I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere 

Interview with Richard Ryan

Scott Monty:
Support for this episode of I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere is brought to you by MX
Publishing, with the largest catalog of new Sherlock Holmes books in the world,
new novels, biographies, graphic novels and short story collections about Sherlock
Holmes. Find them at mxpublishing.com.

Burt Wolder:
And by the Wessex Press, the premier publisher of books about Sherlock Holmes
and his world. Find them online at wessexpress.com.

Scott Monty:
I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere Episode 211: Dear Holmes.

Narrator:
In a world where it's always 1895 comes I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere, a podcast
for devotees of Mr. Sherlock Holmes, the world's first unofficial consulting
detective. The game's afoot as we discuss goings on in the world of Sherlock
Holmes enthusiasts, the Baker Street irregulars and popular culture related to the
great detective. So join your hosts Scott Monty and Burt Wolder as they talk
about what's new in the world of Sherlock Holmes.

Scott Monty:
Well hello there and welcome once again to I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere, the
first podcast for Sherlock Holmes devotees where it's always 1895. I'm Scott
Monty.

Burt Wolder:
I'm Burt Wolder.

Scott Monty:
And Burt, how are you this fine last day of February when we are coming to our
listeners two days early?

Burt Wolder:
I'm ahead of myself actually. I passed myself in the hall on the way to get to my
microphone and I didn't have a good excuse for why I was there, but you know,
it's part of the eagerness, the eagerness and anticipation mixed that characterizes
I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere.

Scott Monty:
February is always a happy month here because we get to come to you two days
earlier, well on non-leap years, that is. We publish our show here the 15th and
the 30th of every month, of course it's on the 28th of February, and we enjoy
interviewing interesting people in the world of Sherlock Holmes, and that's
exactly what we're going to do today with Rich Ryan so stay tuned for that in just
a moment.

Scott Monty:
Before we do that I just want to do a little housekeeping, reminding you that this
episode can be found at ihose.co/ihose211, all lowercase. That'll bring you
directly to the show notes on ihearofsherlock.com. You can find us on all social
media as @ihearofsherlock. Leave us comments, give us feedback, promote the
show, whatever you like to do, we like to build the community around your
conversations. And if there are interesting people or interesting things that you
think we should be covering and interviewing then let us know, and you can
certainly reach us via email as well. We are [email protected].

Scott Monty:
Stay tuned later in the show after the interview where we will have our regular
Canonical Couplets quiz. It's an opportunity for you to guess the title of one of the
Sherlock Holmes stories that we're referring to in the oblique way that we do, and
we will have a prize for you. What is that prize? Well, you'll have to tune in after
the interview to understand and find out.

Scott Monty:
A lifelong Sherlockian Richard Ryan is the author of The Vatican Cameos, a
Sherlock Holmes adventure, and A Stone of Destiny, a Sherlock Holmes
adventure. The Druid of Death, Merchant of Venice and Through a Glass Starkly,
all by Rich Ryan. He's currently at work on his sixth Holmes novel, Three May Keep
a Secret. Among his other credits are The Official Sherlock Holmes Trivia Book, a
book on Agatha Christie trivia and the well received murder mystery Deadly
Relations, that has been produced twice Off-Broadway. He pursued his graduate
studies at the University of Notre Dame where he majored in medieval literature.
To this day he remains a diehard fan of the Fighting Irish.

Scott Monty:
An avid reader, Rich grew up devouring the mysteries of John Dickson Carr, and
Agatha Christie, and others of that ilk. He's been involved with newspapers and
magazines for nearly 40 years and he's spent the better part of the last three
decades working for the Staten Island Advance in a variety of editorial capacities.
He retired in July of 2017, and during the years at the Advance he penned two
nationally syndicated columns and his work has appeared in papers all across
America. He's also involved as an editor in the Dear Holmes project, and we're
going to talk with him about that as well as many of his other books. Rich,
welcome to I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere.

Richard Ryan:
Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Scott Monty:
Well, you have a whole lifetime of an interest in mystery and Sherlock Holmes.
Where did you first get acquainted with Sherlock Holmes?

