The candidate who plays golf, of course. For the exception of Jimmy Carter, if it is a battle between a golfer and a non-golfer, the golfer wins every time. Kamala Harris doesn’t play golf. The Sport of Presidents, which was starting to get attention when golfer Biden was still in the running, was suddenly shut out the second the non-golfer got on the ticket.

If you don’t play golf, you’re not part of the game. Golf’s scaffolding trains the brain to align with the office. Never underestimate this sport when it comes to cinching the Oval Office.

This was an interesting nonfiction Canadian book about trying to rebuild a Toronto area. It was an interesting thing to do. There is one more article that is supposed to come out soon; so stay tuned…

If you want to give someone one of my workshops as a gift….

You can order it here.

You can listen right here. It was a very enjoyable experience. We discussed Murder in a Sundown Town as well as A Time to Kill.

Right here.

Things are moving a little slower than I’d like, but it is moving along. More information when they come.

One of my articles should (finally) see the light of day sometime this month, and there is still one podcast due to come out in September, too. Kintsugi classes have been going well, as usual. I will do a book review or two for one publication as well just because I can. I will have more to say on all those projects when I have links to share.

One of my bigger projects is (also finally) getting some movement next month. There was a serious setback beyond my control earlier this year, yet it was not enough to derail anything. Right now, I am actively working on two related projects that are both significant and amazing, but I can’t say anything about it now. It’s in the early stages and it’s very exciting. I will say more when I can. There is also another project that I may or may not do, but I haven’t closed the deal on it yet. I am pondering it, nonetheless. There is one more thing, and while it would be cool to do, I am not sure of it one way or another. At this stage, it is not up to me. If it happens, I will post it here, but that’s not written in stone, more like pencil with a handy eraser nearby. I am just further along on this long shot lark than I anticipated, and I wasn’t even aware I was even that far until I was informed by someone else. I am not holding my breath, but it’s still great that I got as far as I did so far.

On a personal note, I am refurbishing a lot of my furniture lately and looking after myself. I am also getting rid of clutter, and reworking a lot of things that I couldn’t when I was writing all those books.

Still, there is a lot of waiting. I am patient, of course. I can play the long game better than anybody. Still, September is almost full and October is filling up fast. I have planted many seeds and that garden is starting to grow. 2025 will be a watershed year for me, and while there may be glitch or two to contend with, it is all going right on time and right on schedule.

And while I am still going to tweak this website and do away with this blog, I still need to add a few entries in the meantime; so that means that while this may be up for another month, I won’t be announcing all my projects like this, but there will be updates in the pages instead without any commentary from me.

As many of you are aware, I wrote the book The Dramatic Moment of Fate: The Life of Sherlock Holmes in the Theatre way back in 2020, and as it says on the tin, the book is about the long history of Sherlock Holmes on the stage. I also wrote an article about the connection in Sherlock Holmes magazine a while back.

So I know a thing or two about this obscure topic.

I heard the numerous rumblings at the Shaw Festival’s fourth foray into presenting Sherlock Holmes on stage, a play called Sherlock Holmes and the Mystery of the Human Heart, but I could not intelligibly comment until I saw the actual play last night. I wanted to see this play sooner, but the earliest I could get tickets with decent seating was for August 30th.

It’s a very long play with two intermissions, and really, there is not much of mystery in the play at all. The play is a pastiche of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s canon stories. The actors are pitch perfect in this play, and it is directed by an excellent director named Craig Hall, someone I interviewed and quoted for my 2020 book. At that point, The Hound of the Baskervilles was already performed in 2018 to much acclaim, and it had been the second time the Shaw staged a Sherlockian play. The first was in 1994 with the original sanctioned play Sherlock Holmes, the one William Gillette made into an enduring and iconic play, and one he performed on Broadway and around the world for decades.

The Hound, which I watched at the Shaw, was fabulous, and the same key actors would also go on to perform The Raven’s Curse, a play I skipped. The actors were enjoyable to watch, but the story itself was a mess. The sets were simple and nowhere near the elegance and ingenuity of the 2018 production. It was quite jarring to see the downgrade, and I am sure the fallout of the lockdowns during the pandemic era have a lot to do with those declining fortunes. The play was off somehow, and it heavily relied on knowing the canon stories to the point of being a walk down memory lane. Sherlock Holmes is a popular IP, but we all have different tastes. That’s not the heart of the rumblings, just the byproduct.

The controversy surrounds the playwright, someone called Reginald Candy, a person whose only entry is on the Shaw’s website, and whose other listed plays cannot be found. The name is obviously a pseudonym, but the question is for whom, or equally likely, for what.

If it is a person, the fake bio doesn’t play fair with the audience, but it seems likely that the play has a not zero percent chance of being written by AI and someone slapped a fake name on the credits. This theory has a lot going for it: if you have ever played around with an AI story generator based on well-established IP with a constricted story bible, then it is very easy to come up with a very similar play. AI isn’t a person, however, and it doesn’t get how to actually write a gripping story, let alone do one in the mystery genre. It meanders and will always be vague. Even if the play is a hybrid of AI with a person cleaning up the gunk and kinks, the net result will always be a meandering mess with plenty of vague statements and clichés.

And if this were an AI-generated play, we can see why it was used: many AI generators are still free to use online, and Sherlock Holmes is in the public domain. To purchase the rights to the play can be a costly affair, and when you are worried about the budget, this route may seem like salvation.

However, at least one person claims to know the identity of Mr. Candy, although it is an odd thing to do unless you choreograph an actual meta mystery to go along with the satiric hints. The author of the article is quite defensive of the actual play, but really, while it was performances that were stellar, the actual plot wasn’t very good, and if you had a weaker cast, it would have fallen flat. This cast could have read the telephone book as the characters and it would have been a delight to watch. This cast really needs a television show and pronto.

Yes, it really was a treat to watch the same actors from 2018 perform in those iconic roles. It is a testament to all the actors how well they got into the roles and their chemistry, no matter how big or small, but performances are one quarter of the equation. Direction, sets, and the actual script are equal pillars, and if one pillar is weak, it wrecks the net effect of the entire production. In this case, performance and direction were strong, most likely to make up for the other two weak ones.

The Shaw has remained silent, which is also telling. If it were a person and not a bot, I would suspect they would be working this void up as a mystery in and of itself or at least address the elephant in the room, but they have said nothing, and not addressing this question doesn’t bode well at all. Make it a hunt or clear the air. Either way, while the playhouse was packed last night, the long-term damage of the controversy won’t be good: it is one thing to have a nom de guerre, but quite another to make the biography a parody hoax. It is not just the characters that draw people to Sherlock Holmes; it’s also the stories, and the mystery.

I wouldn’t mind seeing a fifth or even a tenth Sherlock Holmes play at the Shaw, so long as an actual person without literary training wheels or stunts wrote the script — and considering how many Sherlock Holmes plays are out there, it shouldn’t be difficult to pluck a few from that vast pool to entertain the crowds who still love the World’s Greatest Detective over a century later.

In an age of AI, this gambit no longer plays well. It’s not like the Hives and their “lore” of Randy Fitzsimmons, and it should be noted even they did away with the phantom. It was an unnecessary add-on: this cast can pack the playhouse, even during the lockdowns. The Shaw was blessed to have assembled first-rate Holmes, Watson, and Hudson, and the supporting cast here held their own without fuss, and they didn’t need a Randy Fitzsimmons to spice things up. Come to think of it, neither did the Hives.

You can use the direct link to book the following workshops:

Kintsugi

Suminagshi

True Crime Reading Club (Murder in a Sundown Town)