If everything goes as planned, my short story The Adventure of the Red Leech is out today in the Raleigh-Durham magazine Dimension 919 (it is! Link here!) Here’s my story of how it came to be and why it was a completely new story rather than a minor rewrite.
My first published story was a Sherlock Holmes/Lovecraft pastiche, back before such things became common (as I’ve said before, “Lovecraftian” is a broader description than Lovecraft would approve of). One of the many untold adventures Watson alludes to in his writing was “the repulsive story of the red leech and the death of Crosby the banker.” Some Holmesians argue these should be two separate stories, but I went with the view they’re one and the same case. I spun a tale with the red leech a Lovecraftian horror and sold it to Eldritch Tales, a well-regarded horror magazine at the time.
I’m guessing it was the novelty of the concept that helped sell it because rereading it in 2020 I could see the flaws. It’s very talky and the ending is a hand-wave — Holmes talked to someone offstage who knows about occult matters so he has a talisman to defeat the entity. How … convenient. I resolved to polish it a little, fix the problems and put it out there again. 
But I’m not the writer I was back in ’83 — who is? — and a little light tinkering didn’t satisfy me. I wanted Watson to be on the crime scene, telling us what he saw, rather than listening to Holmes’ take. That required new scenes. I had to figure out how Holmes was going to stop a Lovecraftian monstrosity without pulling a deus ex machina. I changed the identity of the killer, though I’m not sure why (was it a problem or just aesthetics?). I completely changed the clues to the killer. I incorporated another untold tale, the unsolved mystery of James Phillimore, who walked into his house to get his umbrella and vanished for all time.
The end result was a new story. I worked on it, read it to my writing group, got feedback that it was really good (I hadn’t realized how many fellow Holmes fans I had in the group) but needed some specific changes; as usual, they were right (it’s an awesome group). I rewrote to suit, submitted it to a Holmes anthology and got a near-miss response. Then I learned of Dimension 919‘s existence, submitted it and bingo!
Check it out and (hopefully) enjoy.
#SFWApro. Art by Frank Wiles (t) and Sidney Paget, all rights remain with current holders.
Nope, not out yet. I’ll keep checking.