What connects Sherlock Holmes, W. G. Grace, Peter Pan, and the Mary Celeste? Our previous collection of Sherlock Holmes facts proved so popular when we posted it back in May that we decided to write a sequel. This seems especially timely since the hit BBC TV series Sherlock will be returning for a third series in a few weeks. So here we are: ten more facts about Sherlock Holmes and his creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
1. The original name of Dr Watson was Ormond Sacker. In the early drafts for plot outlines, Doyle has Holmes’s friend and sidekick named ‘Ormond Sacker’ rather than the altogether more common and humdrum John Watson. Doyle must have realised that Watson’s everyman status was better served by a more down-to-earth and usual name, and altered it. Which brings us to our second fact …
Here is the 23rd installment of Ten Top Lists of What Not to Do by Marie Ann Bailey of 1WriteWay at http://1writeway.com and John W. Howell of Fiction Favorites at http://johnwhowell.com. These lists are simu-published on our blogs each Monday. We hope you enjoy.
10. If you are buying a gift for a girlfriend, do not plan to give clothes unless you are double dog sure of the sizes. If you’re lucky, you buy something too small and she feels bad (yet happy) because you think she’s smaller than she really is. If you’re unlucky, you buy something too big and she makes you feel bad for thinking that she’s bigger than she really is.
9. If you are buying a gift for a boyfriend, do not plan to give him one of those latest mechanical gifts from an on-line gadget store. Best case: he won’t be able to figure out what it is for and will feel stupid. Worst case: he will know what it is for since he already has one.
8. If you are getting a gift for a mother-in-law, do not plan to re-gift something you received from a family member or even a complete stranger. In the best case, you’ll have left the gift receipt in the box with last year’s date. In the worst case, it will be the very gift your mother-in-law gave you two years ago. To make it even more embarrassing, you raved about how perfect the gift was when you got it.
7. If you are buying a gift for a father-in-law, do not plan to give any kind of hat. The best case is your mother-in-law will tell him he looks ridiculous in it. The worst case is he will actually like it and wear it just to spite the mother-in-law, and then you will be on the hook for the resulting friction.
6. If you are buying a gift for a spouse, do not plan to give them anything they asked for when you asked what they wanted for Christmas. At best, your spouse will consider the gift as a no brainer on your part and wonder why you didn’t get something else. At worst, your spouse will have changed their mind and you now have a new door stop.
5. If you want to give a gift to a teen-ager, do not buy anything. Simply give them the money you would have spent. If you do buy an unwanted gift, the best you can hope for will be an eye-roll followed by the teen-ager getting a cash refund for the gift. At the worst, you’ll soon find the gift, with the gift sticker still affixed, at your local thrift store.
4. If you are buying a gift for a co-worker, do not buy any intimate apparel or anything that could be considered personal. In the best case, you will be thought of as “kind of creepy.” In the worst case, you will be explaining to Human Resources what you had intended by the gift.
3. If you buying a gift for the postal person, do not give anything you have baked. The postal employee is fully capable of putting their own cookie together. At best, you will see your baked goods handed off to the next mailbox on your street. At worst, you will wonder why your mail stopped after the holidays.
2. If you are buying a gift for a white elephant gift exchange, do not buy anything you might not want to take home. The best case is you manage to avoid being stuck with what you brought. The worst case is you will be the proud owner of the gift you brought which then you will have to store away until next year or gift to your mother-in-law.
1. If you are buying a gift for your boss, do not try to keep up with his tastes. Simply get a gift card from Amazon and let him pick up a book. The best case is whatever you give other than the gift card will never cost enough. The worst case is you might actually spend enough to find out your boss has one of what you bought. Unless it is a new Ferrari, you will never recover.
It has been an absolute honour and a privilege, once again, to be entrusted with the publishing of such incredible work.
I am continually amazed at the diversity of work that is submitted each month, no two pieces are the least alike. It has been wonderful to see how people have interpreted the ‘Culture’ theme, I have had a fascinating insight into some incredible cultural phenomenon’s across the globe.
