Posting Begins Tomorrow!

[holmesticemods]

The schedule is built, we're collecting the very last of the works, and we're ready to begin posting tomorrow, Dec 1st! (Or, depending on your time zone: today, Dec 1st!)

This round, we have forty-six works in fifteen universes -- many of which are new to the exchange this round! Because we have so many works, we're extending posting by a day: posting will run December 1st through December 15th. The guessing post will go up December 16th, and reveals will remain as scheduled on December 21st. (Can you squeeze all your guessing shenanigans into five days? We trust that you can!) Most days we will post three works; we'll try to keep them well-spaced, but we trust you'll understand if mod schedules cause the posts to skew one way or another. :-)

Please remember that all gifts are anonymous until reveals on the 21st. Creators may reply to comments on AO3 (which protects your anonymity); creators may not reply to comments on Dreamwidth.

Also, we accept treats right through until reveals: if you feel like making something extra for someone, whether you were assigned to them or not, please don't hesitate to get in touch with the mods. (holmesticemods at gmail dot com)

Happy Holmestice, everyone! Have fun reading, viewing, admiring, and commenting!

Comments

[starfishstar]

\o/ YAY. \o/

(and 15 'verses, omg!!)

[sanguinity ( as admin)]

I keep recounting it and coming up with fifteen! We'll have a moreholmes offering nearly every day. There isn't nearly as much diversity in pairings, but there will be at least a gen work every day.

Of course, all I've done is look at the headers -- I'm as excited as you are to get to dig into the works themselves!

[luthienberen]

I'm very excited, especially for moreholmes offerings!

[sanguinity ( as admin)]

The moreholmes offerings have a nice spread to them, too: older sources, newer sources; Victorian-set, contemporary set; Anglophone sources, non-Anglophone sources; some diversity in race and gender... Not much in the way of pastiche this time, but otherwise it's a nice sampling of what the Holmesian multiverse has to offer.

[luthienberen]

Oh a very promising spread! I haven't read many pastiches yet though I would like to try some. It is just difficult to know which ones might be good (and showcase Holmes & Watson's friendship well) - I should go through the lists and note down the pastiches mentioned maybe.

Pastiche Recommendations

[sanguinity]

Nicholas Meyer's Seven Per-Cent Solution has a Holmes and Watson that are devoted to each other. (Even though the relationship is under considerable stress due to Holmes' drug problem. But in many ways, "under stress" is an opportunity to show just how strong the relationship is.) And I remember being very happy with the Holmes and Watson relationship in Lyndsay Faye's Dust and Shadow.

We should get graycardinal and language_escapes into this thread; they both read a lot of pastiche and are likely to have recs.

Re: Pastiche Recommendations

[luthienberen]

Oh thank you for the recs! They sound terrific. Some reading material lol =^_^=

[graycardinal]

[finds likely-looking entry point into the thread]

Oddly enough, "showcasing the friendship" is not an angle at which I tend to approach my reading of published pastiche, at least not directly -- but one thing I do look for and value is a tonal resonance in an author's Watsonian prose that properly matches that of Conan Doyle. A surprising number of generally well-regarded newer pastiches fail this test, notwithstanding jacket blurbs that claim the author has truly captured the Holmesian atmosphere.

So: Of the four or five giant rat tales I've encountered (and it turns out there are at least as many more that I haven't), I am most fond of one of the first, Richard Boyer's The Giant Rat of Sumatra, for NOT being a "spectacle" book. (I also recommend Fred Saberhagen's The Holmes-Dracula File, which covers some of the same territory, but Watson's role in that one is fairly minimal.)

Larry Millett's series of novels featuring Holmes and Watson in the US (most often Minnesota, Millett's own home territory) are meticulously researched, ingeniously plotted -- and do a very good job of retaining the proper dynamic between the duo, I think. The series starts with Sherlock Holmes and the Red Demon.

And you could do much worse than look up the "Solar Pons" series by August Derleth, consisting of a half-dozen volumes of short stories plus a novel. Even though Pons and his biographer (Dr. Lyndon Parker) are half a generation younger and written by an American, what makes these eminently and agreeably readable is that Derleth damn near perfectly echoes the Holmes/Watson relationship dynamic in the characterizations. The Pons stories are absolutely pastiche, not parody -- though they *are* just a touch lighter in tone overall than the Canon proper.

[luthienberen]

Thank you graycardinal! I admit to being rather delighted to discover that some authors have delved into the giant rat tale.

I will add these to my to-read list :D.

[rachelindeed]

Holmes and Watson's friendship is also the first thing I tend to look for in any published pastiche, and it's not exactly a strength in many of the ones I've encountered, unfortunately. However, I do have a few favorites, so I'll just add my 2 cents to this thread, too :)

First, I'd just like to second the recommendation for The Seven-Percent Solution. It's my favorite published pastiche and I think it does a lovely job with Holmes and Watson, and has a number of genuinely moving scenes.

Another story I liked much more than I was expecting to was Stephen King's "The Doctor's Case." It's not a novel, it's just a short story, but it's a story quite unlike what you might have expected from Stephen King. Not only is it not at all a horror story, it actually goes all the way to the other side of the spectrum and reads as lightly comedic much of the time. But it's also essentially a case fic, a perfect locked room mystery, and the hook is that it's the only case that Watson himself solved before Holmes did. Stephen King writes both Watson and Holmes with intelligence, warmth, and humor, shows that they both respect each other, and manages some gently bittersweet moments alongside the neat plot and funny asides. He even does well by Lestrade. I really enjoy it, and it reads very much like a piece of fanfiction, it's so clearly written with great love for the characters. I'm not sure whether it's been published on its own, electronically or otherwise, but I encountered it as part of an anthology called The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes edited by Martin Harry Greenberg and Carol-Lynn Rossel Waugh.