Richard Ryan:
I actually came to Holmes a little bit later. I came to Holmes when I was a
graduate student at Notre Dame. One of my fellow grad students was walking
down the hall with this book thick book and I'm thinking, "Whatever course that's
for, I don't to take." And I asked him what the book was and he said it was The
Complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and I asked him if I could borrow it,
and I borrowed it for about four days and he wanted it back so I immediately
went over to the book store and got my own copy. And so it's been about 40
years we've been together.

Scott Monty:
And how did you find yourself hopping from one story to another? Did you follow
a particular cadence? Did you jump in all at once? Did you enjoy certain
collections of the stories over the others?

Richard Ryan:
I always liked the ones with the great villains. I liked the Charles Augustus
Milverton story, obviously the Moriarty stories, the Culverton Smith. The great
villains are what make the Holmes stories so wonderful for me.

Burt Wolder:
And when, Rich, did you discover there were other people who also were big fans
of Sherlock Holmes?

Richard Ryan:
I think I always knew that but I didn't act and try and communicate with them
until much later. I knew they were out there. I was acquainted years ago with
Otto Penzler when he had the Mysterious Book Shop uptown, but I didn't realize
how much or how rich and how deep the world of Sherlockiana is.

Burt Wolder:
So what was your other readings? It sounds like since you knew Otto when he was
up at 57th Street that you're a lifelong mystery fan, is that so?
Richard Ryan:
I loved John Dickson Carr when I was a kid. I was especially fond of, he had a
series of detectives. He had Sir Henry Merrivale, he had Dr. Gideon Fell, and my
absolute favorite, he didn't do too many books but he was a Frenchman named
Henri Bencolin, who worked for the [Surite 00:08:03] and come to London. And
Bencolin was terrific, he always made him sound a little bit like Mephistopheles,
smoking his cigar and his mustache, he was a character I really admired.

Burt Wolder:
So are you connected to any other fan groups? I don't know if there is a Dickson
Carr society but there's a Nero Wolfe society, certainly.

Richard Ryan:
No. I'm connected to several Sherlock Holmes scions but I can't spread myself to
spin.

Burt Wolder:
Good. No no, well you've got your priorities in the right order. So Rich, when did
you start writing mystery-related stories? Was it Sherlock Holmes that set you off
or did you work in another genre first?

Richard Ryan:
I had a mystery that I started maybe 30 years ago and it was going to be a kind of
a Jack The Ripper tale, and much to my wife's chagrin I never finished it. I got 115
pages in, and no idea where it is now, and I never finished but I said to myself, "At
some point I'm going to write and I'm going to finish a book," and I didn't start
The Vatican Cameos until I was like 63, and it took about 18 months but I got it
done. Nine of the months were spent on research for that.

Scott Monty:
Wow.

Burt Wolder:
And what kind of research? What kind of research did you do?

Richard Ryan:
Well, I had to do a lot of research into the history of the Borgias, into the history
of the art because art plays a big role in The Vatican Cameos, and the creation of
The Sistine Chapel, the life of Michelangelo, the life of Leonardo da Vinci, both of
whom figure prominently. I'm meticulous with my research so I'm always
Googling things like how fast can a horse go, I want to know how far can a horse
travel in two hours. I recently edited a novel where they had Holmes get from
Montpellier, France to Paris in about an hour and I said, "No no, that won't work."
And I went back and I figured out the timetable and it would have taken about 13
and a half hours.

Scott Monty:
Oh, interesting.

Richard Ryan:
So I always check facts.

Scott Monty:
Now does that dovetail with your studies at Notre Dame and medieval literature?
It seems to me there's a confluence of interest there.

Richard Ryan:
There is, and the medieval aspect always seems to work itself into my work. In
The Druid of Death, obviously the whole settling of Great Britain in the prehistoric
period with Stonehenge, that eventually works its way into the monasteries of the
Middle Ages, and then in Through a Glass Starkly the Beowulf manuscript is
imperiled and Holmes, there's only one copy, it survives in the Nowell Codex and
Holmes is tasked with, among other things, locating that which has been pilfered
from the British Library, and something similar is going on in Three May Keep a
Secret with an artifact called The Mérode Cup which is a one of a kind artifact in
the, well then it was the South Kensington Museum, now it's the Victoria and
Albert Museum.

