Roger Riccard

The Adventure of the New Author Roger Riccard As an only child whose mother passed away from multiple sclerosis when I was three, I was soon burying myself in books, even before entering kindergarten. Thus, I have always been a voracious reader. My collection of books overflows my home and storage unit and includes biographies, history, religion, sports, science fiction and, of course, fictional mysteries. One of the first things I did when I started earning money as a teenager was to join the Book of the Month Club. There I found a two volume set of the complete stories of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It was love at first read. Have you ever read a good book and wished the author had written more stories about the characters you enjoyed? After reading Doyle's works over and over it wasn't enough. I wanted more. Then in the mid-70's Nicholas Meyer, ( who would go on to movie fame directing Star Trek II, and co-writing Star Treks IV and VI, among other works) came out with Sherlock Holmes novels: The Seven Percent Solution and The West End Horror. There was, at last, a new breath of life in the vacuum of Holmes lore. Over the years since then, my collection of Holmes books has grown considerably, but recently I found myself occasionally dissatisfied with some authors portrayals (Freudian slip, I originally started to type 'betrayals') . Having thoroughly enjoyed the Granada television series with Jeremy Brett as the quintessential Holmes and Edward Hardwicke, finally giving Watson the character he deserved, I felt I now had role models who inspired my own desire to put a story to paper. I had earned Bachelor of Arts degrees in Journalism and History while in college and had some successes in writing articles for newspapers and magazines. I taught Creative Writing at a private high school for a time and then went into the business world where I continued to hone my skills writing employee communications, policies, procedures and company newsletters. With encouragement from my wife, Rosilyn, as much a Holmes fan as myself, I decided to try a story of my own. Picturing Brett and Hardwicke in my imagination as I formed scene after scene, the story began to come together. My writing process is not your textbook procedure. I knew how I wanted the story to begin and the victim's basic problem. However, it wasn't until I had written a few chapters and introduced surrounding characters, that I finally decided who the actual culprit would be and how they were perpetrating their scheme. At that point, I actually skipped ahead and wrote the ending and the epilogue. The next few months (it was a spare time endeavor) were spent filling in the gap between the foundation I had laid at the beginning and the concluding chapter where Holmes reveals all. In those chapters I created suspicions and false trails, injected a side story and included typical Holmes - Watson interactions. Throughout the process I also performed research into historical and geographical accuracy. For example: The story takes place in 1890 when Scotland Yard has just moved into its new headquarters. I use that fact to create a scene in Lestrade's office where his files are still in boxes and not all of his furniture has arrived. Once I had a complete manuscript, with much editing assistance from Rosilyn, my partner in all things, I needed to find a publisher. As a subscriber to the Sherlockian E-Times, it seemed a logical conclusion that I could ask them for advice. The publishers, Joel and Carolyn Senter, kindly made suggestions and my contact with Dr. Antony Richards at Baker Street Studios resulted in an acceptance of my manuscript. With proofreading, exchanges of ideas and slotting a time in their publication schedule, the process took about a year. Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Poisoned Lilly became a reality. My 2nd novel - Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Twain Papers - made it's debut as a feature of the London Museum Sherlock Holmes Exhibition in October 2014. My next book, Sherlock Holmes Adventures for the 12 Days of Christmas Volume I, a collection of short stories, came out in November 2015. Volume II, Further adventures for the Twelve Days of Christmas, arrived in October 2016. In 2018, the set was combined as a Kindle edition and became e-book of the month for December. In 2016 I was invited to contribute to David Marcum's Holmes' anthology series and have included a few of my stories as teasers for my own books among his anthologies ever since. 2017 saw the beginning of my new venture, A Sherlock Holmes Alphabet of Cases, which was a five volume set of 26 short stories concluding in 2021. November 2022 saw the launch of a new series with five short stories in Volume 1 of The Colourful Cases of Sherlock Holmes.