Mary Russell’s Blog.

(Mary Russell posts on her Myspace blog every Monday during the Fifteen Weeks of Bees. With her kind permission, I shall post the same here every Tuesday.  Think of this as a serial short story.)

1.

Hard as it is to believe, fifteen years have passed since Ms Laurie King published—under her name—the first volume of the Mary Russell memoirs. She recounts (in her Editor’s Preface to that volume, which was given the title The Beekeeper’s Apprentice) her puzzlement as to what these manuscripts were and why she was the recipient of these multiple volumes of hand-written (for the most part) manuscripts recounting the life of a stranger and, moreover, a stranger who claims to have been married to one Sherlock Holmes.

Now, the fifteenth anniversary of the publication of The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, may be as good a time as any to answer that puzzle.

It began in the winter of 1989, when a bout with a troublesome although ultimately meaningless illness left me with an awareness that, in my ninetieth year, I was perhaps not to be immortal. It was time to gather my thoughts for posterity and make some arrangement for their preservation.

I might have done it long before, truth to tell, but for the identity of my husband. When one is married to a person of considerable fame, one tends to choose invisibility over all else. And since any memoirs I was to pass on would be of occasionally inflammatory nature, I needed to choose my literary agent with care.

Little did I realise that what that decision would cost me.

3 Comments

  1. Elizabeth on February 3, 2009 at 6:12 pm

    My deepest condolences on your loss…

  2. Kelly on February 3, 2009 at 7:28 pm

    I’ve read all your books, but I am new to your website. I’m very sorry to hear of the difficulties you and your husband have had, and of his death. One thing you may find is that these last few years will fade, and you get back the person you spent so many years with when you think of him…

  3. suzy Thompson on February 7, 2009 at 6:10 pm

    Finally! I’m sure most of your fans have made up their own scenario about the elderly Mary Russell, and I look forward to hearing your (her) own. My condolences on your loss, and my heartfelt thanks for your writing.

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