The pies were nice.

I spent my afternoon making pies. It was an easy day, with little on the agenda, so I got a little creative with one recipe, tried something else new (apple with cinnamon roll crust), and stuck to a couple of old favorites. My key lime is excellent.

What does this have to do with Sherlock Holmes? Nothing, and for that, I apologize. I try not to go too many posts without writing about the man himself, or something else drawn from his Canon, but this week . . . ah, this week, I broke my own rules. Partly because I've been writing about Sherlock for another purpose that will eventually see daylight, partly because it was a very involved week at the job, and I was just seeing what spilled out at the keyboard.

So, pies. Had all my pies done and set to take them to a nice family dinner with some of the best humans I know, and I finally got around to checking Twitter, where it seemed, I had become the topic of discussion. And we all know that's not usually a good thing. If people have to discuss you, well, somebody out there probably isn't happy about something.

I suspect that over the course of my Sherlockian life, I've had more people angry with me than any other part of my existence. In the real world, as one might call one's daily existence, people do take offense upon occasion . . . but we work it out, have a laugh, and know that we all mean well. It's this distance between us in our fan lives that catches us. That and the fact that Sherlock Holmes, and all the culture around him, becomes a part of our identity. Which makes us vulnerable, susceptible to getting a bit hurt.

So, when one comes off a nice afternoon of pie-baking, and finds a fellow Sherlockian suggesting that one is mentally ill and needs friends to step in, simply for having a different perspective, well, one has to assume that someone felt a little bit hurt by something one said. Which hurts in turn, as no one wants to see other people hurting from words that weren't intended to sting . . . just explore some ideas. It makes a writer feel like the writing didn't quite work the way it was supposed to, as well.

But we all come to the Sherlockian dance with our own history, our own biases, and our own reasons to get angry at what our own eyes see as an attack on something or someone we hold dear. We just might want to try to control our tempers a bit, when the red haze starts moving in, just in case what we saw wasn't really intended in the manner in which we took it.

So, not the best day to be yours truly on the old Sherlockian Twitter (didn't engage any of it on Facebook, which I keep pretty pared down). Thanks to everyone who took the time to ponder the matter or send a kindly thought.

The pies did turn out really well, too.