ABOUT ME

Introducing me, Brenda Seabrooke

When I was three I  found out books were not magically manufactured in the library or bookshop but first were written by actual people called writers. I was three and an actual people. I could write a book. One problem: I couldn’t write or read. I had memorized all my raggedy little books - I still remember: “Way cross the sea and such, lies the little toy land of the Dutch Dutch Dutch” (I learned about repetition here) - but we were not allowed to learn to read because we might learn the wrong way and that would be hard to unlearn. I had a brilliant idea - I would make picture stories and that’s what I did.

 

The first one was about Finny the goldfish that came out of his bowl and had adventures. My mother said a goldfish can’t live outside its bowl. Even at 3 I knew something had to happen to make a story. What can a goldfish do but swim round and round and go glug glug glug - repetition again! - and it was my story! I was the author and Finny was coming out of that bowl. (Stubborn and determined kid!) Anyway I had already drawn the pix and was ready to move on to the next book which may have involved a lady bug.

The natural world was my playground because in those days we didn’t have TV or Legos or the internet. We did have telephones but that’s another story. We climbed trees, played in the woods, made frog houses that remained untenanted since any frog with brains took off for Florida when we were outside. 

After I’d published 20 books for young readers, I wrote one about, a London street dog who follows Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson home in hopes of a morsel of food. One bite of Mrs. Hudson’s scones and he decides to move in. Scones and Bones on Baker Street and its sequel were published by Belanger Books. 
 

Derrick Belanger, editor and owner with his brother, Brian Belanger who illustrated the Sherlock’s Dog books, suggested I write a Sherlock Holmes story for an anthology they were publishing. A Holmes story as written by Dr. Watson! That would be so hard! But I did it and The Shadow of Malice was published at Belanger in Beyond the Canon. 

Nineteen of my Holmes stories were collected and published by MX UK in two volumes. 
 

I was especially pleased for The Open Window to be included in the collection about medical mysteries. My father was a doctor who was making notes for a book when he died suddenly at 49. I wonder what he would’ve thought of this story.

Medical school days: Fred to friends, Frederick to his family. He looked so young when he opened his practice in Fitzgerald, Georgia he bought a pair of glasses with clear lenses for gravitas. He practiced for 33 years and on my visits home every time former patients told me how much they missed him. I’m sure he misses them too. We didn’t leave town for vacations or events if one of his patients wasn’t doing well.
 

Non-Holmes mystery stories were published in The Best New England Crime Stories and Mystery Tribune. 
 

Literary stories by me:

The Boy from Princeton, Texas Review
Landlocked, Kestrel
Against the Wall, Tulane Review
Going South, Confrontation
Men and Angels, The Washington Review
(First place in the West Virginia Writers’ Contest)
Potiphor’s Wife, Kerem
Still Life with Tomato, Jabberwock
Deadcat, Yemassee
Burnt Corn, Alabama Literary Review
Nightfliers, (2) Alabama Literary Review