Yesterday's lively discussion of "The Adventure of the Devil's Foot" at the Parallel Case of St. Louis's irregular Zoom reminded me of a silly little novelette I did a few years back about Watson's full drug trip during his ingestion of certain vapors in that tale. In 2019, I had been playing with old paperback covers in Photoshop to make silly parody covers, and one hippy-dippy thing from the sixties wound up with the title Radix Pedis Diaboliday. My friend Paul Thomas Miller actually had a moment of belief that it was a real book, so when National Novel Writing Month came around, I decided to make his belief be a true thing. I had twenty-five copies of that book printed using 24 Hour Books, and sent him one as a surprise.
Some other friends got "Compliments of the Season" gifts of the book that year, and I only published it as a Kindle e-book to let the friends with print copies keep the rarity of their gift. Since it wasn't much promoted (and who really needs one more silly pastiche these days), not too many people knew of it anyway.
Well, the Parallel Case meeting not only reminded me, but made me think, "Well, it's been three years, I probably could put that out there for those who missed the first round." And, since Amazon makes publishing things fairly easy, I did. Here's the link:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BPR6YLS1
But here's the thing. I was in such a rush, I based the new cover off of the original 25 print run cover art and not the Kindle cover art, which I like better. So I want to change it. And I'm going to. But not until January first at the earliest.
So for those of you that read these silly blogs, I'm giving you a head start. Not going to promote the thing (like I ever promote anything) until the cover change. But with the new year, the version being sold on Amazon will change at some point, making for a third print version of the same book. Will the second become a rare collectable, like the first? Well, probably not, unless I take to serial killing or find unlikely Hollywood stardom, but I just like fiddling with things and messing with obsessive collectors.
In any case, if you're really curious as to Watson's full drug trip during his spring 1897 vacation with Sherlock Holmes, the novelette is as cheap as a lot of comic books at $4.99. (Yeah, comic books are not cheap these days.)
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