Scott Monty:
That's fascinating. So where do you get your ideas for your books?

Richard Ryan:
I usually just start off with one idea, and as I'm sure you know there are two kinds
of writers, there are plotters and there and there are pantsers, and I'm strictly a
pantser. I have no idea where the book is going when I start. I have just the
vaguest idea and I like to say, I call it the wouldn't it be cool school of writing.
You're sitting there and you're plotting and you're writing a scene and you go,
"Wow, wouldn't it be cool if this happened?" And then you realize, "I can make
this happen," and you do it.

Scott Monty:
I like that.

Burt Wolder:
Well you know, you're drawing on your experience as a lifetime fan of people like
John Dickson Carr, but I don't think Dickson Carr was a pantser.

Richard Ryan:
No.

Burt Wolder:
And your experience as a newspaper man, you know what people want to read
and how to put a sentence together, so you've got all the tools, it sounds like.

Richard Ryan:
Thank you. Yeah, I've always enjoyed writing and it was always the non-fiction
thing with the columns ore the newspaper articles, and this just opened up a
whole new world for me when I decided I was definitely going to do a book. I wish
I had started a long time ago.

Scott Monty:
Yeah that's always the way, right?

Richard Ryan:
Right.

Scott Monty:
Tell us a little bit about your newspaper career. What did you focus on at the
Staten Island Advance?
Richard Ryan:
I was hired to edit the weekend entertainment section, and then after I was there
about 18 months I became the entertainment editor, so I was doing the daily
entertainment page, I was doing the weekend, the Friday section we'd call it, and
then there was the Sunday entertainment section as well. And then after about
14 years my editor called me in and he goes, "How do you feel about working
nights?" And I wasn't too crazy about it so I went home, I talked it over with my
wife, I went back in, I said, "Well, I'm not really crazy." Well he said, "You really
don't have a choice." So then I spent the next maybe three or four years working
nights as the national news editor.

Richard Ryan:
The news editor retired and I became the news editor for the paper for the last
decade or so, so I would put together page one, write headlines, things like that,
which incidentally A Merchant of Menace came from a headline that I had
written. At one point when we were fighting the war on terror, I don't know if you
remember Osama Bin Laden had offered a bounty to his soldiers for every
American they could kill, and my headline was The Merchant of Menace with a
big picture of Osama Bin Laden. And I remember when leaving the Advance I said,
"I might take that with me."

Burt Wolder:
I hate to ask this because I suppose I should know, and I'm not optimistic about
your answer, but what's the current state of the Staten Island Advance? Because
with the digital disruption in media the big losers have been these local papers,
local reporters.

Richard Ryan:
Yeah. They've been making a great push towards the digital end for years and
years. The Advance is a Newhouse paper and they have 60 or 70 papers all over
the country, and for years they resisted a paywall and they've just recently put
one in very much in the model of other papers where you have, I believe it's four
free articles and then if you want to read that fifth article then you have to pay to
subscribe. So I know subscription has dwindled considerably, it was just about
100,000 on Sunday when I saw it and 80,000 during the week, and when I left it
was significantly less.
Scott Monty:
You know Burt, we should think about establishing a paywall on I Hear of Sherlock
Everywhere, although I don't even know if we could get up to the four let alone
the fifth.

Scott Monty:
Well, we will be back after this quick word from our sponsor to talk more with
Rich Ryan. Stay tuned.

Burt Wolder:
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the world of literature ever since 1895. Wouldn't it be great to look through all
those discussions, have all those articles, reviews and commentary in one place
on your bookshelf? Now you can because the Wessex Press has published
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bringing back dozens of long lost commentaries about the chronicles of Sherlock
Holmes. Don't wait until this handsome volume is out of print. Get your copy of
Sherlock Holmes, Conan Doyle and The Bookman right now at wessexpress.com.

