Chapter Text
Friday 2nd May 2014, 9:30am
Hello everyone!
But of an odd post today but I hope you’ll all bear with me because it’s quite an important one. Well to me anyway.
Before you get excited, no it’s not a book announcement (though I hope to have some more information about the Evie Trevor series soon… #WankyAuthorSayings)
As regular followers will know, I’ve mentioned S a lot in these blog posts and you’ve all been very patient waiting for me to tell you more about them, or anything about them beyond the fact they exist and have quite an unusual job. Well, your desperate pleas in the comments have been answered and today I’ll be answering a question second in mystery only to Who is H from Line of Duty: Who is S ?
In this blog post, I want to tell you a story...
It started 4 years ago. Well sort of. Technically you could say it started 4 and 1/2 years ago, when my first book was published. Or 6 years ago when I was honourably discharged from the army. Or 36 years ago when I was first unleashed upon this earth. However, in the interest of length and not boring you to death, let’s say it starts 6 years ago and I’ll skip through so we only get the essentials.
6 years ago, I was shot. I’ve talked a little about it in another post which you can read here , but the main thing is I was returned to England, unable to do the job I’d trained for, no real purpose, and absolutely flat broke. My therapist suggested I start a hobby, like gardening or painting or a myriad of other things that made me feel like an 8 year old being told to play nicely with the other children. Eventually, exasperated, she said “What about a blog?”
‘ A blog? What a ridiculous idea. Nothing ever happens to me ,’ I thought.
Yes, I do now realise the irony.
I dismissed the blog, but the thought of writing in general rattled around in my brain and refused to go away. It had always been a secret passion of mine and with nothing but time, limited WiFi signal, and a very decrepit laptop, I began to write. Or, more accurately, rewrite. By this time I was on the fourth draft of what would become ‘The Scarlet Study’, a story I’d been working on-and-off since university, my first mystery novel, and really the thing that changed my entire life. (Thanks for that, by the way).
Fast forwarding again, I worked on it for a long time, jumped through the many publishing hoops (read more about that story here- once again, massive thanks to my agent Mike and sorry for calling you a dickhead), and eventually it was published.
For 6 months, I was riding high. The reviewers were being fairly kind, along the way I’d started this blog, the difficult second novel was underway and was not giving me too much grief. (As you all know that would come a few months later when I wrote myself into a pit and shouted about on this very blog for suggestions on how to solve it.) People were wanting to interview me, I was looking for a new place to live, I could afford something better than my bedsit, and for the first time in a very, very long time, I felt genuinely hopeful.
And then The Email came.
I have reproduced it here for you, in full:
Dear Dr Watson
I have just finished your book ‘The Scarlet Study.’ I could comment on its incompatibility with reality, it’s inconsistencies, or its general overwrought sentimentality. That can be overlooked; however I am sure you would like to know that you have solved the case incorrectly.
Yours
S-
Not a happy camper. Obviously, being a mature, sensible, some may even say stoic individual, I did not rise to the bait...much:
Dear S-
Please, don’t hold back on my count. Tell me what you really think. It’s not as if I or any of my team have spent any amount of time on the manuscript. Please, pray do inform us lowly mortals of the actual solution to the mystery I wrote.
Yours
JW
Alright, a little overboard, but in my defence, I was pissed. I had spent the best part of a decade thinking, plotting, and writing out this book, I wasn’t going to be told I had missed something obvious from a random person over the internet.
They wrote back within the hour. Just one word.
Cabbie .
And this is what really sent me over the edge. Not only did they come into my emails and insult my work, but they had the audacity to be absolutely fucking right .
(Since this email, S has agreed that my solution does technically work.)
Obviously, I had to meet them, if only to explain how angry I was and to see the person who had, in one email, neatly embarrassed me and every person working on the book. I sent a very long, sweary email back demanding how and why and how dare you and a reluctant can we meet , and a week later I arrived at a cafe that, unbeknownst to me, I would very soon be living above.
There were only three other people in the cafe, two older gentlemen having a spirited conversation about the Arsenal match, and S, sitting in the corner with their eyes closed. I had spent the commute preparing myself to storm over and demand answers but in the flesh I stalled and bought a coffee first.
I sat down and their eyes opened slowly, sharp quicksilver scanning over me. I tried very hard not to look away from the examination and stared back aggressively. Annoyingly, S didn’t seem shocked by this.
“Go on then,” was all I said, so, with all the theatricality and exasperation of a magician explaining an elaborate trick to a small child, they laid out every detail, twist and turn in the novel that pointed towards the Cabbie being behind the whole thing.
It was infuriating, embarrassing, and the most brilliant thing I’ve ever seen. If my anger had not shocked them, my sudden burst of laughter did, as did my next question.
I asked them to be my beta reader, someone to consult with on plot points and solutions, so each new book would be watertight and irreproachable from a deductive standpoint. This request was much to the annoyance of my editor, who has spent the following years arguing with S about nearly every detail in my subsequent novels, but luckily for me and my books, S hesitantly agreed.
