Meme-Free Zone

The Forgotten Futures CD-ROM contains a lot of period novels, stories and articles in HTML format.

After I got a couple of requests for it I started converting some of the longer pieces into Microsoft Reader .lit format. And the response was...

...total apathy. I never got any feedback suggesting that it was at all popular, or worth continuing with it. In fact I've continued to do so, since the work involved is only an hour or two per book and the software is free, but I've no reason to believe anyone ever looks at the damned things.

Today I read something which made me wonder if I might get a more positive response if I used the Palm Reader format instead, and I've been pointed at a site that carries free software for it. But before I start doing this I'd be grateful for some feedback; do people use these readers, and if so, which? And if they do, would they find the files more user-friendly than HTML, bearing in mind that illustrations will be smaller?

I should add that PDF is probably not an option - the files are too big and it looks crap unless you spend a LOT of time working at it.

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

FANFIC AUTHORS' APPRECIATION DAY (WEEK / INDETERMINATE PERIOD UNTIL I GET BORED / WHATEVER)

March 6 through March 13

Post to your LJ each day at least one of your favorite fanfic authors and why you love them, their work, and why they need more appreciation.

Two for the price of one today - nwhepcat and liz_marcs. They both write fiction that tends to be Xander-centric, but can actually do so without making him ridiculously powerful or denigrating the other BtVS characters, which for some reason seems to be the norm for Xander-fic. I don't think either of them has ever written a Halloween Costume story, which for Xander-centric authors is almost unheard of.

Hepcat's fiction is archived on her own site and I particularly recommend the amazing Lilac City, Postcards from a Kerouac Summer, and A Few Things Anya Knows (the Billy Pilgrim Remix).

Liz Marcs keeps her completed stories on fanfiction.net; my favourites are Into the Desert, Contrite Spirits, and the wonderful time travel story Living History.