Scott Monty:
Okay, we're back talking with Rich Ryan and we are exploring his multiple avenues
of authorship and editorship, and there's a lot more to come so this should be a
good conversation. Rich, you mentioned A Merchant of Menace, The Vatican
Cameos, what's your cadence for putting out books? How long does it take you to
author one and how often do you actually come out with new titles?

Richard Ryan:
I've been fortunate in the sense that once I got through The Vatican Cameos,
which was the most research intensive, I've been able to do about one a year, and
I don't want to push it beyond that because again, there are so many Sherlockian
books coming out that you want to take the time, you want to do a really good
job on because you're up against some very stiff competition and you've got to
bring a quality product to market.

Burt Wolder:
And when you conceive of a book, you mentioned that you're a pantser but
you've read the canon, you've read other authors, so when you look at that first
blank page what characteristics of a typical Sherlock Holmes story do you start
with in your head? Usually many of the Conan Doyle stories, virtually all of them I
think, start on dialogue or very quickly get into conversation. How do you prep for
starting a book?

Richard Ryan:
I don't.

Burt Wolder:
You really are a pantser.

Richard Ryan:
Yes, I really wish that I... I start off with just the vaguest idea and... Like with A
Merchant of Menace, I knew that I wanted to write a story about a Fabergé egg
and I knew that I wanted to have Holmes involved, and that's as far as I got. Then
I sat down and I began to type, I said, "Okay, now we can go here, now we're
going to go there, and I think this could happen." So I really don't plan. I wish I
could because I have a friend, he has those oversized index cards, they're about
almost the size of a sheet of loose leaf, and he plots out everything. Chapter one,
he fills the card both sides, and then chapter two and he fills the card both sides. I
wish I was that organized and disciplined, but I'm not.

Scott Monty:
Do you have anyone with whom you share your ideas or bounce your ideas off of
to help steer the direction? Or are you a complete loner when it comes to this?

Richard Ryan:
I'm pretty much a complete loner. I had a friend, he was a very successful
Broadway playwright and he said to me, and I always remember this, that once
you tell someone what you're doing, he said it's over because they're going to tell
you how wonderful it is and you're going to be happy with that and it's never
going to be as good as it could have been if you hadn't told them. He was a
talented, talented man. Jack Zeeman, his name was.

Scott Monty:
So in addition to your writing, and we'll get to what you're working on next in a
little bit, but in addition to that you're involved with a billion interesting projects.
There is a website that popped up a couple of years ago, maybe three or four
years ago, called Letters of Note, and they partnered with MX Publishing, one of
our sponsors here, to do a program called Dear Holmes. This is ostensibly a, well
you know what, Burt? You are a regular recipient of Dear Holmes. I'd like you to
pick it up and describe from a user standpoint what it is, and then we can talk to
Rich about this involvement.

Burt Wolder:
Well, for Christmas my daughter Jen made me a recipient of Dear Holmes which I
thought was just a great present because I'd heard about it but I hadn't
experienced it. And what happens is over the course of four or five weeks you will
receive a weekly communique that puts you into a Sherlock Holmes adventure,
and in some cases you receive a copy of a note that Sherlock Holmes received, in
some cases you receive a note from Sherlock Holmes to a client or a prospective
client, and so over the course of a couple of weeks you have an opportunity,
letter by letter, to ask yourself, "What's going on here? What might happen
next?"

Burt Wolder:
And this only started for me in January so I've only been through really one case
and that took five letters, and at the end of it you get the denouement. But the
lovely thing about it, we frequently remark when you subscribe to the Baker
Street Journal you can look forward to getting four issues and a Christmas annual
in the mail, the lovely part of it is it does give you something to look forward to
getting in the mail. You get that envelope and off you go. So it's a lot of fun.

Scott Monty:
And it's great. So Rich, tell us about your involvement with Dear Holmes. How did
it come about?

