The secret fangirl of Baker Street.

It was "a wild morning in October."

Sherlock Holmes is sitting at the breakfast table "with that somewhat sinister cheerfulness which was characteristic of his lighter moments." All this takes place in the opening of "The Problem of Thor Bridge."

But Holmes is uncharacteristically not telling Watson about that case. Watson even has to ask him about the case, and when he does, Holmes makes Watson wait a full fifteen minutes while John eats two hard-boiled eggs.

And what is so important that Sherlock Holmes is delaying working on a case? Not only delaying, but taking a certain glee in holding back discussing it?

The eggs.

"Their condition may not be unconnected with the copy of the Family Herald which I observed yesterday upon the hall-table. Even so trivial a matter as cooking an egg demands an attention which is conscious of the passage of time, and incompatible with the love romance in that excellent periodical."

Soooooo, we have a new cook at Baker Street, and she loves reading stories in magazines.

And it's only about six years since John H. Watson made Sherlock Holmes the most famous detective in England with his stories in The Strand Magazine. Do we think that the new cook doesn't know who she's cooking hard-boiled eggs for?

And Sherlock is taking some merry delight in telling John that she's in a romantic mood. So much delight that he's putting off discussing a case for fifteen minutes that John Watson would have us believe were spent in silence. "A quarter of an hour later the table had been cleared and we were face to face," Watson writes.

Face to face? An interesting phrase, especially after a table-clearing event. Could it be that the fifteen minute conversation got a little bit heated? A bit of a table-clearing tussle ending with John's face in Sherlock's, telling him to back off?

The case we know as "Thor Bridge" took place in that time in the early 1900s of which Holmes wrote, "The good Watson had at that time deserted me for a wife, the only selfish action which I can recall in our association." I once theorized that Watson finally had realized his affection for Mrs. Hudson and stolen Holmes's landlady away from him, but when one looks at this new cook, who is already messing up eggs with her romantic ideas, and the way Holmes is needling Watson about it . . .  well, one has to wonder if the cooking didn't get better, reaching a level Holmes was really enjoying at about the time Watson decided to monopolize said cook's time with his own romantic notions.

It was a "wild morning" on Baker Street, indeed, that October.

Sherlock Holmes . . . over one billion cases solved!

Seeing an interview with a guy who wrote a Sherlock Holmes story today, still on my way home from a convention full of people, most of whom write Sherlock Holmes stories, and then thinking about a recent collection or two where people who hadn't written Sherlock Holmes stories were encouraged to write Sherlock Holmes stories . . . well, I started realizing that Mr. Sherlock Holmes has solved a whole lot of mysteries at this point.

Sherlock Holmes has solved more mysteries than any other detective in history, I'd think it is safe to say. Novels, short stories, comic books, TV shows, movies, cartoons, advertisements . . . even 140 character tweets . . . Sherlock Holmes has solved mysteries in every single one of those formats, and not the same sixty mysteries every time, either. Little mysteries, big mysteries, minor mysteries that are a part of major mysteries. Kid mysteries, adult mysteries, famous people mysteries, animal mysteries . . . he is the guy who solves mysteries. The veritable god of mystery solving.

At this point, given the internet's wealth of tales, I think we've crossed the line past which it's even possible to count how many mysteries that Sherlock Holmes has solved. Just counting actors who have played Holmes has turned into a ridiculously epic quest for Howard Ostrom. Trying to count the number of mysteries Sherlock Holmes has solved across all mediums? That would take a fully staffed think tank with all manner of research assistants, one would think.

And then to categorize them. Oh, he's probably more into murder solving across the board than he was in the original Canon, thanks to the sensationalism of that particular crime, but how many times has he solved an almost-Red-Headed-League case? How many times has he solved a not-quite-but-sorta-Hound-of-the-Baskervilles thing? And how many different solutions to the Jack the Ripper business has he come up with over the years?

So many mysteries solved! But he's Sherlock Holmes, of course. He's not stopping now. Like McDonald's and hamburgers, his ongoing march to "one billion served" seems to have become an inevitability.

Post-221B Con 2016: Can't stop the posting!

Live from a hotel room on James Saunders Boulevard, somewhere between 221B Con and home! (And having dined with a member of the Sir James Saunders Society this weekend, that little Canonical co-inkey-dink is very appropriate.)

