“We should write a novel together.” With retirement approaching, Bonnie did not intend to slow down.
“About?”
“Maybe base it on a Baker Street Irregular (BSI) who’s now an adult and a renowned detective…”
A lifelong fan of the Sherlock Holmes universe, both Conan Doyle’s original stories and those by writers since, Bon admired the street urchins Holmes occasionally employed to gather information. She suggested a BSI story set in the US could be a natural progression from the original stories.
“And…?” I asked.
“I’ll give it some thought.”
And she did, filling a blue notebook with possibilities over ensuing years.
In 2015, Bonnie retired after three decades of federal service as a special agent for Defense Investigative Service, Defense Security Services, and Department of Army, a career she ended with a year’s service in security for NATO. As retirement neared, she began developing the potential BSI character, other characters, possible plot lines, and settings, incorporating events from her personal experience, such as the purported, but extremely suspicious, suicide of a coworker, and our planned move to Las Cruces, New Mexico, upon retirement.
The novel wasn’t our only goal for retirement. We also planned to travel the world, which we expected would provide even more potential material for our BSI mystery. Two months after arriving in Las Cruces, those travel plans had to be placed on hold when doctors diagnosed Bonnie with endometrial cancer — luckily, stage one. A hysterectomy solved the problem, with no spread to surrounding tissues or lymph nodes. During the following months of monitoring checkups, we remained close to home, visiting only New Mexico destinations, all the while discussing novel possibilities.
As ideas began to coalesce into a possible storyline and doctors relegated medical checkups to a yearly basis, we again made travel plans. And again cancer put a stop to those plans, this time
stage two/three colorectal cancer, which would require nearly two years of treatment, beginning with chemo and radiation, followed by surgery, followed by a second round of chemo. Meanwhile, Bonnie kept augmenting that notebook with possibilities.
By 2020, the oncologist had declared her cancer-free — just in time for the pandemic. We continued developing ideas for the novel as Bon immersed herself in her two favorite creative skills, culinary arts and crochet, and I completed a literary project. By late 2021, an end to pandemic restrictions came into view as destinations beyond the horizon called. But…
The cancer returned, this time stage four. We put aside the book and all other projects to concentrate on treatment and recovery. Nevertheless, despite the oncologist’s optimistic outlook of at least a five-year survival, chemotherapy proved ineffective, and the pain became excruciating. Bonnie passed away ten months after diagnosis.
I buried myself in work, finishing several writing and music projects. Somewhere in there, I opened her notebook of ideas and heard her voice, excited, full of expectation and anticipation, as I read her words. And I realized I could keep her close by doing the very thing we’d planned to do — writing that book together.
Three years later, The Crosses ~ A Baker Street Irregulars Mystery — set in 1925 Las Cruces, New Mexico, featuring a BSI, a female Native American-Caucasian newspaper publisher, and an African-American deputy sheriff, working together to solve the murders of three local tribal councillors — has been completed. Bonnie and I have done our best to make The Crosses a good read, an honorable entry into, and member of, the Sherlock Holmes universe. I’m deeply grateful to MX Publishing, the world’s largest publisher of Sherlock Holmes literature, for deeming it worthwhile.
In the coming months, background posts will explore the novel’s historical setting, the characters’ racial diversity, the BSI’s background and circumstances that have brought him to the Southwest, and the literary “Easter eggs” interspersed throughout the novel, which I believe you’ll find interesting. The desert cardinal image that accompanies this post will then be explained.
These blog entries will appear on https://windpoemcreative.blogspot.com and https://csfuqua.com/blog, as well as Facebook. I hope you’ll join me on this adventure which will culminate in the publication of The Crosses by Bonnie Lynne Del Aguila and C.S. Fuqua.