Richard Ryan:
Steve Emecz asked me if I would edit the Dear Holmes before it went to the
company and I said sure. And as Burt said, it's basically four letters to Sherlock
Holmes, and the premise is that each letter should provide the leader with a bit
more of the mystery. Each one contains another clue or clues to the mystery, but
the fourth letter you should have enough information, if you're a real armchair
detective, to solve the mystery. But if you're not a real armchair detective you get
the letter from Sherlock Holmes that says, "Here's what you missed." And it's a lot
of fun.

Scott Monty:
It's kind of like a pen pal meets Encyclopedia Brown, if you will, for lack of a
better...

Richard Ryan:
No, that's a very, very apt description.

Scott Monty:
Yeah. Well, and I think in a lot of ways it captures not only our love of Sherlock
Holmes but perhaps our childlike love of unlocking a mystery, trying to beat the
author to the punch, and I think that's what so many... When Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle, that famous newsreel clip of him in the late 1920s explaining what he was
trying to do with Sherlock Holmes, it was to put everything in front of everyone,
or just about everything in front of everyone and make it seem as if it wasn't a
magic trick, it wasn't as if he came about his conclusion by a lucky chance or a
guess. And that's pretty much what you're doing here with Dear Holmes, isn't it?

Richard Ryan:
It is. They're very difficult to write because you don't want to give too much away.
It's parceling out, "Here's enough to get you started. Okay, you're interested,
here's a little bit more, here's a little bit more, and here's your last helping, you
should have enough to put all this together by now and figure out what's going
on," if it's done well.

Scott Monty:
And do you approach that differently than you approach the stories that you
write?

Richard Ryan:
No, I... Again, I come up with an idea and... I did one that was called The Sporting
Spiritualist and this gentleman, his father was being approached by a spiritualist
who was predicting football games and picking stocks for him, and then as the
letters went on he picked the winner of horse races and he picked the winner of
The British Open. And you're sitting there and you're saying, "Well all right, I can
get the stocks and I can get the football game because it's one or the other, but to
pick the winner of The British Open and to pick the winner of The [Lagarde
00:26:28] Cup, how does that happen?" Well, I'd be happy to tell you if you like.

Burt Wolder:
No.

Scott Monty:
No, we'll leave that to... Hey, what a great incentive for our listeners to subscribe
to Dear Holmes. So when the recipients get their Dear Holmes letters, is there a
feedback mechanism? Can they write back in and give their impression as to how
they found the solution or their reactions to the story?

Richard Ryan:
The company sponsors a featured detective program and they actually encourage
readers to write back, assess the story, tell them what they liked, tell them what
they didn't like, how they solved it, and really it's a very handsome plaque that
they award each month to the featured detective.

Scott Monty:
How fun.

Richard Ryan:
Just Google Dear Holmes blog and it'll come right up.

Scott Monty:
Excellent. Well, we'll put a link to that in the show notes of this episode. So tell us
a little bit more about the projects that you're currently working on. What's
something that stands out?

Richard Ryan:
One of the things I'm really enjoying is I'm editing an anthology of short stories for
[Ballandra 00:27:47] Books, and the title of the anthology is 1881, which was the
year that Holmes and Watson met, the canon began. And the premise of the
anthology and subsequent anthologies is to basically fill in the blanks of the
canon, if you will. In 1881 we know that Holmes and Watson meet, we know they
solve A Study in Scarlet in March, and Watson makes reference to The Resident
Patient occurring near the end of the year. Well, what were they doing the rest of
the year?

Richard Ryan:
When the book comes out you'll know. So there's one case for each month and in
this case we're actually giving you a baker's dozen, we're giving you 13 in the first
book instead of 12. And we've got some nice people involved. David Walker's
written a short story, Craig [inaudible 00:28:44] has written a short story, I've
contributed a short story so we've got some nice people involved working on it.

Scott Monty:
How fun. How fun. Now before we began the recording we were just chatting and
catching up, and you mentioned that you have two young grandchildren.

Richard Ryan:
I do.

Scott Monty:
Talk a little bit about how that has inspired some of your work lately.

