The SH Meets SH Fiction Challenge.

Great minds really do think alike. Especially if they’re in a chat room together, or if they happen to be Saitou Hajime and Sherlock Holmes.

It started with one person watching a Sherlock Holmes movie and another bringing up the idea of Saitou going to London to work with Sherlock Holmes on the Jack the Ripper case. How would Saitou deal with London? With the English? Why would he be there in the first place? And how would he react to Sherlock Holmes and the first well-known serial killer? Does Saitou figure it out? The ideas and possibilities are endless and that’s what those of us who came up with the challenge would like to see --- our fellow Shinsengumi fans turn their imaginations loose alongside Saitou and Holmes as they investigate the murder of women on the dirty streets of Whitechapel in 1888.

There are a few guidelines, a few rules.

1. Saitou Hajime and Sherlock Holmes must both be involved. You can use any version of Saitou you wish to --- the real man, Rurouni Kenshin, Peacemaker Kurogane, the NHK television drama “Shinsengumi,” the film “Mibugishiden” (“When the Last Sword is Drawn”), or any other source material in which Saitou Hajime appears. You can even spell his name Saito or Saitoh. The same is true for Sherlock Holmes --- Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories, Basil Rathbone, Peter Cushing, Nicol Williamson, Jeremy Brett, or any of the other fine actors who have undertaken the role. Write the characterization you know and love, or experiment with others. Additionally, if you don’t want to send Saitou to London, but instead want to send Holmes to Japan, go for it --- the only clause is that they have to meet and it has to involve the Ripper case in some way.

2. The story can be anywhere from one (1) chapter to a multiple-part of no more than seven (7) chapters.

3. Information on the Ripper murders is available in a document within the SH Meets SH Challenge folder. General information on Holmes’ career as a detective may also eventurally find it’s way into the same folder. FYI --- Holmes begins his career as a detective in 1887 with “A Study in Scarlet.” You may want to use that for a date, but you’re not limited to it. We can suspend disbelief for this.

4. The deadline for acceptance of stories is November 8, 2004. Only completed stories will be accepted and uploaded. Stories cannot be published elsewhere, such as fanfiction.net or on other mail lists.

5. Completed stories should be sent to me (philalexandros) any time before the deadline. Don’t post them to the list! And don’t upload them to the Files section! You can send them to me as an attachment or within the body of the email message (formatting may be lost if it’s sent within the body). If the story has more than one chapter, please send them to me one chapter per message. The address to send them to is spiritus_saitou@yahoo.com . I will post a new address if it changes. Include the header used for story submissions

6. The stories will be collected and remain unread until November 9, the anniversary of the death of the Ripper’s last known victim, when they will be uploaded to a folder in the Files section of the SHQ Spy Division yahoo site and the SHQ website. Authors are strongly encouraged to publish their story on http://www.fanfiction.net/ on November 10. If you don’t have an author account on ff.net, there are several writers on the list who can help you, including me. It’s very simple and we would be more than happy to help.

7. This is NOT a contest. There’s no judging involved. It’s simply a challenge and a way to have fun together. If publishing to a wider audience has always kept you from writing, this is your chance to exercise those imaginations and fingers. What’s important here is getting to share how we envision a beloved member of the Shinsengumi and how we think he might handle the situation. No one is up against anyone else and there’s certainly no right or wrong solution --- after all, it’s still an unsolved mystery after 116 years. And sssh… keep your story quiet so we can all be surprised on November 9!

If you have any questions or need clarification on anything, please feel free to contact me at spiritus_saitou@yahoo.com .