Events
Minutes of recent Passengers meetings:
Nine Passengers gathered virtually
for the August meeting, along with ten guests, all authors attending for a
special group presentation.
The
meeting started with the sad news announced earlier in the week of the death of
long time Passenger, Doug Elliott, following a battle with cancer. Doug was a member
of the Passengers for twenty three years,
and also part of the Crew as Anchor Watch. Some Passengers were able to
attend his farewell.
Media News
Anniversaries
For the ‘Show and Tell’ portion of
the meeting, Leigh Blackmore showed some recent purchases, including two
volumes of pastiche by Stephen Herczeg, one of the authors featured in today’s
presentation.
Rather than having one main
presenter, this meeting gathered together a collection of authors who all
contributed to Sherlock Holmes Into the
Fire, a two volume
anthology released this month. The project was inspired by Arthur Conan Doyle’s
book Round the Fire Stories, which
contains seventeen short stories, all with themes concerned with the grotesque
and the terrible. This new project from Belanger Books takes those gothic
horror stories of Doyle’s and pairs them with brand new Sherlock Holmes
stories, each by a different author. The
series is edited by Margie Deck. Margie and a number of the contributing
authors were welcomed to the meeting.
Margie interviewed each of the
other authors in turn to talk about what they wrote and why and what other
writing projects they are currently involved in.
The original idea for the anthology
came from (Passenger) Mark Jones in the UK and he wanted to do it with both
Margie Deck and Nancy Holder (another of the authors joining in for the
session), but he wasn’t able to fit it into his schedule, so Margie took it
over and rounded up all the fellow authors to contribute.
Each author chose which Doyle story
they wanted to pair with and Margie pleasantly found that she didn’t have much
trouble in allocating all seventeen of Doyle’s stories. It turned out that
around half the authors wrote a sequel and the other half wrote a reimagining
of the original. One author chose a supernatural story by Doyle and then had to
find a way to fit Holmes and his maxim of “no ghosts need apply” into her
story. Apparently she turned in a great
effort and her story has had lots of compliments. Another writer started
writing a story that didn’t include Watson, then discovered that the story
needed Watson, so had to go back and start again. Many comments from the
authors indicated that their story was a lot of fun to write, and one writer
serendipitously found that the real-life discovery of a forensic technique
fitted neatly into her story’s timeline so was able to use that in her story.
Many thanks to the authors who
joined in for this meeting: Margie Deck, Paul Hiscock, Liese Sherwood-Fabre,
Rebecca Buchanan, Katie Magnusson, Naching Kassa, Nancy Holder, Stephen
Herczeg, Katy Darby and Derrick Belanger (also the publisher). The two volume
anthology is available from Belanger Books and Amazon.
The meeting was recorded and has
been uploaded to YouTube.
8th June 2025 via Zoom
The meeting
began promptly at 2pm with eight attendees Zooming in from Australia, the U.K.
and New Zealand. The Captain welcomed guest presenter Orlando Pearson, joining
at the unfriendly hour of 5:00am.
In media
news:
Canonical
Anniversaries for June.
Show &
Tell
Leigh
Blackmore had acquired two books by David Stuart Davies along with the Mammoth
Book Of Sherlock Holmes Abroad edited by Simon Clark. He had also been
watching the Lucy Worsley series Killing Sherlock.
Next in the
meeting, Quartermaster Rosane McNamara spoke about her trip to India with the
Sherlock Holmes Society of London, accompanied by a series of photos showing
highlights from her ‘hiatus’. The group travelled to Calcutta, Lucknow, Agra
(famous to Sherlockians from The Sign
of Four), the Taj Mahal, Delhi, and Shimla. There were plenty of opportunities
for both sight seeing and dressing in Victorian costume. The group even
performed an original Sherlock Holmes radio play written by Peter Horrocks.
The Captain
next announced the winner of the 2024 Montpellier Award for the best article in
The Passengers’ Log from that year, as voted by society members. From four
excellent nominees, the winning article is Construct of the Stranger - One Further Revelation by Ross Philpott, from the January
2024 Log. Congratulations to Ross. There will be a full report in the
next edition of The Log.
The meeting
concluded with the main presentation, introduced by Orland Pearson. Orlando is
an author and playwright, currently up to volume 9 of his Redacted Sherlock
Holmes series. Orland presented his play The Baron Of Wimbledon,
which he adapted from a story written in 2020, and first recorded and ‘Zoomcast’
during Covid lockdown. It has now been seen across twelve countries It was
based on the story of Gottfied Von Cramm, a real tennis player from the 1930s,
who was also the first German sportsman to play outside Germany after World War
II. Orlando described how he came to write the story and adapt it for
performance. The play (available on You Tube) was well received the Passengers and Orland took questions afterwards, also
speaking about the latest volume of The Redacted Sherlock Holmes and
also his other Mycroftian series – Adventures In Statecraft.
