Well, I owe our Monday readers an apology this week, as the new material didn’t get on the site last night as usually happens. As is my regretable habit, I tend to put things off to the last (a weekly occurence for the site), and two of those things collided. After months of sporadic research and false starts, I came down to having one weekend to write and layout a little book I had planned for a family reunion next week. The clock started ticking on Friday night . . .

It had been a while since I’d let myself be consumed by the final processing of piles of research and putting words on paper. Actually, I’d probably never before done it at the level I was working at this weekend. I mentioned my subject earlier in these columns, and how I’d swapped Sherlock Holmes out for my great-grandfather, a German immigrant named Jacob Vollmar. 

From first thing in the morning until late, late at night, I slaved away, forcing myself to eat whenever I noticed that mealtime was two hours past. Making discoveries from looking at two divergent data sources side-by-side, finding an old ledger’s dull business records held details of a key change in life . . . there were great mental adventures to be had, and I don’t think I explored nearly all of them in the short time I had. When Sunday night came, I had to stop myself, tie it all off in a bow, and say, “Done.”

And that’s when the really amazing part happened. After several attempts, I finally got my resulting huge PDF files to the printer I had picked out the week before. It was Monday morning before they finally got there, but less than an hour later, I had proofs to download and look at. Six hours later, the books were printed and ready for the UPS pickup.

Six hours to get a hundred copy run printed and bound? Sure, that’s not that particular printer’s guarantee, and sure, it was probably a good day, but . . . wow. In three short days it is possible to write and publish a book in this magical modern world of ours. Sure, you’re not going to turn your best quality work over a weekend, And sure, there all sorts of little arguments against Print On Demand books. But when you could just really use something printed up for your own purposes? It’s wonderful.

If Print On Demand printers had existed during the Sherlockian boom of the seventies and eighties when so many of us were struggling to typeset our small press things on IBM selectric typewriters and getting them printed by any means possible (including mimeograph) . . . boy, would we have a lot more collectible books right now.

Anyway, my apologies, one and all. No new comic this week, nor movie investigation from Sherlock’s grandson, I’m afraid. But next week! Next week! Well, come back see what we’re up to then.

Your humble correspondent,

Brad Keefauver