sketchbook: the valley of fear
Come see me and a bunch of other amazing authors at YALLWEST this Saturday if you’re in SoCal!
Here are Holmes illustrations from THE VALLEY OF FEAR! Always challenging myself to find new and exciting ways to make Watson look put-upon.
I’ve posted this one before, but it’s from this story and I think it’s such a sweet moment, whether or not you’re reading them as romantically involved (it IS canon that they are sleeping in the same bed during this case lol do with that what you will).
and…a little bit of foreshadowing to wrap it up. It’s been fun trying to put these stories, which don’t have a clearly established chronology, into a timeline that makes sense to me. In the original publication order, Moriarty is not mentioned until ‘the Final Problem’, when Holmes confronts and kills him and appears to die himself; it was only later, when Arthur Conan Doyle was forced by an adoring public to ressurect his hero, that he backfilled some foreshadowing for Holmes’s greatest enemy.
"Obscurity to the Oscars" is SO funny considering how famous Nimona was TO ME at age 13 when the book came out and how abnormal I was (am?) about that book! Just goes to show that 13 year old girls* (not anymore lol) are the real trend setters...
HUGE fan of "when the polycule tries to cover up your murder"
A cold bow is a tricky thing to pull off! It has to be short and quick, like those spasm/nods that Alan Rickman does as Prof Snape, but should still be proper and incline the shoulders so that one can maintain gentility. And I don't think Watson can pull off a real catty boheme's cold bow, he probably doesn't realize that even his gruffest attempts are warmer than a smile from Holmes (to everyone but Watson, naturally)!