Okay, I’ve got another podcast going. I’ll be doing this one fairly regularly, at least until the application deadline for Viable Paradise, June 15th. It’s purpose is to give people an idea of what the workshop experience is. I’ll be talking to current instructors and previous instructors (Maureen, I’m comin’ fer ya!) and previous students.

(For those who don’t know, Viable Paradise is a residential, week-long SF and Fantasy Writing workshop held on Martha’s Vineyard every fall. Lots of details at Podible Paradise or at Viable Paradise.)

During the first episode I talk with Mur Lafferty, writer and podcaster, a student at the most recent VP. You can visit the site here or subsribe.

In 1893, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle killed off Sherlock Holmes – a character he had been writing about with great success since 1887’s A STUDY IN SCARLET – in a story called “The Adventure of the Final Problem.” Conan Doyle reportedly felt that the Holmes stories were keeping him from accomplishing more important work, so his solution (ironically) was “The Final Problem.”

As it turned out, though, Conan Doyle had a problem beyond “The Final Problem”:  Namely, that Holmes wouldn’t stay dead.

Readers loved Holmes. So did Conan Doyle’s publishers. In other words, nobody wanted Sherlock Holmes dead except the man who’d created him.

So after eight years of pressure, Conan Doyle responded with 1901’s THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES, but set the story an unspecified number of years before the events of “The Final Problem.” That way, he could give his publishers and his public a little more Holmes, but still make sure that the arrogant old cokehead stayed dead.

In other words, Conan Doyle would control Holmes. Holmes wouldn’t control him.

Yeah. Right. Good luck with that, Art.

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