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Thursday, November 15, 2012

BOOK CLUB FRIDAY GUEST AUTHOR - MICHAEL CHARTON


Today’s Book Club Friday guest is Michael Charton, husband of last week’s guest author Elaine Charton/Elaine Joyce. Michael enjoys the writer’s journey, the experiences and the people he gets to interact with during the course of that journey. You can learn more about Michael at his blogMichael is offering a free download of Moriarity, the Life and Times of a Criminal Genius to one of our readers who posts a comment. -- AP
Professor Moriarty, One Writer’s Obsession.
I’ve always been an Anglophile and a Sherlock Holmes fan, with a Pythonesque sense of the absurd.
I was always interested in Sherlock Holmes’ main adversary Professor Moriarty.  In the book The Seven Percent Solution, it was called a figment of Sherlock Holmes’ cocaine racked mind, hence the seven percent solution.
I always wondered, what drove Holmes’ adversary and Holmes’ obsession with him?  It would have to be a man with a similar intellect. I thought, could I make Moriarty more than just a common criminal?
And then the light bulb went off. Victorian Britain, an Irish surname, Irish issues, and reading up about gangland. I had my Moriarty. I had James Moriarty shaped by the Irish Potato Famine, known in Gaelic as An Ghorta Morta (The Great Hunger). Was it a form of genocide? That is for historians to decide. My interest in history took over as well. I threw in the gangland leader brains of Meyer Lansky with the ruthlessness of the last major Irish-American gangster in the United States, Boston’s James “Whitey” Bulger. Add the history buff in me and my version of tHolmes’ opponent was created.
I might enjoy the idea of a female opponent for Holmes.
Maybe a female Moriarty?
Will let you know.

Thanks for joining us today, Michael. Readers, if you’d like a chance to win a copy of Moriarity, the Life and Times of a Criminal Genius, post a comment. Don’t forget to either include your email address or check back on Sunday to see if you’ve won. We can’t get your book to you if we have no way of contacting you. -- AP


7 comments:

Kathleen Kaska said...

It's great to wake up in the morning and discover another Holmes book has been published to add to my collection. Good luck with book, Michael. Are you a member of a Sherlock Holmes society? I belong to The Dogs in the Nighttime. The named comes from the story Silver Blaze.

Liese said...

I have to say I also am fascinated by Sherlock Holmes and am obvioulsy not alone (or else Elementary would not have made it to TV).

Interesting twist, to look at his archenemy.

Craig Faustus Buck said...

Holmes and Moriarty, Yin and Yang. It was no accident they went over the falls in an embrace.

ElaineCharton said...

Hi
this is Mike's wife, Elaine. He asked me to let you all know he In trouble getting on from work. He will be on later after work and promises to answer all your questions then.

Marni said...

Fascinating way to approach the character of Moriarity, Michael, I take my hat off to you for this one! I highly recommend you bring your book to the attention of the writers at Elementary, and they can do up a contemporary version for their series.

CactusCorner said...

Kathleen, thank you so much. I am not in a Holmes society at the moment, but we are planning to be in London next summer so I will finally get to visit 221B.

Liese, thank you. The history buff in me enjoyed coming up with this.

Craig, true lol! Marni thank you.

Irene said...

Bring on Irene Adler!