Richard Ryan:
Well, I'm really happy. One of the things that I think you want to do, or
Sherlockians want to do, is share Sherlock Holmes, and my granddaughter of two
is not going to listen to A Scandal in Bohemia as I read it. She might listen to it if
Burt read it, I don't know. So I came up with the idea of doing what I call an
alphabet book and it's called, the name of the book is B is For Baker Street (My
First Sherlock Holmes Book). And it's illustrated beautifully, the illustrations are
really, really nice, and each letter has an alphabet block on it and there's a little
flow line rhyme that goes with each one. And children three, four, five, I think,
can go through this and I think Steve is also planning to bring it out as a coloring
book. So it'll be illustrated, if you want the colored version you can, and if you
want to get a coloring book and let your children color in Sherlock Holmes and Dr.
Watson you can do that as well.

Scott Monty:
How fun. Yeah. I had long thought about doing a book like that but in the style of
Edward Gorey and The Gashlycrumb Tinies. I'm so glad that you're doing it though
in a much more child appropriate way.

Richard Ryan:
It's something that I think, that I hope they'll enjoy.

Scott Monty:
Now is that just in process right now?

Richard Ryan:
It's all done.

Scott Monty:
Okay.

Richard Ryan:
The illustrations are all done. I'm hoping to see it within the next month or two.

Scott Monty:
Okay. Now did you do the illustrations too?

Richard Ryan:
No. If I did the illustrations you'd be looking at 26 pages of stickmen.

Scott Monty:
Well, the dancing men, right?

Richard Ryan:
Yes. That's what you'd get. No, it was done by a young woman named Sophia
Asbury and she did a terrific job. The illustrations really are quite beautiful.

Scott Monty:
Ah, great.

Richard Ryan:
Yeah, Watson and Holmes look to be about four or five years old, and Holmes is in
the deerstalker and there's pictures of Mycroft because M is for Mycroft, and it's
all there, the canon is there. And it was funny because one of the letters, it might
be C, C is for color, and I managed to work in just about every color from each
title in the canon. Orange, silver, blue, red, they're all there.

Scott Monty:
That's great. The latest episode of our other podcast Trifles that we do weekly, we
spent about 20 to 25 minutes talking about colors in the canon, so it'll be nice.
We've talked about your anthology with Ballandra Books, 1881, we've talked
about B is For Baker Street, the children's book, what do you have lined up next in
the series of your regular Sherlock Holmes adventures?

Richard Ryan:
I'm currently about halfway through a book that I call Three May Keep a Secret,
and the title comes from the old Benjamin Franklin adage three may keep a secret
if two are dead. I had that in the back of my head and that's where I began. I said,
"Yeah, that kind of works." So obviously there'll be two dead people showing up
early on in the book and your job as a reader is to figure out who's doing it.

Scott Monty:
Well, we will look forward to seeing where your pants take you.

Richard Ryan:
I wish I knew. I'm like the brotherhood of the traveling writing pants, they just go.

Scott Monty:
Anything else Rich before we sign off here?

Richard Ryan:
I really am enthusiastic about this anthology for Ballandra Books, as I say, because
1882, I don't think there are any cases that take place in 1882 which leaves it wide
open for authors to explore. It can be a story about Lestrade, it can be a story
about Mrs. Hudson, it's wide open which is kind of nice to be able to get away
from Holmes but still be with Holmes at the same time. So I'm curious to see what
authors do with it in the next couple of years with this anthology.
Scott Monty:
That sounds great. Well, we will have a link to Ballandra Books and to Rich Ryan's
page on the MX Publishing site as well as Dear Holmes. Rich Ryan, thank you so
much for joining us for this fascinating conversation here on I Hear of Sherlock
Everywhere.

Richard Ryan:
Thank you for having me, appreciate it.

Burt Wolder:
Great conversation with Rich Ryan. It's interesting to hear his approach as a
pantser, but it just shows you a couple of things. One is that creativity and
storytelling really can start anywhere and anybody has a different process. I
remember the writer George Saunders, one of my favorite writers, once said, he
had an anecdote about one of his early experiences selling, I think maybe his first
short story, to the New Yorker, and he asked the person who bought it at The
New Yorker, the editor, what he was looking for in a short story.