The long drive home from 221B Con is always a thoughtful time for me. I replay the weekend before in my head, compare it to Sherlockian weekends I've been to over the last 33 years, see what the new generations of Sherlockians are bringing to the hobby, and see what Sherlockiana can be like now that we've hit convention numbers and folks are actually willing to put cons together. (Not that a couple of past weekend organizers haven't come close -- there have been some great things done in weekend-symposium mode.)

After four years of this, 221B Con just keeps getting better and better. This isn't where you come for scholarly illumination (though there's a lot to educate anyone willing to pay attention), this is where you come to celebrate Sherlock Holmes and just see how everybody else is celebrating Sherlock these days. You celebrate an actor like David Nellist and what his Stamford means to the current iteration of BBC's Sherlock Holmes. You celebrate that Sherlock Holmes can be one sexy guy. (Whether in prose or in person as a burlesque dancer.) You celebrate the diversity of style, tastes, expressions, and joy that exists in our Sherlockian biosphere. And you celebrate what everybody celebrates at every Sherlockian event -- the bonds that connect us.

One thing I noticed this year at 221B Con: familiar faces. That may seem a little silly to say, but when you go to a conventnion that runs between six hundred and a thousand attendees, you don't know who most of the other attendees are, but you start to know their faces. One face might evoke the memory of a late night writing workshop that threw groups of strangers together for a writing exercise. Another face might give a flashback to a panel discussion you particularly liked about Moriarty. And some faces are just folks you may have gotten a quiet smile from in the elevator because you both knew, "Hey, you're a Sherlockian, too!"

But here's the thing about me and 221B Con: I don't think I've ever been ready for it.

The first year? Complete and total surprise. No one, not even the organizers, really knew what was coming.

The second year? Well, I missed it, even though I'd bought a membership. Seriously not ready.

The third year? Just coming off a few months of family crisis mode and it was a last-minute respite.

This, the fourth year? Just had my mind in a lot of places, especially at work, and didn't start thinking about it until the week or two before.

Next year, 221B Con's fifth year, I think it's time to go all out. As in, start the planning for it NOW. Start letting those panel ideas simmer. Get that one great cosplay idea for the costume exhibition night, and start gathering/making pieces for it. Start researching all those corners of fandom that had me scratching my head this year.(The acronyms! Oh, the acronyms!) See if I can . . . well, let's not get too crazy just yet.

But I'm not doing con-drop this year. I'm doing con-anticipation start.

221B Con FIVE already. Can you imagine? And if we get a season four Sherlock earlier in 2017 in the run-up to it?

Oh, it's on. It . . . is . . . on.

221B Con 2016: The Last 221B Con Story . . . yeah, right.

Even as the good Carter and I came back from our morning stroll through the empty streets of Atlanta today, the first signs of departing Sherlockians became apparent. Even though 221B Con still runs until 5:00 PM, it's Sunday, and the work week is beckoning far too many with it's skeletal finger of . . . well, those things I'm not thinking about just yet. Because there is one panel left to go.

I could be in the "How to Podcast" panel right now, but having determined I need a partner or two to go down that road, it's not on my immediate to-do list. And also, saving the convention-chair tolerance up for that one last session.

Today began, for me, with a lively little panel on Sebastian Moran, where much consideration was made as to how one would adapt Doyle's original Moran to the modern BBC Sherlock version, since he has yet to appear. Moran's absence there makes for a fanfic character completely open for play, and a whole lot of people have tried a hand at it. Kim Newman's The Hound of the D'Urbervilles came up for the first time today, as it would again -- Sherlockian gatherings are always good for making you realize you had missed something, and picking that one up is on my to-do list for when I get home. (Yes, I could order from Amazon from here, but first things first.)

All the discussion of tiger hunting at the Moran panel made me wonder if the colonel ever hired out to stalk "tigers" like "the Tiger of San Pedro," Don Murillo from "Wisteria Lodge." But during the discussion, some had him rescuing tiger cubs, some had him dealing with addiction, and so many other thoughts swirled about him that I decided to save that thought for later. Good panel.

From there it was on to the Baker Street Babes interviewing David Nellist about playing Stamford and so many other things, like his kids' fear of the Abominable Bride, but as with Three Patch, you can hear all that online, so I won't get into it here. David Nellist continued to be quite the charming con guest, I will say that!

