S.H. Roddey

2. Tell us a little about your story.

3. Who’s your favorite Sherlock?

4. What else (if anything) have you written?

5. Where can we find you online?

Full disclosure: I’m fairly technologically backward. As such, I do not have a facebook account, nor anything for myspace, twitter, whatever else there might be. If you want to look for me, the only real place is on Amazon, where there is a small Authors Page. Well, that’s about it. I hope that you enjoy the book, wherever you are…

THE IMPROBABLE TRUTH: THE ADVENTURE OF THE SLOW DEATH

It was some time after the Case of the Crestfallen Corsair that the great detective allowed me to fill my late fathers shoes as his biographer. This would have been after the Great Scourge left half the globe a charred mass, the other half a sweltering, desiccated nightmare. Those of us in what was left of Great Britain looked fearfully to the dawn, constantly on alert for our own time. Nine months with no Heavenly fire, and still we shook in our shoes.

“It was hardly a Divine fire from Heaven,” he told me over tea one melancholy evening. I had made the error of reporting to him the judgment of many papers of the time, that the sky of fire had been the Judgment of God. “Nothing more than a particularly large ejection from our sun. One with devastating effect, but a natural occurrence, nevertheless.”

In my minds-eye I could hear him saying these words around the stem of his pipe. Now, however, there were no ‘Three Pipe Problems.’ Inquiring as to why one particular day, I was informed that the smoke did nothing to focus his mind of late. I couldn’t help but assume that it was the constant barrage of ash flowing over the world that put him off of his pipe. How does a man willingly spark a match when the charred reminders of half of mankind float by his window on every breeze?

A small charcoal of my late parents adorned a place of honor upon the stone fireplace around which we sat. We both looked upon it through the silence that evening, and many others. No fire burned, nor embers glowed. Even through the deepest winter past, the heat of day was nearly intolerable. It was through habit and emotional necessity that we persisted there. The past may be lost to us, but should never be forgotten.

With a tip of his cup, he said to me, “I find that I miss them more often of late. Never let you think that those friends around you are but passing fancies. They are the spice of life. Without them, our outlooks are simply… Bland.”

Companion though I may have been, I was aware of my position to him. He had known me since birth, though I would never be able to take the place of his fallen friends. I could only stand in their place, not fill their shoes.