About BSTLYH

Be Sure to Lock Your Homes: being the writings of a Lady upon Sherlockiana, Arcana, Cinema, and Assorted Mischellany.

Pleased to meet you, I'm "A Lady:" I usually just go by K here; my screen name in various places is unicorngirl or iamunicorngirl. I'm a librarian and writer living in Iowa City in the USA, but my heart is very often in England.

I started this blog as a repository for these "treatises" I keep writing or meaning to write about Sherlockian topics, movies, history, the paranormal - a good deal are probably going to be vampires, another favorite research topic - and whatever else fits. I don't know if much of it will be of interest to others, but I'm putting it out there regardless, if only to get my thoughts in order in a manner which would make sense to someone else.

I'm a proud novice member of the Younger Stamfords in Iowa City. While relatively new to the wider world of Sherlockian study, I've been a reader and fan most of my life. I'm also a writer and aspire to pastiche one day. I think better in writing, so this is a good place to get out some of my thoughts and organize some of my research (such as it is) into Sherlockian topics.

I'm also a film buff, and am definitely going to be using this platform for some of the movie reviews/musings on various films I have written or meant to write - once they're polished up anyway! I've been watching (and rewatching) movies obsessively my whole life, writing about them for some, and some previous attempts at blogging movie reviews were less than successful, but help me get my thoughts in order. I have a lot of thoughts on a lot of films, so you'll definitely be seeing those to come.

What's in the name?
When I was very young I saw a series of TV movies of Sherlock Holmes stories, and had a hazy memory of a scene from one, in which Watson confronts a heard-of-hearing and slightly daft shopkeeper. When asked his business, he says he's sent by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, to which the shopkeeper responds, "Eh?? Be sure to lock yer 'omes?" I found this very funny and clever, and it stuck with me long after I forgot where I'd heard it. Later when I read the canon, I always thought this joke would be in the stories somewhere, and was a little disappointed to find it wasn't. However I've valiantly given it new life as the title for this blog. (Later I went on a quest for that series of movies and discovered this scene appeared in the 2001 Canadian TV movie production of "The Sign of Four" with Matt Frewer and Kenneth Walsh, which I talk more about in this post.)

I welcome comments, even criticism or disagreement, but please keep political in-fighting and hurtful language out of my blog. Everything I express and espouse here are my personal opinions unless otherwise noted as original research or cited as someone else's research. I welcome viewpoints other than my own on Sherlockian ideas, but please respect mine and others' views on questions that cannot be definitively proven by the canon as one of many possible readings. Offensive comments will be deleted.