Timothy Miller's Blog, page 26
March 15, 2021
M. Vernet/Mr. Holmes
“My ancestors were country squires, who appear to have led much the same life as is natural to their class. But, none the less, my turn that way is in my veins, and may have come with my grandmother, who was the sister of Vernet, the French artist. Art in the blood is liable to take the strangest forms.” --Sherlock Holmes, The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter
March 14, 2021
27A Wimpole
"Much like the fictional professor of phonetics, who famously lived on the same Marylebone street, the property's original owner, Professor Horace Wilson, was a linguistics expert." --The Daily Mail
For Writers
Think of your story as a Rubik's Cube (though each story has a different method of solving, so you can't just memorize one), but you've got to keep twisting and turning and observing the results from every angle. There is one correct solution for each story, one which is satisfying, so don't be afraid to scrap your progress and start all over again.
March 13, 2021
A Book by its cover
By the way, I'm extremely pleased to announce that Jennifer Do, the artist who did such an amazing job on the cover for The Strange Case of Eliza Doolittle, is on board once again for my second endeavor,
The Strange Case of the Dutch Painter. Can't wait to see what Jennifer has up her sleeve up with this time.
March 12, 2021
Birth of a Novel
An article I wrote for Crime Thriller Hound
"So I got an idea. I would write a little detective story. (You can see that I still had Holmes on my mind.) That would give me a reason to lard it with prepositions—which I would leave blank. And I’d populate the story with English characters, probably hoping to make up for my American mutt complex and show those Brits. Characters that even an Italian would be familiar with. So I picked them out of the air. Sherlock Holmes. Henry Higgins and Eliza Doolittle. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I think it was about six pages long, and as I recall Higgins is murdered and Eliza revealed as the culprit, a denouement G.B. Shaw should have thought of. I acted it out for my students and it was a big hit, with them shouting out prepositions right and left."
Bradbury
"I ran up and down the stairs, finding books and quotes to put in my "Fireman" novella. You can imagine how exciting it was to do a book about book burning in the very presence of the hundreds of my beloveds on the shelves. It was the perfect way to be creative; that's what the library does."
Booklist starred review
Somehow I've managed to forget to post Booklist's starred review.
"Suspense, resonant period ambience, vivid and memorable characters, masterful writing based loosely on Conan Doyle’s style, a multilayered plot with references to the works of George Bernard Shaw and Robert Louis Stevenson, and, most of all, Holmes and Watson in a story perfectly suited for them make for a gripping, hugely entertaining, and very satisfying read."