(For those of you lunging to read the acknowledgements, they still appear as S in there so you’re going to have to keep reading for answers....)
Not to be out done, S announced I was looking for a new flat and should move in with them, for ease of our new working arrangement. Before I was really aware of what was going on, I’d been whisked upstairs, shown into the most chaotic flat I’d ever seen, handed tea by a lovely, cheeky landlady, and herded into a comfy chair that seemed to be moulded to me. I looked at S with mild bewilderment.
“Might be dangerous.”
It was said so casually but S knew exactly what they were doing. If words were a siren call, the word “dangerous” must be mine. It should have been upsetting, being read so accurately in less than 20 minutes, but I didn’t feel anything but seen .
I moved in the next day.
So, in less than 24 hours, I’d gained a new flat, new flatmate, and new fiction beta. It was a wonderful, exciting time that has been caught only in snatches on this blog because I was so busy doing, I forgot the telling, but there are elements of it threaded through, including the hilariously short entry: “Caught up in Flatmate’s work. Roller Skates are the devil’s work. Need to sleep now.”
Nothing could spoil it, apart from the aforementioned plot pit and the roller skate.
Oh, and the fact that I had the largest, wildest, soul-melting crush on S.
It wasn’t difficult to fall in love. They were amazing: a genius, with a bravado rivaling the size of Big Ben, hiding a perceptive sensitivity, a wicked sense of humour they kept hidden from most people, and looks that would make angels weep. (Yes, I may be slightly biased but only slightly ).
Assuming there was no way such a person would be interested in me, plus the complicated dynamic of flatmate-beta-friend that was already being delicately balanced, I tried everything in my power to do nothing about it. I spent weeks and months of my one wild and precious life trying to do nothing. Believe me, I would have moved heaven and earth to do nothing at all.
At first, I tried to deny it. Then, ignore it, like all proper Englishmen. Then I tried to tame it into submission. Then I decided that I could live with it, a sort of semi-trained animal that was mostly docile, only occasionally sending me into a head-spinning emotional thunder-dome that had me questioning life, the universe, and how anyone could look so good while having an Actual Tantrum over the morgues inability to hand over body parts (for science-based work reasons, I promise.)
After a while, I was becoming used to this, slowly gaining acceptance that this was my life now and it was infinitely better than the one I had been living, even if it wasn’t exactly what I wanted when It happened.
I was midway through line edits. Now, it is no secret that I am not entirely fond of line edits. In some ways, some people might say I hate them with an unwarranted intensity that should only be reserved for war criminals and people playing loud music on the tube.
Part way through swearing at my laptop that no, that sentence was not grammatically correct, that was the point , S threw a coat at me and demanded that we were going out. Happy to abandon the words, I followed them out, even though I didn’t realise at this point we were headed to a crime scene. I have another whole post about that strange evening and the day that followed, which ended with the fact that, despite being awake for over 24 hours, we raced home, sprinting through the streets of London like small children through Regent’s Park.
What I failed to mention was afterwards, we were leaning on the wall in the hallway giggling hysterically from a mix of adrenaline and exhaustion. It was that heady mix that meant I made a stupid, reckless, bad decision.
I kissed him.
Turns out, it’s possibly the best-worst decision I ever made. I’m not going to claim it was the best kiss to ever grace the face of the earth but what it lacked in finesse, we made up for in enthusiasm. 3 years later, we’re still happy, still together, and still driving each other up the bloody wall.
And because it’s a big part of my life, I’ve become really bored of the amount of editing I’ve had to do around it, the careful rewriting and self-censorship and half-truths. It’s not fair to you, it’s not fair to me, and it’s not fair to S.
So, for full disclosure, S stands for Sherlock.
... Yes. That Sherlock. ‘Sherlock Holmes’ Sherlock. The detective bloke in a stupid hat (please don’t mention the hat to him).
Is now an appropriate time to say surprise? (No John, no it’s not. Sorry.).
Because, along with that reveal, there’s an implicit reveal of my own, isn’t there? A coming out. For full clarification, if anyone cares, I am bisexual and very happy about that fact.
This has not always been an easy revelation for me but it has, in its acceptance, led me to being the happiest I have ever been, with the best partner I could ask for.
Don’t get me wrong, he’s still very irritating: constantly critiquing the plots of my stories, leaving evidence from genuine crime scenes all over the flat, has no apparent awareness of the time or date at any given moment, and has the coldest feet known to humanity.
I wouldn’t change him for the world.
A sentimental example of why, if you’ll indulge me.
When I was writing this post, I was, to put it mildly, a little tense.
In fact, I was full pacing-the-length-of-the-flat-violently-making-tea-muttering-under-my-breath level of tense, and we were quickly heading to grumpily-sulking-in-front-of-the-football level.
So, when I asked him, for the ninetieth time, if I was making the right decision, if all this turmoil was really worth something that would change nothing materially about my life, he answered, very calmly with a smile.
“Might be dangerous.”