Manuscript and Author Information:
Holmes and Watson, LLC:
Goodnight, My Love
Copyright 2023
92,000 words
Available for Serialization:
Holmes & Watson, LLC: Goodnight, My Love
Joseph Warren, copyright 2023
92,000 Words
Holmes & Watson, LLC is something I’ve (Warren, not Watson) always wanted to write. Once falling into public domain, I could borrow the namesake Doyle characters and create those I wanted: Black Americans. This is not Holmes in black-face. It is not a cheap pastiche. This is Sherlock Holmes as he has never been before, along with his Boswell (Doctor Watson), who in this storyline sees himself more as Holmes’s Virgil owing to the hellish nature of crime today.
They are both mixed-race, and live in a restored old post-bellum mansion in Savannah, Georgia, with the whimsical Missus Hudson as housekeep – a former nun of the Discalced Carmelites of Port Tobacco. Although she is unmarried, Holmes began calling her “Missus” owing to her matrimonial affiliation with Jesus Christ very soon after she joined the duo. “That’s fine with me, Mister Holmes. I was and am still in my heart wedded to Christ, although the rest of me could come up for grabs at any time. Of other kith and kin, as they say, I have none.”
Both Watson and Holmes are Howard University alumni dating back to the early 1970s when they first became acquainted, which Watson describes in the Prelude to the book written as a beginning sophomore at Howard who lacks maturity, but holds fast to his desire to become a “medical doctor” as he had promised his mother.
As Howard alumni, they joined the ranks of, “Zora Hurston, Thurgood Marshall, (the current Vice President) Kamala Harris, and even Puff Daddy (whomever he may be)…” along with Holmes’s attorney, Perry Mason (No, not that one) who represents him in an action following Holmes’s beating at the hands of small-town Virginia cops who do not know who he is, after being stopped on a back road early morning following a meeting with Agent Lestrade at the NSA. Holmes maintains a working relationship with the NSA as does his older brother Mycroft, who has worked for various three-lettered agencies since his graduation from West Point. Mycroft is identified as retired, but active likely with the CIA. (Mycroft had suggested that both he and Sherlock are the illegitimate offspring of Patrice Lumumba, more as a joke, but causes Watson some moments of reflection.)
Now, on the ebb of his medical profession when this book takes place, Watson’s practice, conducted in the old Carriage House elaborately renovated in the early part of the last century, consists of much in the way of pro bono services to the community.
A little about the author:
As the editor, predominant writer, and co-publisher of TheIndependentDaily.com after several years of increasing annoyance at contributors and would-be writers submitting sometimes nearly indecipherable pulp for consideration, I cut them off.
The focus of the TheIndependentDaily.com for the last twelve years, as one may easily judge by its content, is to relate Literature, History, Science, Philosophy and the Arts to today’s manifold issues facing our shared dirtball-Earth. It’s still growing in popularity (30,000 readers per month), but after twelve years we remain steadfast in our refusal to accept advertising of any type. It would change the publication’s Voice. I believe that’s why readership has grown. (For two-to-three years we embedded Google adverts, which are quite product-arbitrary, yielding an ad, as an example, for rectal cream next to an article regarding Hans Fallada’s epic, Little Man, What’s New? We’ve just never wanted the money that badly.)
Warren is a graduate of the University of San Francisco. He is the author of many, many articles published over the years in newspapers ranging across the United States. He is the author and director of one feature-length script and several short films, all of which may be found on IMDb, including the feature, The Abduction and Trial of George Bush. He is also a retired Sea Captain (for what that may be worth).
Everybody knows Stein told Hemingway to “…write what you know.” But, to know, one must read: It’s the only option beyond sitting around the fire pit while one’s elders tell history. Movies rarely achieve this goal, and certainly social media is a complete failure in imparting knowledge and devoid any scale of redemption, in my opinion. (We are at 20 years sans television.) Plainly, people just don’t read as they must to perpetuate an evolving civilization. We are on the retrograde and that necessitated my completing this manuscript before the world blows up. Hurry up and read this!
Some of these concepts are included in this manuscript. (How could they not be? I am the voice of this Holmes.)
Here’s a quick snapshot of Holmes:
“…(Holmes’s) freneticism of learning is reflective in his appearance: Gaunt, tall, aquiline nose, a well-formed mouth capable of revealing any number of states of doubt, not entirely unlike John Burrus from Fisk University, many decades earlier, but devoid of Burrus’s ancillary facial hair. Holmes, as Burrus was, is of a lighter complexion most reminiscent of our shared slave heritage who were settled in the South and whose female ancestors were subject to the whims of various slave holders yielding, what we used to call, a “Passing” skin tone, if one were in darker surrounds. I maintain the richer hue of our African past relishing facial hair in abundance in an effort, vainly I suppose, to smooth out the less refined aspects of my chin, and to afford a greater level of believability to an otherwise boy-like face not conducive to my chosen professional field, as I perhaps erroneously believed. As to height, I am shorter: not Sancho-to-Quixote shorter, but only by a nominal few inches.”
Mrs. Hudson takes on a much more significant role in this Holmes-Watson household in their Reconstruction-era Savannah, Georgia mansion now serving as their point d’appui, as the duo work through various investigative cases. In the background, the far lesser element responsible for the title’s “Goodnight, My love,” emerges as the antagonist, Ari Omit Yr, and becomes more central, eventually leading in the last three chapters to an undefined conclusion.
Thank you for your time.
Joseph Warren
Mr.Warren@WatsonandHolmes.com
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