The
assembled Zoom attendees departed at 3:15pm. A recording of the meeting is available on YouTube on the Passengers’ channel.
Sherlock Holmes Close Up Zoom Act
16th March 2025 via Zoom
The meeting
began promptly at 2pm with ten attendees Zooming in from various time zones.
In media news:
Canonical Anniversaries:
In the Show
& Tell section of the meeting, Leigh Blackmore showed his latest book
purchases including The Secret Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, an anthology
by Gary Lovisi, with cover art by a friend of Leigh’s. Leigh also had some Solar
Pons pastiches.
Rosane
McNamara has been on a trip to India with the Sherlock Holmes Society of London
– look out for a write up of her adventures in the next Passengers’ Log.
The main
part of the meeting commenced with a warm welcome to presenter Micah Cover from
California. Micah is a professional magician and performer, playwright, and
author who has performed for Hollywood celebrities and on a number of
television shows, including Penn and Teller: Fool Us (available on
YouTube).
Micah believes he’s the only
magician in the world to perform a Sherlock Holmes themed magic show. Micah
performed a number of tricks for the assembled Passengers over Zoom, involving
the attendees in various acts of mentalism and card tricks with a Sherlockian
theme, even thwarting concerted efforts to mess with his act. More information
on Micah and his tricks can be found on his website.
The assembled
Zoom attendees departed at 2:55pm. A recording of the meeting can be found on
YouTube.
Thanks as always to Doug Elliott for editing the video.
Phosphorus and the Making Of a Hellhound
1st December 2024 via Zoom
Nine
Passengers attended the final meeting for 2024, Zooming in from Australia, New Zealand
and the USA. A particular welcome was extended to the committed people joining
from unfriendly time zones, including presenter Matthew Hall.
Originally
from Sydney, Matt has lived and worked in the US for many years, and is very
active in Sherlockian circles there. He is an avid collector and contributes
regularly to The Passengers’ Log.
The
Navigator reminded Passengers that there will not be an end of year issue of the
Log this year, due to various extenuating circumstances affecting the
editorial team. Instead, there will be a double issue early in 2025. This hopefully
gives more time for people to put fingers to keyboard across the holiday period
and contribute an article.
The
Captain had various items of news for the attendees.
Media
News
Anniversaries
From Around the Date of the Meeting
In
the ‘Show and Tell’ section of the meeting, Paul Jenkins described the five
weeks he spent in London, including a visit to the Baker Street museum where he
purchased a Sherlockian themed bowtie which he was sporting at the meeting. He also
met with Steve Emecz from MX Publishing about a potential book involving a true
crime in Sydney in the 1890s, which Paul will be continuing to work on. Matt
Hall showed the book Holmes Away From Home which was from a State
Library of Victoria exhibition in 1987-8. Matt is on a mission to collect Australian
Sherlockian ephemera, and also has a rarer version of the same book (from a
limited run of fifty) including an etching. Leigh Blackmore had picked up some
Conan Doyle biographies The Man Who Was Sherlock Holmes written by John
Dicksoon Carr in the 1940s, and Conan Doyle by Pierre Nordon (1966). He
also had the anthology The Mammoth Book of Sherlock Holmes Abroad
(2005).
Matt
Hall then began his presentation: ‘Phosphorus in The Hound of the
Baskervilles’. In his professional life Matt is a scientist, with Sherlock Holmes
and genealogy as side interests. He originally presented this talk at the ‘Sherlock
Holmes at Fifty’ conference and as a published article in The Baker Street Journal.
In
his examination of whether phosphorus could have been used to make the Hound
glow, Matt began by discussing how existing literature on the topic focussed on
how phosphorus was problematic due to its toxicity. Matt then explained the
various types and properties of phosphorus and how its glow was discovered. He
went on to describe why rubbing phosphorus on a living being to create a glow
was not actually poisonous and gave the historic background of ‘ghost hoaxing’
in the Victorian era where people did exactly that – including documented cases
in Australia, and made the case that Conan Doyle would very likely have been
aware of this. Matt finished be reiterating that phosphorus was only toxic if ingested,
not if spread thinly on skin or, in the case of the Hound, fur. The attending
Passengers followed up with various questions and comment including adding use of
phosphorus by magicians and various related chemical interactions.
The
meeting ended with a big thank you to Matt for his very interesting and
informative presentation.