Left Coast Sherlockian Symposium: Sunday morning!

Sunday morning starts at 9:30 with Margie Deck and Bob Coghill giving out the fabulous doorprizes!

Margie prepared a fun quiz based on Portland and the symposium itself, and by turning it in (You didn't even have to get any answers right!), we all got ten door prize tickets we could drop in cups next to some really great prizes. I dropped most of mine in celebrity autographed photos, but there were games, stuffed Sherlock bears, mystery boxes, all sorts of goodies. About eight prizes in, I still haven't won anything . . . SOB tea box, hmm, didn't put a ticket in that one, so I'm good. Christopher Lee autograph photo! Tim Johnson gets it, and I did have a ticket in that one. Aw. missed the Cumberbatch, too!  First edition Bonnie MacBird, no luck! RDJ, Jude Law, NOOOO!!! Jeremy Brett, goes, and we're done. No luck for me on this outing.

But Margie is giving us to the answers to the quiz. Stormy Petrels are Watson, Holmes, and a member of a scion. Lyndsay Faye goes with Dust and Shadows. Henry Baskerville, John Watson, Sherlock Holmes = Christopher Lee. Sherlock Hemlock first appeared looking for a half a chicken salad sandwich. Jack James did time in Portland. SH looked for the Missing Three Quarter on Gray's Inn Road. Neil GIbson looked like Abe Lincoln.  October 13 was when Watson wrote a letter from Baskerville Hall. Hosmer and Mary met at a ball. Thirteen friends of Hugo Baskerville, thirteen speakers on the program for the weekend. What were the questions? You'll have to ask Margie, as I'm already typing as fast as I can.

Haley stops by, gathering speaker autographs on the symposium poster -- one of those brilliant ideas that we all wish we had thought of, now too late to pull off. A lot of luggage in the symposium room today as folks have checked out and are leaving soon.

Elinor's up to introduce Lyndsay Faye, and my table learned early on that if we started loudly clapping, we could silence the room for her. Sherlockians love to join in clapping. And now comes Lyndsay, who is fearing spontaneous combustion from public speaking, unbelievably enough. She's diving into audience interaction to help out, and endearing herself immediately.

I always remember meeting Lyndsay at the first 221B Con, and telling her she was the person that I wanted to be when I was thirty, and there's still a lot to admire there. Such good thoughts coming out, Doyle's hat-trick in Holmes and Watson being self-aware that they were getting published -- something BBC's Holmes and Watson would have had to realize they were on TV to pull off. And how she brought that into her wonderful Timothy Wilde novels.

"All novels are sequels," Michael Chabon said, according to Lyndsay, as she's shown that Sherlock Holmes followed other writings and other writings followed him. She wraps up her main comments, and we eventually get to "Sherlock Holmes and Dinosaurs," one of her true passions. And there are people in this audience who have never heard of it? WHAT!?!? (And that guy across the room that threw shade at Holmes and Watson -- I may have to take him out. He looks a little young and fit though, and probably even capable of verbal riposte, so then again . . . well, I'm save that for my podium time.)

Asked about her influences, Lyndsay tells us she reads a lot of poetry while she's writing, which is a really interesting point about wordsmithing. She also makes a point of historical fiction giving voices to people whose voices we never will hear. The audience questions are really providing a nice variety of Lyndsay thoughts. Her roots, her childhood, and how they play into her creation of Paragon Hotel, and Portland's racist past. And up comes, for the second or third time this weekend, how Michael Dibdin's The Last Sherlock Holmes Story is the one most offensive Sherlock Holmes pastiche in the world, and is always called out as possibly the worst Holmes book ever.

Like so much of the rest of this weekend, a whole ton of ideas are coming out here. And we're about to roll right into Tim Johnson, so I'm posting!