It has been quite a difficult week for me over here in my little corner of the globe, but I am thrilled to finally publish the very last issue of The Paperbook Collective for 2013.
This is so cool! This new website, That Part Where, is a great place for authors to promote their books and for readers to find new books. Take the path through Kevin’s post to find out more :)
My feature at That Part Where is live now, and looks great! To reiterate, at this site you get to highlight a scene from your book — any scene at all — set it up with text that you write, and link to a purchase site and other places where you have a web presence. With any luck, someone new finds your book and buys it.
The good folks at That Part Where also do some promoting for you via their Facebook page and Google Ads.
All for $10.
Let me know what you think, and spread this around too! Reblog this post, tweet it, tell your ma, tell your pa, sing it from the nearest hilltop!
A fun (and interesting) post on the meeting of high brow and low brow culture through the work of Martin Amis. [I admit that I have never read anything by Amis. Well, I did start to read a short story once, but his long and graphic description of a pilot pooping in his pants put a damper on my interest in reading more.]
An amusement arcade is perhaps the last place you would expect to find someone like Martin Amis, one-time enfant terrible of English literature and formerly respectable Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Manchester. Notoriously witty, erudite, baffling, and perhaps a little bit unpleasant, it’s hard to imagine this vocal mouthpiece chuntering at a game of Space Invaders rather than at the literary establishment, bashing big red buttons rather than his keyboard.
However, in the early years of the 1980s, Martin Amis did indeed play Space Invaders, even writing a little-known strategy book about it, Invasion of the Space Invaders: An Addict’s Guide to Battle Tactics, Big Scores and the Best Machines, a work whose “shameful presence” was revived by Mark O’Connell in an article in 2008. When Nicolas Lezard of The Guardian reminded the mature Amis of the…
Recently good friend and fellow blogger John W. Howell had a short story published in an online zine, The Paperbook Collective. (Okay, it was back in August, but at my age, it feels just like yesterday.) I was intrigued by the old-fashioned typeface used in the zine and the seemingly quirky personality of its creator (she made a Christmas out of books). So I decided to purchase a copy of the issue. Here’s what I got in the mail, all the way from Australia.
The magazine, a card, and a bookmark!Up close and personal with the magazine.And a cool card that I might keep for myself, but display for others to enjoy :)And a cool bookmark! One cannot have too many of those!And of course, the short story.
I encourage all my readers to immediately head over to The Paperback Collective and start perusing the past and current issues. Even better, click here and purchase hard copies of The Paperbook Collective and support Jayde Ashe in her effort to publish good writing and art work.
Kudos to Kevin Brennan for his relentless search for websites on which to promote his latest novel, Yesterday Road. This is from the About page of his recent find, BookPinning.com: “Our mission is to support and connect book lovers everywhere!”
I found this site in my wanderings and decided to give it a try. It’s called BookPinning.com, and for free it will feature your book cover image and link of choice (e.g., to Amazon). There are also some paid options, like Book of the Day, which apparently gives you a larger image at the top of the page.
Every little bit helps, I’m thinking. Check it out!
Kudos to Kevin Brennan for his relentless search for websites on which to promote his latest novel, Yesterday Road. This is from the About page of his recent find, BookPinning.com: “Our mission is to support and connect book lovers everywhere!”
I found this site in my wanderings and decided to give it a try. It’s called BookPinning.com, and for free it will feature your book cover image and link of choice (e.g., to Amazon). There are also some paid options, like Book of the Day, which apparently gives you a larger image at the top of the page.
Every little bit helps, I’m thinking. Check it out!
If you haven’t yet discovered the Advent calendar of essays over at Essay Daily, let us be the first to show you the way. Smart thinkers who write well explore various facet of the form, each and every day of Advent.
Well that’s three out of four, and the fourth, from Phillip Lopate himself, is pretty nifty as well. Bookmark the site — they’ll be adding new gifts every day for a few more weeks.
Marie at 1 Write Way 
