Bedtime Stories

I am the first one to admit, I spend far too much time on YouTube. On the other hand, it is much less a time waster than Facebook (which I visit occasionally) or Twitter (which I abandoned completely because of the endless and ever-growing tide of liberal hate), and it is often a source of vital information. After all, where else are you going to find short, easily digestible videos about the important things in life--meteor impacts, steampunk music, model building, zombies, woodworking, dogs, UFOs, traffic accidents in Chula Vista, ancient, civilizations, volcanoes, comic books, the Fermi Paradox, abandoned shopping malls, silly rants, science fiction, the foibles of humanity, old TV series, Simulation Theory, and, of course, kittens?

Now and then, something I watch on YouTube leads me to a new book. I found out about The Three Body Problem on a channel called Quinn's Ideas...smart fellow, that Quinn. And all the hullabaloo about that terrible Rings of Power series (Amazon itself soured me with their own teasers, trailers and first fifteen minutes of the series) led me back to rereading LOTR after more than fifty years...overwritten, surely, but Tolkien's facility with the English language makes you wish he had overwritten more. From Gary Lovisi's channel, I learned about a novel featuring HP Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard as characters...a little embarrassing, that one, since it was published twenty years ago, and I should have known about it. And sometimes a channel leads me to an unexpected and pleasant surprise.

ISBN 979-8435530322

ISBN 979-8835857425

I've been a fan of the YouTube channel Bedtime Stories for several months. Despite the name, the stories they relate are not the kind of nighttime tales you want to tell your kids before they go to sleep, not if you actually want them to go to sleep. The fare offered touches upon aliens, ghosts, mysteries, unexplained phenomena, true crime, odd deaths and urban legends. They are delivered in a delightful English accent (Yorkshire?) and are accompanied by evocative art with some animated effects. The channel has been around for five years, so I have been slowly working my way through past episodes. In one of them, they mentioned the publication of two books, each containing forty stories previously presented to viewers.

I was hesitant when I heard the word "transcripts," but I took author Richard While at his word that the chapters were more than verbatim copies of the episodes. He was correct. The reader gets revisions, added information, further speculation, and, sometimes, corrections...no matter how thorough one may be in researching, authors are fallible creatures, but one of the strengths of Richard and his colleagues is that they never really close a case, always searching for more information as investigations turn up new data and witnesses.

The stories really are a mixed bag. In the first forty tales we have the high strangeness of "The Ikley Moor Alien," the historical conundrum of "The Flannan Lighthouse Mystery," the very disturbing case of "The Body on the Reservoir" from Brazil, and my favorite, "There is Something in the Woods." In Volume Two, we have "The Lair of the Wendigo," an examination of the folklore also used by Ambrose Bierce in his classic story; "Tales from Skinwalker Ranch," looking into Indian legends and UFOlogy; the urban legend of "The Manchester Pusher," which asks the question of whether a secret serial killer might haunt Manchester, England (much like the perhaps-mythical Smiley Face Killer in America, also covered by the channel); and "The Kentucky Goblins," a UFO/demon story near and dear to me since I used to live just a stone's throw from Hopkinsville in the 70s.

If you like mysteries, unsolved crimes, paranormal phenomena, UFOs, cryptids, urban legends, ancient folklore impinging upon modern life, or wonder why so many people vanish without a trace in the national parks of America, these books might be of interest. They are available in paperback and in less expensive e-book versions. I got the paperbacks, myself. As one reviewer noted, the books are easy to pick up, but hard to put down. Me? All I say is, don't read the stories at bedtime. 

Adventure of the Five Sherlocks

 As most of you know, not only am I a huge fan of the Sherlock Holmes stories and films, I have written a fair share of stories featuring the Great Detective myself. I was also the first to introduce Sherlock Holmes to fantasy writer HP Lovecraft and his cadre of monster-gods, which I did in 1983 with "The Adventure of the Ancient Gods." I've published two collections of Holmes-related tales and provided a handful of stories for anthologies edited by others. The latest example of the latter is "The Adventure of the Five Sherlocks" in Mystery Magazine (formerly Mystery Weekly Magazine), a Canadian periodical, for its October 2022 number.

Mystery Magazine
October 2022
Special Sherlock Holmes Double Issue

I had provided two stories for previous issues, in 2017 and 2019. Both were tales having do with Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, one set in the period between Holmes' apparent death and his return, the other narrated by a Bertie Wooster-like character. When editor Kerry Carter contacted me recently and asked if I had anything to contribute, I considered another foray into the Mythos, but I really wanted to do something completely different, especially since I am now working on my third and final collection of Sherlock Holmes stories, this time taking him into HP Lovecraft's Dreamlands, a wild ride to be sure.

Quite some time ago, I wrote the opening paragraphs to a story titled "The Adventure of the Five Sherlocks." As is often the case with me, I had the opening and I had the final lines of the story, but everything in-between was a little vague. Had Kerry not emailed me, who knows how long my protagonists would have sat in that chamber after their monthly dinner wondering what was going to happen next? Kerry's request spurred me to finish it in a couple of months.

The main characters are Basil Rathbone, Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and Jeremy Brett, all actors known for, among other accomplishments, portraying the Immortal Detective on the screen. In case you're wondering, no, the story is not set in the past, when they were all contemporaries of each other, but, rather...later. Yes, I know they are all dead, but in the context of the story that really does not matter.

While I admire all of them for their acting skills and the entertainment they brought me over the years, I must admit Basil Rathbone is my favorite Sherlock Holmes, and that bias probably shows in the story as events unfold. What can I say? We all remember our first as being the best--Sean Connery as Bond, Roger Moore as The Saint, David Suchet as Hercule Poirot, John Nettles as DCI Barnaby, and Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes. 

The plot of the story is a bit "out there," but I don't want to go into it, lest too much be given away about the mysterious disappearance of Gaius Julius Caesar, the noblewoman who arrived with her barbarian bodyguards,  and the mysterious girl who spoke an unknown language. Suffice it to say that it will entertain both Sherlock Holmes fans and movie buffs. If you want (should you decide to read it), you can even imagine the events of the story unfolding in glorious black and white, as the best films do.

I am not alone in this special issue of Mystery Magazine. I am joined by sixteen others, all presenting new adventures of Sherlock Holmes. It is quite the value. If mysteries are your thing, you might want to consider a digital subscription to the magazine, which will save you quite a bit.