2024 Writing Review and 2025 Preview

This year-end review feels a little repetitive to me because what little I had published or produced in 2024 all came out near the end of this year.

In October I was honored to have my horror story “Expiration Date” serve as the Hallowe’en episode of Jim French’s Imagination Theatre, then one month later my fourth Sherlock Holmes mystery for IT, “The Adventure of the Cheapside Secret,” debuted on The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. This is the first time I have had TWO scripts produced during a single season of IT, and I have hopes of a THIRD, but more on that in a moment.

My only publication this year was my alternative universe short story “My Tombstone Days by John H. Watson M.D.” in the anthology Multiverse of Mystery from the International Association of Tie-In Media Writers (IATMW). It tells how Holmes and Dr. John H. Watson first meet in the boomtown of Tombstone, Arizona, where Watson also reunites with a university friend named John Henry “Doc” Holliday, D.D.S.

And there you have it.

Looking ahead to 2025, it’s going to be a big Big BIG year if, for no other reason, I become eligible for Medicare.

Anyway…

That third radio script I submitted to IT for this season is an adaptation of Bram Stoker’s best novel after Dracula: Jewel of Seven Stars. Centered around attempts to resurrect the mummy of a female pharaoh and sorceress, Kim Newman and Stephen Jones ranked it 23rd in their list of the 100 best horror novels and S. T. Joshi has called it an “impressive tale of Egyptian horror.” To date there have been three movie adaptations and one television adaptation of Jewel of Seven Stars, but as far as I can discover no one has ever adapted it for radio. Since Stoker is one of my favorite authors, and Jewel of Seven Stars is one of my favorite novels, and my wife loves mummies, I figured if anyone should try to fix that oversight it ought to be me.

Oh! And here’s a teaser. Jewel of Seven Stars was published in 1903, but since 1912 almost all editions have excluded a contemplative though hardly controversial chapter called “Powers – Old and New” and replaced its original dark and tragic ending with a more upbeat conclusion. My adaptation adapts the 1903 ending, which I believe is the far superior finale.

On the publishing side, it looks like my short story adaptation of “Adventure of the Cheapside Secret” will appear in either volume 49 or 50 of The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures. Edited by David Marcum, The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures is concluding its ten-year run in May 2025, and I have been honored to have been a very small part of this wonderful series that has featured so many terrific pasticheurs and has done so much to help Stepping Stone School at Undershaw in Surrey. And, for what it’s worth, I am also happy to say I have had at least one pastiche in every ten-volume allotment of the series.

After a long, hard slog, it also looks like I will have another Holmes pastiche, “The Friendly Hand of Death,” appear in the mystery-by-mail serial Dear Holmes. And I do mean a long, hard slog. Each month Dear Holmes mails its subscribers one post a week: the first three present clues to a Victorian-era mystery and the fourth presents the solution. The catch here is that the first three “clue letters” are genuine-looking Victorian letters, newspaper clippings, police reports, and so on that are sent by a client to Sherlock Holmes, while the fourth post is a letter from Holmes on his stationary explaining the solution to the client. And, let me tell you, Dear Holmes subscribers take their clue solving seriously! Just check out the Dear Holmes website to see what I mean. Subscribers compete each month to be a Featured Detective, have access to a blog site and a podcast, gather together for mystery nights, posts theories on YouTube, and more. I’ve got to tell you, writing a Dear Holmes mystery is intimidating!

And that is everything in the pipeline right now. I suspect one or two unexpected writing opportunities will pop up over the course of the year as they usually do, but at this moment the only things on my plate is a long-term novel project that has picked up steam over the past few months, and there has been a definite development in that really cool and very big project I mentioned in last year’s review. Hopefully I can spill the beans about one or the other sometime soon.

Finally, I ended last year’s review with the news that 2024 was going to be the year that the Joneses became grandparents, and I am proud to that say our granddaughter arrived as per schedule and is both healthy and happy. But, as I also mentioned, life is a little laugh and a little tear, and unfortunately my uncle Eugene Jones passed away last October. Better known as Gene or Genie Boy, he was a favorite uncle and the last survivor among my father’s six siblings, so this was a particularly sad passing. Gene and his wife Alice were also among my influences when I was creating my series Max Q, but instead of trying to summarize what all he meant to me, I would like to end this year’s review with Gene’s obituary, which perfectly encapsulates the man and is one of the best obituaries I have ever read:

Gene and Alice Jones, 2005

“Eugene Lee Jones, age 84, of Lincoln, Nebraska passed away on Tuesday, October 15, 2024. He married Alice Truax on July 9, 1960. Gene was a member of the Nebraska Mason Association for over 50 years and took great pride in it. He also loved spending time with his grandchildren and great grandchildren and putting his sons to work. He was full of many jokes and pranks, some of which may have gotten him into a bit of trouble. Outside of his family, his 1966 Ford Mustang was his pride and joy. Eugene was part of the Mustang Club. During football season he loved watching the Steelers and Huskers play, and despite the wins and loses he stayed loyal over the years. Gene had a way of luring you into lengthy conversations about many things and about nothing at the same time. His presence will be missed.”

Left to Right: A young Gene Jones looking dapper in Lincoln, Nebraska; Gene surveying the Mississippi in the early seventies; Gene and my dad Don “Sam” Jones in the home office of Jones Parking Company in the mid eighties.