After that bigger session, I headed for my own little panel session, 'Old School Shipping: The Many Wives of John H. Watson," and I think it was the first room I was ever in all con that had more males in it than females. And given the scarcity of males at the con, that kind of shows how non-packed the house was. Still, we managed to have a pretty good time, wandered through theories old and new (The secret fangirl of the Canon! Replaceable Watsons!), and generally covered just how problematic Watson's love life is when you try to keep him hetero. (Johnlock solves so, so much.)

Shift change on the Jackson room came and the "Popularity of the Pastiche" panel rolled in -- Ashley Polasek, Amy Thomas, and Elinor Gray. (Two writers of pastiche, one reader, in reverse order.) A nice little intro on what differentiates "pastiche" from "fanfic" got the ball rolling, the definition of "pastiche" being something we apparently all have our own take on. (And the appearance of tenacles equals "no pastiche," according Ashley, in case you weren't clear on the tentacle thing.) Before they got to talking about good pastiche recommendations, however, they had to take a small detour into the wasteland of bad pastiche.

Apologetically, of course, because we live in a less pastiche-shaming culture than back in the 1980s.  Is it because we have more writers among us than ever before? Is it kindlier feminine influences on what was once a masculine-dominated hobby? I dunno, but when one of the three panelists gave an honest opinion of a certain over-rated 1970s blockbuster, she immediately gained a Twitter follower. (And may have inadvertently caused a new Sherlockian society called "The 93% Problem" to be born.) Anyway, good pastiches, bad pastiches, good panel.

After that, I had to get to a group photo of the members of the Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes at 221B Con. Two of us were boy Adventuresses, of course, because that's how we roll these days. And that segued into a sort of mini-A.S.H. luncheon in the bar, while a much larger event was going on in New York today. I finally had a "Scarlet Claw" cocktail, made by the con's bartending superstar, Josh, along with a Perimeter Burger and sweet potato fries. The Perimeter Marriott here does a nice job of a lot of things, including bar lunch.

But I digress. Winding down is taking place. Brain closing down.

The "Our Last Bow" panel is always well attended, because it's the only one during the last session, nobody wants to quite give up the ghost yet, and it's a good chance to show some appreciation to the organizers. A whole lot of positive comments this year, along with a truly wizard suggestion or two, and a sneak-in cameo by David Nellist (who is possibly, and according to IMDB, the only person ever to play Stamford). And then a great big ol' con selfie.

And then, done. Sigh.

I'm three out of four for 221B Cons, and I don't think I've ever gotten quite enough of the thing. I've always loved a good Sherlockian weekend, as well as a good fan-run convention. There's something organic to these cons, where one-of-a-kind moments can spring up out of nowhere. No year is the same as the year before, and next year will be different again. The 221B Con team may tighten up a few loose ends, do a little fine tuning, but it's a great environment to be a Sherlockian in. Hard to describe, even with the creative juices that get flowing on these weekends. But every time, I have to try . . . and never quite get it.

But, with any luck, I'll try again next year. Big thanks to everyone who organized, ran, volunteered, brought their talents, or just came to 221B Con this year. Good times.

221B Con 2016: Deep into Saturday night.

You can look at an event like 221B Con and see costumes. All day and all night costumes.

Within the hotel terrarium environment that is a con, fashion goes into R&D mode, even outside of the costume exhibition. It's beyond just Sherlock and John outfits. It's even beyond costumes. Within the bubble of an accepting populace, people just get to wear fun stuff for a change. I wore a deerstalker most of the day Saturday, and I never do that. (The complete headcanon behind my Saturday clothes were sort of "over-sized Victorian street urchin who stole a deerstalker from Sherlock Holmes and got some glasses from the next century from the Doctor.")

But when the proper costume exhibition comes on Saturday night, you get to see the really fun stuff. Sailor John and mermaid Sherlock. Severed head in the refrigerator. Watson's Victorian moustache walking around with a human host. (Said moustache being so big it actually bumped me in the elevator. That thing had presence!) All sorts of things, from all sorts of periods, from all sorts of universes. Were I more adept at getting photos from photo to Chromebook, I might put a few of them here, but, sadly, I can only apologize for leaving it to your imagination.

One of the things 221B Con does wonderfully is involve its guests in the proceedings, and David Nellist made an terrific host for the costume portion of the evening, a job which takes a good sense of humor and a ready-for-anything acceptance. His hosting really made the event all the more special for all involved, and we were all very grateful for it. The costume event was all-to-short, however, which left us time for more panels.

