In August of 1963, a twelve-year-old Craig Stephen Copland stood with his family on Broadway, eating pizza at midnight.

The streets and sidewalks of Manhattan were alive with people and music and traffic. It was fabulous.

During that week, he ascended to the top of the Empire State Building, took the Staten Island Ferry to the Statue of Liberty and climbed to the crown. He went to Radio City Music Hall, Central Park and the Museum of Natural History. And a lot more.

He fell in love with New York City.

Now, sixty years later, he can finally turn that affection into stories that took place in the Big Apple during the monumental years between World Wars One and Two.

He would have started writing about New York sooner, but was pre-occupied with creating sixty novels and twenty short stories about Sherlock Holmes. That quest – a new story as a tribute to each of the original Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle – was completed in the autumn of 2023. Three million words later, it is time to move on.

Each story in the series will take place in a successive year, beginning in 1920, and they will be connected to historical events that took place during that year. If you have suggestions for plots of future stories, please send them to Craig at CraigStephenCopland@gmail.com