“Amazing, ecstatic, overjoyed, fabulously flabbergasted, and of course, humbled by this fantastic award.”
During the inaugural Doylean Honors celebration of the ACD Society, I was honored for excellence in Fiction!. I am grateful beyond measure for this momentous Best Fiction of 2022 Award.
The awarded short story was “Sir Arthur and the Time Machine” published in the splendid Belanger anthology, Sherlock Holmes: Further Adventures in the Realms of H. G. Wells – Volume Two. It is my first published SciFi story and one of many fine stories in these volumes. Never be afraid to step out of the box!
When one takes on the joy of writing new Sherlock Holmes novels, one invariably gets to know Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The more I read of Doyle’s life the more I found connections that were incredibly telling. When I found that within six months time: Doyle and his wife, Touie, birthed their first child, discovered her severe tuberculosis diagnosis, and his beloved father died in an asylum an incurable alcoholic. I considered how these major life events coming on top of each other might cause him to write “The Adventure of the Final Problem”. In Switzerland for his wife’s health, Doyle visited the Falls of the Reichenbach and published this story just two months after the death of his father. The story that threw his fans into an uproar and birthed the first Sherlockian Groups — the Keep Holmes Alive Clubs. It was my great joy to foster Sir Arthur’s travel into the future where he conferred with sages from other times and of course left his fingerprints everywhere.
The ACD Society is an esteemed Sherlockian literary society dedicated to studying and enjoying the works of Arthur Conan Doyle. With great panache, the ceremony commenced at the Mysterious Bookshop during the 2022 BSI Sherlock Holmes Birthday Event in New York. Thank you for this great honor and congratulations to my fellow recipients.
“It is only when a man goes out into the world with the thought that there are heroisms all round him, and with the desire all alive in his heart to follow any which may come within sight of him, that he breaks away from the life he knows, and ventures forth into the wonderful mystic twilight land where lie the great adventures and the great rewards.” ― Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World.
Gretchen Altabef is an Award-Winning, MX author of Sherlock Holmes novels. She also publishes with Belanger Books and Mondadori Publishing has contracted to translate her first novel into Italian. Ms. Altabef strives to emulate Dr. John Watson’s and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s literary style. The first, These Scattered Houses, is in Holmes’ own voice and resourcefully chronicles the last two months of his ‘great hiatus’. The second in the series is, Remarkable Power of Stimulus. After 3 years away, Holmes finds London awash in murders, No. 221B under siege, anarchists threatening Paris, and the return of Irene Adler. Fully aware he is under surveillance by Moriarty’s henchmen, Holmes steps out of the cab into Baker Street knowing he will find Watson’s friendship and unerring aim are as dependable as the British Rail. Her latest novel, THE KEYS OF DEATH is the genesis story of the world’s most famous address, No. 221B Baker Street.
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