mission and directed to leave the country with no explanations to friends or family.  From this point, the story becomes a study in the double-cross.  At any given time, it is impossible to say who is currently friend and who is foe, as people seem to change orientations so frequently. 

The task requires intense concentration and heavy sacrifice by all involved.  The results are kept secret and the participants are silenced, either by guilt, by death or by other Government action.  Dr. Watson’s account is given to his lawyers in a sealed package only to be read by his descendants after seventy five years.

The narrative in engrossing and the characters are well-drawn.  I was impressed by the realistic representations of several historical characters and I found that the mystery and tension of the narrative carried right up to the final page.  The book is certainly worth reading and it is an interesting Sherlockian mystery.  The presentation of events and personalities is carefully done and seems quite consistent with the known history of the times.  I repeat, things could have happened this way and the people involved could have acted this way”

The Secret Journal of Dr Watson is available for pre order from all good bookstores worldwide including in the USA  Barnes and Noble, and in the UK Amazon.

The book is also available on Amazon Kindle and all good electronic formats.

You can watch a video review at No Place Like Holmes.