Panels go into the night on Saturday, though my sitting parts were about numb when nine o'clock rolled around, so I had to give it up. "Continuity Doyle" offered some discussion on familiar turf, and "Role-Playing 101" had insights into an area of fandom that has always intrigued me, yet never took off very well in Sherlockian generations prior to BBC Sherlock's.

As with Friday night, 221B Con revels continued into the night, in the karaoke pavilion, in the hotel bar, in the Three Patch suite, and the 24-hour con suite where the Tardis, the president, and the famous door to 221B hung out, but like I said earlier, my sitting-parts had reached their limit, so after a quick walking tour of the sites, I headed upstairs to continue contemplating the "Watson's wives" panel coming up on Sunday.

One more day . . .

221B Con 2016, second report: This is where minds are blown.

"These youngsters go everywhere, and hear everything," Sherlock Holmes once said of his Baker Street irregulars. Of course, he was talking about the street urchins en masse, and not individually. Because if he was talking about them individually, I've going to become very upset for not getting in on their secret.

Halfway through 221B Con and I'm already missing things left and right. So many tracks going at once that you're always going to be forced to sacrifice one thing for another. A pleasant conversation at a dealer's table might cost you half a panel. Time is a dear currency here at 221B Con, and it slips through your fingers quicker than water.

Started the day with the Three Patch Podcast, recording live on shipping. So many good thoughts from both the panel and the audience, but what stood out for me was TPPer Caroline's description of her monogamous ship relationship with Johnlock and how she's not even sure why she loves the thought of Sherlock and John together. "It's like loving your mom and dad," she said, or something very much like it. It'll probably be coming out on their next podcast, so you can hear her real words their. There is both honesty and energy at these panels, and I tweeted something about feeling like I was at a 1930s party of the Baker Street Irregulars of New York -- so much, new, raw energy. Nobody going on about "the way it should be done" or how so-and-so did Sherlockiana way back when. Sherlock-love in its purest form, happening right here and right now.

From there, the dealer's room, where I missed half of the "Sherlock and the Kobayashi Maru" panel from pleasant conversation, as mentioned earlier. Crossing Sherlock over into other fandoms' classic situations is a great way to churn up the imagination, and that room for of Trekky (the adjective form) Sherlockians were full of great thoughts, even up to how Jeremy Brett's Holmes would handle the starship command no-win scenario. So much fun there.

When that panel got over, its door opened to find a mass of humanity flowing upstream in the hall outside -- the David Nellist Q&A had been relocated to the larger Pavillion area! We joined that throng headed to hear the BBC's own Stamford and the session came together very quickly, despite the move. A few microphone glitches were handled seamlessly, and David was very much enjoying answering questions from Crystal, who hosted the session (reminding me very much of a starship captain, after the Kobayashi Maru business) and the fans, who happily lined up with a goodly variety of inquiries. David Nellist was a wonderful guest and a great fit for 221B Con. (And we got to learn, among other things, the real reason he wasn't at Watson's wedding. I'm so sad for that!)

After that, another episode of S(her)lock: The Web Series, this time based on "A Case of Identity" -- S(her)lock being very good at bringing the old Canon into more modern times, then hunger struck and the Elementary panel in the hour after just wasn't going to work. But that was okay, because after fortifying myself with the good Carter's lunch leftovers, I headed down and got David Nellist's autograph in the lobby and talked with him a bit about a variety of subjects, such as America's penchant for giant portions in restaurants and our over-dependence upon cars in getting about. As I wrote on Twitter, a few more 221B Cons and I may yet get over my fear of celebrities (of both the acting and podcasting varieties!)

This just in from the good Carter -- David Nellist just did a cameo in the Atlanta Radio Theatre Company's play downstairs, as I type this -- one more bit I'm missing! (Definitely needing a blogger collective to cover this thing!)

After getting David's autograph, I picked up a copy of Compound a Felony: A Queer Affair of Sherlock Holmes by Elinor Gray, who seemed maybe a little surprised that vanilla-looking old male me would be buying a bit of porn-y gay dom-sub pastiche (yes, Holmes and Watson are hard at it in the first chapter, pun intended), but it's a big, big world out there and one has to look in on what everybody else is doing at some point, or what, really, is the point? After the first chapter, Compound a Felony certainly wasn't boring me, so I'm sure I'll continue. (Boredom is the crime by which most books lose my attention, moreso than anything else.) You get old enough, it seems like people are people and parts are parts, so one can almost pretend there are whatever gender you enjoy's bits in there somewhere.

