The Sherlockian Interview - David Marcum
Posted by Steve Emecz on
The final four volumes (49-52) of The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories are now on Kickstarter (click here). Every day we will be featuring one of the authors in the collection. Today its David Marcum.
What’s the name of your story in the collection?
I actually have four stories – one in each of the four volumes:
o “The Adventure of the Flatigious Sire” (Part 49)
o “The Indiscriminate Paragraph” (Part 50)
o “The Uncle’s Cryptic Clues” (Part 51)
o “The Clue of the Undamaged Stones” (Part 52)
How did the stories come about?
As the editor of the books, I could see what the breakdown was going to be in terms of how many volumes and what years they would cover. From that, I knew how many stories I planned to write, and when they would occur so that I’d have one story per volume. I don’t ever outline, so for each one, I opened a new Word document and let Watson start dictating to me . . . .
Where did you first discover Holmes?
In 1975, when I was ten years old, I had an abridged copy of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, but hadn’t yet read it. Then one rainy Saturday afternoon, I saw part of A Study in Terror (1965) on television, remembered that I had a Holmes book, and started reading it. And there was no going back.
Are there any writers/adaptations of Holmes you particularly enjoy?
I think that there are many great pastiche writers, and many provide better stories than some of what’s in The Canon. Having created and edited these books, and having worked with over 200 contributing authors from all over the world, I’m not going to get in trouble by listing some and forgetting to mention others. To me, anyone who writes more traditional Canonical stories about the True Sherlock Holmes is enjoyable and wonderful!
Do you write on any other subjects?
As a more-than-full-time civil engineer, I write in my spare time – and for the last decade that’s been mostly about Holmes. I’ve written and published 135 Holmes stories (so far) and 36 Solar Pons stories, and edited around 1,200 Holmes stories and over 100 books, along with a lot of essays and blog entries. Back when I was previously employed as a U.S. Federal Investigator in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, I wrote a Ludlumesque adventure novel, 600+ pages, based on my old job – but it resides, unpublished, in my old government briefcase under my bed. It’s Cold War exciting, but a generation out of date – although the bad guys were evil then and they still are right now – and it taught me the secret to writing: Put your butt in the chair and do it.
Where can fans find more about your work?
My Amazon page - David Marcum
My blog – “A Seventeen Step Program”:
My MX Publishing page - David Marcum Author Page