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Hugh Ashton is a British-born novelist and writer, best known for his series of Sherlock Holmes pastiches, published by Inknbeans Press of California.

Biography (UK) Hugh Ashton was born on 8 January 1956 in Ramsgate, Kent, where his father (David Ashton) was teaching at the junior school of St Lawrence College. In 1960, the family moved to Norton-on-Tees, where his father was deputy headmaster of Red House School, which Hugh attended, and in 1966 to Stafford. There, he attended the Graham Balfour Grammar School, which merged with the local secondary modern when he was in the third year, and has gone through a number of name changes before assuming its present identity as Sir Graham Balfour School. He then attended Wrekin College and Ellesmere College, before entering Christ’s College Cambridge in 1974 and graduating with a second-class honours degree in Philosophy. Following graduation, he worked in a variety of fields, before coming to rest in the area of IT, where he worked for the East Anglian Health Authority and a number of technology firms (now defunct) in the Cambridge area.

Japan In 1988, he moved to Hamamatsu, Japan in 1988 to work for a documentation company, where he produced manuals for (among others) Yamaha musical instruments and audio equipment, and developed documentation tools using NeXTSTEP. In 1994, he moved to Tokyo, where he spent a year working with TWICS, Japan’s first commercial Internet Service Provider. He then worked in the IT field for a year before becoming self-employed, chiefly as a technical writer working on TASCAM products, but also contributing to English-language publications in Japan. In 1999, he moved to Kamakura to be near his wife Yoshiko’s ailing parents, and continued writing, including documentation projects for Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank, among others. He also wrote many articles on finance, technology and other subjects for printed and online publications in Japan, as well as industry reports on Japan’s retail banking and wealth management industries and other financial topics for London publishers. Since 2011, he has worked extensively with the Japanese arm of the Bloomberg organisation, producing advertorial content for print and online media. His current plans (2016) are to relocate to Lichfield in the United Kingdom.

Fiction bibliography Following several unpublished novels, Ashton self-published an alternative history novel, Beneath Gray Skies in 2009, with the j-views imprint. He subsequently published a Tokyo-based thriller, At the Sharpe End (2010) and another alternative history, Red Wheels Turning, set in the last years of Tsarist Russia (2011). All of these have subsequently been republished by Inknbeans Press. In 2012, Ashton signed a contract with Inknbeans, and the following titles are now available in his Sherlock Holmes series: Tales from the Deed Box of John H. Watson MD (2012) More from the Deed Box of John H. Watson MD (2012) The Bradfield Push (2012) Secrets from the Deed Box of John H. Watson MD (2012) The Trepoff Murder (2012) The Darlington Substitution (2012) The Deed Box of John H. Watson MD (2012) Notes from the Dispatch-Box of John H. Watson MD (2013) Further Notes from the Dispatch-Box of John H. Watson MD (2013) The Reigate Poisoning: Concluded (2013) The Death of Cardinal Tosca (2013) Without my Boswell (2014) Last Notes from the Dispatch-Box of John H. Watson MD (2014) The Dispatch-Box of John H. Watson MD (2015) 1894 (2016) In addition to the Sherlock Holmes titles and the reissues of the above three self-published titles by Inknbeans: Tales of Old Japanese (2012) Sherlock Ferret and the Missing Necklace (2013) Sherlock Ferret and the Multiplying Masterpieces (2013) Sherlock Ferret and the Poisoned Pond (2014) The Adventures of Sherlock Ferret (2014) The Untime (2015) Leo’s Luck (2015) Balance of Powers (2015) The Untime Revisited is scheduled for publication in 2016. He has also made contributions to the MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories, (MX Publishing, London) with adventures in Book I (2015), Book IV (TBP 2016) and Book V (TBP 2016).

Music With rudimentary skills in classical music, Ashton has played bass guitar and keyboards in a number of bands including a band (Ersatz) in which DJ Harvey was the drummer, and has recorded and produced records and demo tracks for others, including The Great Divide, in which Boo Hewerdine was the lead singer and songwriter (he also played in one of Hewerdine’s earlier bands, Placebo Thing). He has continued to have an interest in composing and producing music, basing his work around keyboards, lap steel and resonator guitars, and producing short musical pieces, chiefly for his own enjoyment, though some have been used (largely uncredited) to back others’ short videos. His weapon of choice is Presonus Studio One.

Personal life Ashton married Josephine Sharman in 1978. They separated in 1982, and the divorce was made absolute in 1988. He married Yoshiko Nishio in 1993. There are no children from either marriage.