And now I've got an autographed picture of Fred Grandy (of Love Boat fame) who played Sherlock once, as well as an Alfred Molina. My curious collection of Sherlock stars is growing, thanks to a certain collector who might have been mentioned before, who is letting his daughter liquidate some very fine things this weekend.

221B Con doesn't get boring, you can count on that if you keep moving. So back on the move I go . . . .

221B Con 2016: Return to the Heart of Sherlockness

It's a little trite, a little cliche, but I have to say it:

This isn't your grandpa's Sherlockiana any more.

It's 221B Con time again, bitches, and if you aren't open to having a little real Sherlockian fun, well, for one, you're probably not here. Not to say that you probably don't have a very good excuse, but, man, I don't see how people pass this thing up. I have to admit, it always scares me a little bit -- so much energy so very different from the Sherlockiana I came up with, at least on the surface. But then once you just step up and jump into the big ol' 221B Con pool, the water is really quite comfortable. And you might even start to swim.

Our long, and often detoured, drive down here got us to the Atlanta Perimeter Marriott just an hour before registration began and two hours before the programs started, and since we ran into Marilynne McKay early on and heard she was doing one of the first panels, on doctors in the Canon, we headed there and started the con with a dose of good solid Victorian medical expertise. Learned a few things, felt good about that, and then went for the entertainment.

S(her)lock, the web series, was back with new episodes, based on "Resident Patient" and "Devil's Foot." I enjoyed their very LGBTQIA-oriented take on Holmes, Watson, and Mrs. Hudson last year, and their new stuff showed both a lot of thought and a lot of talent, both behind the camera and in front of it. The case of Patricia Trevelyan added some 1990s era AIDS-related plotting to the original  -- S(her)lock takes place back in the 1990s -- to the tale of the resident patient and gave the story some real consequences, even for Sherlock. Helen Davies does a lovely job of putting Holmes's fire into a different body in a different era, and is a real treat to watch.

After that, the good Carter and I took a break for dinner with a fellow who knows more about Sherlockian actors than anyone else alive: Howard Ostrom. We didn't talk about that during dinner with Howard and his daughter Macy, because like so many other Sherlockians, he's got a lot of other colorful things going on in his life and the conversation ranged from pro wrestling to Rick Springfield to the obliquity of the ecliptic . . . well, we might have stopped before we got to that last one. After a good meal and a mandatory stop at Ali's Cookies (Any place with a cookie called "George Washington's Revenge" has got to be good, right? And it's even better.), we headed back to the Con.

I dove back into 221B Con with the tail end of "The Abominable Bride or Abominable special?" panel -- which was packed, as Sherlock-related content here tends to be. Make no mistake, the blazing energy that fires this con tends to be more BBC than Doubleday, but if you sit through any of these panels, you quickly come to understand that as much mental energy has gone into the study of the new Holmes as went into studying the old. It's a different thing, yes, but no less thoughtfully and intently undertaken. The new Sherlockiana cannot be dismissed as a passing fad these days by anyone who has paid real attention to it.

We followed that panel with that con-organizers' favorite, "Sherlock Holmes and Dinosaurs," harkening back to the blaze of glory around the Asylum film that happened here last year. A twerking Tyrannosaurus Rex actually took over at one point, but, hey, it's Friday night, and the fun is just starting to crank up. And boy, was it cranking up this time.

At 10 PM came the "nerdlesque" burlesque show benefiting the Beacon Society, and . . . whoa. Just whoa. Hosted by a well-voiced faux-BBC-Sherlock, the Hysteria Machines, Atlanta's own nerdlesque troupe, took us through a pop culture tour of some amazing performances based on fan favorites from Penny Dreadful, Harry Potter, Kingsman, and more with an even mix of male and female performers. Sherlock Holmes giving in and doing his own striptease was something none of us ever thought we'd see done at this level of skill, and the show was the perfect climax to the first day of 221B Con. (Not to say there isn't still video, dancing, and other socializing still going on, even as I write this.)

I heard one first-timer passing by going on in amazement at "so many people like me in one place," and remembered that, yes, that is what these things are all about. (Burlesque Sherlock had a much better story about the mythical creation of 221B Con that ended with the words, "I want Tumblr to be real for three days," which is good, too, but still . . .)

But here's the other thing: sometimes you come to these things to remind yourself that yes, other people are like you, even if you seem very different on the surface.

On to day two . . .