The Missing Martian

[ffutures]

I've scanned the third and last of the stories I wrote for the Midnight Rose Collective's fiction anthologies.

This one's from The Weerde: Book 2, the second in a series of books set in a world in which there are shape-changing primordial beings living amongst humanity. I'd rather not say much more about the background, since it builds up over the two books and works best if read that way.

Influences on this one include Raymond Chandler, Rex Stout, Ed McBain (who suggested the name of a detective), and numerous other crime writers of the forties and fifties. Most of the other character names are anagrams of bits of my name; the exception is Louis Ginsberg, a distant relative of my great-grandparents. One wasn't invented by me - Claude R Worlsman first appeared in the Call of Cthulhu module Statue of the Sorcerer by Chris Elliot and Richard Edwards, published by Games Workshop in the days when they were an RPG company.

On the whole I'm reasonably happy with this story, even after 12 years, though I think I would change the last few paragraphs a little if I were writing it today.

As usual I would be grateful for comments on spelling errors, typos, etc.

The Missing Martian

Comments

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I am tempted to post the manuscript copies I still retain of my own two stories from these anthologies. Thoughts?

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

You stand much more chance of selling them again than I do - in an anthology of your own work if nothing else. Having them on-line might be bad for sales, or might make a nice sampler for a larger compilation, I really don't know. The latter seems to work for Baen, I suppose.

I doubt I'll sell mine again, so I haven't got a problem with putting them on line - I think Roz intends to put the rest of hers on-line too.

If you do want to put your stories up, please feel free to link to the cover pictures I've used, or copy them to your own site. I haven't scanned the covers of the books I wasn't in as yet, but will be happy to do so if anyone wants me to.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

I'm not planning on selling them again, though. Reason: the setting is too ... well, it's too obviously someone else's design. And they're early work, journeyman stuff, not up to snuff for the next anthology I'm putting together (which might surface around 2007 at the current rate).

Roz putting hers on line is great to know about. Maybe if everyone else agrees, we could resurrect the two anthologies online (say, under a Commercial Commons no-commercial-reuse/no derivatives license)?

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Fine by me, but I suspect that getting everyone to agree - or even finding everyone at this late stage - would be a bit of a nightmare.

I'm currently scanning Roz's stories for her, since she is in the same boat as I am re. floppies, I've done all the ones she didn't have apart from the Villains story, for some reason I haven't found that book yet. But she's apparently waiting on someone else to upload them so it may take a while before they appear on line.