Early on, Sam Siciliano developed a taste for fantastical worlds better than the one he was stuck with. He grew up reading the golden-age juvenile science fiction of Heinlein and Andre Norton, the Mars and Tarzan novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Baum's Oz books, Brooks' tales set on a New England farm where Freddy the Pig had his adventures, and of course, there was the London of Sherlock Holmes. Siciliano has a doctorate in English Literature and taught briefly at the college level, but because of the terrible academic job market, he ended up with a career in information technology, mostly as a database administrator. His reading and authorial tastes remain diverse, with a special fondness for genre fiction. Besides ten Sherlock Holmes' pastiches, he has had three vampire novels published. At the University of Iowa, Siciliano met and married fellow graduate student Mary Slowik, and the two have raised three children and several cats together in the Northwest.

Here is the order and inspiration for the Holmes series:

THE ANGEL OF THE OPERA
(Inspired by Gaston Leroux's Phantom of the Opera)
THE WEB WEAVER
THE GRIMSWELL CURSE
(Inspired by Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles)
THE WHITE WORM
(Inspired by Bram Stoker's The Lair of the White Worm)
THE MOONSTONE'S CURSE
(Inspired by Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone)
THE DEVIL AND THE FOUR
(Inspired by Conan Doyle's The Sign of the Four)
THE VENERABLE TIGER
(Inspired by Conan Doyle's "The Speckled Band")
DEATHLY RELICS
THE GENTLEMAN BURGLAR
(Inspired by Maurice Leblanc's The Hollow Needle)
SHE REINCARNATE
(Inspired by Rider Haggard's She)