“Of course it’s very hampering being a detective, when you don’t know anything about detecting, and when nobody knows that you’re doing detection, and you can’t have people up to cross-examine them, and you have neither the energy nor the means to make proper inquiries; and in short, when you’re doing the whole thing in a thoroughly amateur, haphazard way.”

This diffident and witty passage comes from A.A. Milne’s only murder mystery, The Mystery of the Red House (1922). Although not quite up to the standard of Agatha Christie or Dorothy Sayers, it’s a pleasant and ingenious whodunit with murders both real and darkly imagined, hidden motives, missing bodies, funny dialogue, and the odd secret passage.

But of course nobody has heard Milne’s name because of this book, or his essays in Punch, or his scripts for the early British film industry. Or even his plays, though several of them were hits on the London stage. Once he decided, after a trip to the zoo with his son, to pen a story of the boy’s own adventures with a stuffed bear in a magical wood, nothing else he’d done mattered any more.

Then there’s Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He wanted to be known for his historical novels, and the mega-success of Sherlock Holmes was apparently a bitter pill for him to swallow. He tried to reduce the demand for new Holmes stories by raising his fees, but the dastardly publishers paid up without complaint. (Some people just have rotten luck, I guess.)

Like some Deep State operative at his wits’ end, Conan Doyle then tried simply assassinating his out-of-control hero. The attempt failed. He should have remembered the old admonition about striking at the king. He was more or less forced to bring Holmes back, and write a new series of stories about him, meanwhile continuing to grouse all the way to the bank.

Milne, though also apparently annoyed by Winnie-the-Pooh’s popularity, dealt with his frustration differently. He gave his stories an ending that made Pooh basically immortal, and gifted Christopher Robin with a sort of eternal youth (whether or not his son was happy about that is another matter, but divine gifts often bring troubles in their wake).

Still, on the whole, I like Milne’s way better, and would follow his example if I get a chance. And at this point, I’m formally putting all wish-granting supernatural entities on notice, if any happen to be listening at the moment: any of my characters is allowed to become immortal. Granted, I may be a bit peeved if it were, say, Holly Morrison from Father Winter who achieves a literary version of eternal life, rather than Sean of Sean’s Saga, or my own Robin Hood Wolfshead (arguably unfair anyway, since his parent character is already immortal), or any of the Blackthorn family from my upcoming supernatural-cozy-comedy-cum-epic-fantasy The Blackthorn Chronicles.

But I’d be okay with it. I would try to bear up under the fame and accolades with as much grace as possible. So have at!