Improbable Press Blog

Writing about a city you don’t live in can be challenging, especially when the characters you write about are very steeped in a particular metropolis, the way that Sherlock Holmes and John Watson are so associated with London. It’s challenging, too, when you might be writing of Holmes and Watson in the London of the 19th Century. London remains very much the sum of its history, but new layers are always being placed over the old, and some of its past was torn down and obliterated in various building booms over the centuries. The tricks of writing about London (past...

Today's the official release date of A Murmuring of Bees, and here's a thing I just want to say to you: Write because you love writing, share it everywhere and anywhere, ignore everyone who says something negative because no matter at what stage you are in your writing development, you're doing fantastically well because you are writing. This bees anthology? I asked a lot of people to take part. A lot of them said they couldn't. They were afraid. Write because you love it, listen to the people who tell you what you do well. The 'less than good' features...

By Narrelle M Harris When you’re writing canon-era Sherlock Holmes stories, it’s not enough to read Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories from start to finish. Although that is something I definitely did before (and during) the writing of The Adventure of the Colonial Boy, it didn’t always tell me important things like… what was Victorian era underwear like for men in the 1890s? I was writing a Holmes/Watson romance, and although I didn’t intend to be super explicit, I fully expected we’d be getting these gentlemen out of their underthings at some point.Obviously, it was vital to know what those underthings...

Everything’s a story. Or it can be. When the writing’s resisting me I do my best to remember that.You may hate prompts from others, many do, but I’d be curious how you feel about prompting yourself. Walking around and looking and wondering what story that and that can tell.To paraphrase Sherlock, once you plant an idea, it’s awfully hard to remove. Maybe we need to let more ideas plant themselves, especially the ones we think we can't use.Sure, there are some things I’ll probably never write. A Moriarty-centric romance. Something without redemption. Not going there.But sometimes it’s been delightful to...

In 1886 - a year before A Study in Scarlet launched the fictional career of Sherlock Holmes - Fergus Hume's The Mystery of the Hansom Cab was published. From its small beginnings as a 'schilling shocker', this crime novel set in Marvellous Melbourne became an international phenomenon, selling half a million copies. While Hume did not invent characters as enduring as Holmes and Watson, the publication of Hansom Cab and its subsequent unheard-of success made the future success of the Holmes stories (which might otherwise have started and ended with the Beeton’s Christmas Annual) and the whole detective genre a...