Burt Wolder:
And so Saunders is sitting there thinking, this is the fiction editor of The New
Yorker and he's about to get the answer, the insight, the answer about how to
structure and shape his fiction, and the editor said, "Well, I read the first sentence
and then I see if I want to read the next one. And then I read that one and I see if I
want to read the next one." And that's really it. You've got to grab your readers
and get them interested and have them ask what comes next.

Scott Monty:
That is delightfully simple in its approach, especially in this day and age when
people have so many options for where to go for entertainment, for information,
and just for... I mean, you think about the good old days before we had
computers stitched to our hands, we would stand in line at the supermarket, and
what would we do? Well, our options are just people watch, look around and see
who else is shopping, what people have bought, et cetera, or you can browse the
gum and candy bar rack there for last minute purchases. Or of course, you can
leaf through the tabloids that are lined up there.

Scott Monty:
And what do we have now? We have everyone, when you happen to be waiting in
line, socially distanced six feet from the person in front of you, what are most
people doing? They are scrolling with their thumb, and that is the power that we
need to capture today, is the power of the thumb. What is going to make
someone stop and spend more than two seconds with your content? And it's the
same concept as that editor of The New Yorker saying, "Well, it's a matter of
getting from one sentence to the next." What are you going to do to hook
someone and capture their attention and keep them rapt in your content?

Burt Wolder:
Well, that is a great observation and I would say two things about that. One is I
can look back on those past years standing in line at supermarkets thumbing
through the tabloids, being progressively more amazed day after day, visit after
visit, supermarket after supermarket, about what Elvis was getting up to after his
demise. It seemed limitless. But the other thing is that you have to be... It's
interesting about how people's approaches to capitalizing on that and viewing
that as an opportunity have both succeeded and failed, and I'm just thinking
about QB which was such a huge disaster. The idea that this is going to be
content.

Scott Monty:
You mean Quibi?

Burt Wolder:
Quibi. Quibi, QB, Quibi. Content organized so that it can be consumed in those
missing empty seconds as you watched your soda, your scallions and your
potatoes move slowly on that conveyor belt. What can we do? Why don't we grab
someone's attention and tell them a story? It just needs to be four seconds long,
how hard can it be?

Scott Monty:
I know. It's interesting because I think if anything, we see content that, let's say,
zigs rather than zags, that moves in the opposite direction, long form content.
Handwritten letters like Receiving letters from Dear Holmes, this is a wonderful
way to extract ourselves from the digital minds in which we work every day,
whether we want to or not. I think that's why we're seeing the rise of things like
Clubhouse. If you haven't heard of Clubhouse it's, I think, best described as social
audio.

Scott Monty:
It's basically like a conference, an audio conference with keynotes and panels and
the ability for people to come from the audience to step up. It's somewhat
analogous to podcasts but different because there's not the same level of quality,
but the notion here with Clubhouse is that you're not requiring people to be on
camera. We're so burnt out from just being slaves to our screens every day that
it's nice to be able to step away, and certainly audio as listeners of I Hear of
Sherlock Everywhere know, audio is a way to step away from the screen, to
multitask, you can do other things while you're listening, and to still feel like
you're getting some kind of quality level of content.

Scott Monty:
So there's all sorts of options now and I think the ones that do the unusual, it's
not the two second attention, it's not the four minute episode, the ones that
require something a little between are the ones that are certainly worth looking
at.

Scott Monty:
Have you noticed that the direct to consumer market has made it easier than ever
to get items you love delivered to you on a regular basis? It could be a monthly
subscription to a newspaper, laundry detergent or razorblades, and you can
depend on getting what you need without fail every month. But what if you could
do the same thing with Sherlock Holmes books? That's exactly what MX
Publishing has introduced, the Sherlock Holmes Book Club.

Scott Monty:
With their monthly subscription you'll be able to get a regular delivery of volumes
from the MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories. Fans can choose from a
monthly subscription or a full year upfront for a small discount. If you're planning
on reading any of the new Sherlock Holmes stories from MX Publishing, this is an
affordable and reliable way to get your fix. Just go to ihose.co/mxbookclub and
sign up today. That's all lowercase, ihose.co/mxbookclub. Try it this month.

