(Actual quote: “What I learned to do many years ago was to forgive myself. It is very important for every human being to forgive herself or himself because if you live, you will make mistakes – it is inevitable. … If we hold on to the mistake, we can’t see our own glory in the […]
While this project is called “Writers Gone Wild: The Sequel” — or maybe “Writers Gone Wilder” — this anecdote is probably one of the mildest, but only because Dave Barry was ahead of his time in making an ass of himself on the Internet before the invention of social media turned it into the French […]
Today’s parody comes from the latest volume in the 223B Casebook series: “Sherlock Holmes Jazz Age Parodies and Pastiches I: 1920-1924.” (Amazon Kindle)Stories from the 223B casebook — stories published during Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s lifetime (plus later ones I liked) — are published here every Wednesday. The list of those published at PlanetPeschel can […]
An excerpt from “Writers Gone Wild 2: The Sequel” a work in progress One of the great novelists of his time, Charles Dickens wrote with feeling and even rage about abandonment, poverty, and the hard life of orphans. That’s because he learned about the hard life of Victorian Britain firsthand, courtesy of his feckless father […]
The heart wants what it wants, Woody Allen said, and to J. R. Ackerley, the English memoirist and editor, it was Queenie. She was everything he wanted in a lover. She was also a German shepherd. For 30 years, the Cambridge-educated Ackerley (1896-1967) was a cultural gatekeeper at the BBC. As literary editor of the […]
What’s this? Sherlock Holmes turning Japanese? Is this cultural appropriation? If it is (and I don’t care to be honest), it’s done right. Introduced in September on HBO Go (but also found on YouTube, at least for now), “Miss Sherlock” (8 episodes) reimagines Conan Doyle’s duo as women sharing a flat in Tokyo. The recipe […]
A few years back, Lee Goldberg and William Rabkin created the Dead Man world and let a number of great writers play in their horror series. They were pretty nifty shockers, definitely R-rated, and I enjoyed them a lot. When Kindle Worlds opened, they let other writers join in, and I contributed “Hell’s Casino.” I […]
As y’all know, I have a pash for Dorothy L. Sayers. She is one of my favorite mystery writers. While I haven’t been keeping up with the Wimsey Annotations as I should (I have been trying as of late, but that is another post), people still seem to find it useful. But she was not […]
Agatha Christie seems to be undergoing a mini-revival of sorts. Last year, we had Kenneth Branaugh’s all-star version of “Murder on the Orient Express” (in my top 2 of OE movies, vying neck-and-neck with David Suchet’s). We saw this in the theater, because that’s the best way to tell Hollywood to bring us more movies […]
Mixing business with pleasure, we attended the Scintillation of Scions 2018 at a hotel near the BWI airport recently. Rather than drive down Saturday from Hershey, Teresa and I elected to spend the night at the hotel. This gave us a chance to scout out the location and meet some of the Sherlockians who will […]