I haven't yet caught up with Marcia Wilson's published versions of her Scotland Yard stories (the Test of the Professionals series and You Buy Bones), but I read them a decade ago when they were still fanfics over on fanfiction.net, and they were simply fantastic. They are much more focused on Lestrade and the other Yarders than they are on Holmes and Watson, but she writes Holmes and Watson wonderfully whenever they do appear. I can't remember if these series cover the time of Watson's marriage or whether that was in her other fics, but she writes a lovely Mary when she does appear, and Lestrade's wife Clea is a central and marvelous character. Plus she brings all the Scotland Yard inspectors to life with great characterization and a lot of historical detail.

Most of Carol Nelson Douglas's Irene Adler novels don't feature Holmes and Watson very much, so I must guiltily admit that I kind of skimmed through them back when I was in high school and thus don't have a strong memory of the series as a whole to share with you. However, I do remember that one of the books in that series, Irene at Large, had a plot that drew Holmes and Watson closer into Irene's investigation because it turned out that events during Watson's Afghanistan experience at Maiwand were central to the story. I seem to remember thinking that that book had some nice moments in it.

I'm not as widely-read as many of our participants, but those are some of the pastiches that have stuck in my mind over the years :)

[luthienberen]

Thank you rachelindeed! Yes, out of the few pastiches I've encountered most fail the Holmes & Watson friendship test.

Thanks for the recs, particularly Stephen King as he is an author I avoid, but his SH story sounds readable for me!

Ah I admit you're not alone, I tend to skim or skip any story not focused on H or W.

[language_escapes]

Okay, I recognize that I am LITERALLY a month late to this thread, but... I read a lot of pastiches, and better late than never?

First, I would like to second what many of the others have said. Seven-Per-Cent Solution is a wonderfully plotted story, and Watson and Holmes and their friendship are at the center of it. As noted, it starts as a bit strained, but we get there!

Dust and Shadow by Lyndsay Faye is fantastic, and I would also recommend her short story collection, The Whole Art of Detection, because they are all AMAZING, and Faye really gets the dynamic between Holmes and Watson. Seriously. THE BEST.

Like graycardinal, I love Millett's series; I read them as a child and by books are falling apart at this point from frequent re-reads.

Marcia Wilson's books, You Buy Bones and Test of the Professionals (parts I and II) are fabulous, well worth the read. While they focus on the Yarders, primarily, the Yarders primarily interact with Watson and so we get a lovely portrait of how awesome Watson is. And when Holmes appears, he is usually with Watson, and they are lovely together.

Now for some others...

If you don't mind reimaginings, Elizabeth Eulberg's The Great Shelby Holmes series as some great stuff between Watson and Shelby. In this series, Holmes is a nine-year-old girl and John is an eleven-year-old Black boy who is new to the area, and they meet and solve cases together. These are middle grade books, but they're so lovely, and Shelby gets that she needs to learn from Watson, and Watson works hard at learning deduction, and they care about each other very, very much.

I might also recommend Robert Ryan's Dr John Watson series, which starts with Dead Man's Land. These books take place post-Last Bow, and while the primary focus is Watson's work during WWI, Holmes does start showing up, and their history and friendship (and complications - they start the series not really talking) are important to the books. But it's also great to get books that center on Watson, should you be interested. They are war stories, notably, so if war is hard for you, avoid. They do not pull any punches about war sucking hard.

There are also a number of other pastiches that I consider to be good, but they fall either outside or on the edges of the Watson-Holmes friendship interest. For example, A Study in Honor by Claire O'Dell is an excellent futuristic reimagining of Holmes and Watson as Black women, but in the first book Holmes doesn't necessarily know how to be a friend yet; she's a bit too manipulative and selfish for some people's tastes. Additionally, I love Michelle Birkby's series, which starts with The House at Baker Street, but that series is all about Mary Watson and Mrs Hudson, with Holmes and Watson in the background. I also enjoy Carole Bugge's books, but I honestly don't remember if they were ACTUALLY good, or just better than whatever I'd been reading at the time...?

So those are some of my thoughts on Holmesian pastiches!

[luthienberen]

Thank you for your recommendations language_escapes! Any time is a good time to jump in :D

I really must try Lyndsay Faye clearly! Thanks for all the pastiches, it is astonishing how many are out there.

[starfishstar]

Hang on, gen every day? That's fantastic. Between that and so many 'verses, it sounds like this Holmestice is going to be a wonderful mix!

[sanguinity ( as admin)]

There might be a day right at the very end where we don't? (We're still three works down; we'll see what comes in.) And I'm trusting that people are using tags correctly in their headers; I haven't read anything, and tag usage varies. But with those caveats, it's looking a lot like there's going to be a gen work every day.

[sanspatronymic]

~*After all there’s only one more sleep til Holmestice!*~

[796116311389]

I'm super excited to see what everyone's created! :D

[write_out]

I've been looking forward to this so much!

Thank you

[elwinglyre]

This will be fun and I want to thank you for all the hard work you've put into organizing this year after year!

Re: Thank you

[holmesticemods]

You're very welcome! It's the participants who make it a joy to mod. :-)

Oh the excitement!

[belle82devart]

This has to be such a highlight to my holidays and I CANNOT WAIT to see what all is posted. From what I've seen so far, all seems to be bloody amazing! You guys are SO AWESOME!

[a_different_equation]

This is amazing! So many universes, so many new stories to discover. Thank you for hosting Holmestice once again. The game is afoot :)