Scott Monty:
Ah, that music can mean only one thing. There's a sale when you get off the
elevator. No, it means that it is now time for everyone's favorite Sherlockian quiz
show. That's right, it's Canonical Couplets where we give you two lines of poetry
and we ask you to identify the Sherlock Holmes story in question. Sometimes it is
in poetry, other times it's a convoluted title, but the whole idea here is to
familiarize yourself with the titles in the Sherlock Holmes stories. The last time we
were here we gave you this clue. At six AM near Aldgate Station, Mason's finding
alarmed the nation. Burt, do you know which story we're referring to with that
Canonical Couplet?

Burt Wolder:
Oh yes, that is one of my favorite obscure stories. That's the case of the mechanic
that restored an automobile polish that could only be applied on cloudy days.
That's "The Reappearance of Shady Chance's Car Wax."

Scott Monty:
Yeah, I'm going to take a pass on that one. Wow. That was really a reach. I have to
commend you on that.

Burt Wolder:
Yeah.

Scott Monty:
Well, our friend Erik Deckers also decided to reach, and he said, "I've got it, I've
got it. It's the story about Holmes participating in a game show called For the Love
of the Game itself. It's "The Adventure of the Lovely Partington Gifts."" No, what
you and Erik seemed to miss there was "The Bruce-Partington Plans." That's what
you were looking for. Yes. Yes. So well, we did have a number of people who were
successful in guessing the correct title so we're going to put them all in the
revolving drum and spin the big prize wheel here. It goes around and around and
lands on number 11. How do you like that? Number 11.

Scott Monty:
And that means our winner is none other than Ed Lear. Ed, congratulations. I
should also note that Ed in his submission said, "This case was not like any other /
Even with involving Sherlock's brother. / Spies, death, a train station, / Plans that
could destroy a nation. / The Bruce Partington Plans was a real mother." We do
appreciate a good limerick around these parts Ed, so that is fantastic. We will put
a prize in the mail to you. I think it was the copy of the 2020 Christmas Annual so
count yourself lucky among the recipients of the 2020 Christmas Annual, which
was the unique Hamlet.

Scott Monty:
And now this time around we have another fine prize and it's, of course, as you
would imagine it is a book by Rich Ryan, and in this case we're going to send you a
copy of well, we'll let you choose. How's that? We won't pick one of his five titles,
we will let you choose which title you want when you win, and it is when you
answer this Canonical Couplet.

Scott Monty:
"Begun with pleasant lassitude from a bath and then a smoke, the flame-like
woman finished with a packet neath her cloak." If you know the answer to this
Canonical Couplet address it to [email protected] with Canonical
Couplet in the title. If you are among all of the correct answers and we choose
your name at random, you will win this fine prize. Good luck.

Scott Monty:
All right Burt, my goodness we've done it again.

Burt Wolder:
Hallelujah.

Scott Monty:
Hallelujah. Well, we have another wonderful guest lined up to be with you here
next time on, I guess it will be March 15th, the ides of March. Oh boy. Don't
forget your toga.

Burt Wolder:
It's getting pretty close to St. Patrick's Day.

Scott Monty:
It is, it is. I have to roll out my annual Jack Benny / Dennis Day impersonation. Oh,
Dennis. No, I won't do that right now. Well, thank you for joining us here on I Hear
of Sherlock Everywhere. Just a reminder, if you'd like to support the show you can
do so via PayPal or Patreon, just find that orange button on our homepage and
decide if you'd like to support what we do. It's for as little as a dollar a month but
you can choose whatever level suits you. And if you tell people about the show
that helps make it better for everyone. The more people know about I Hear of
Sherlock Everywhere, the better the show is.

Scott Monty:
Now in the meantime I remain the marginally better Scott Monty.

Burt Wolder:
And I'm the marginally annotated Burt Wolder.

Scott Monty:
And together we say...

Burt & Scott:

Holmes & Watson:

Narrator:
Thank you for listening. Please be sure to join us again for the next episode of I
Hear of Sherlock Everywhere, the first podcast dedicated to Sherlock Holmes.