Still working on “Advanced Operators,” which has gone from a Lovecraftian novella, to a Stephen King-ish novella, to a Lovecraftian short story, and now to a Fritz Leiberesque short story.
The jury’s out on whether it will have any of my own style, but I’ve been particularly inspired by this passage from Leiber’s “Smoke Ghost”:
Have you ever thought what a ghost of our times would look like […]? Just picture it. A smoky composite face with the hungry anxiety of the unemployed, the neurotic restlessness of the person without purpose, the jerky tension of the high-pressure metropolitan worker […] the aggressive whine of the panhandler, the inhibited terror of the bombed civilian, and a thousand other twisted emotional patterns. Each one overlaying and blending with the other, like a pile of semi-transparent masks […]
This was written in 1941, mind you. As usual, ol’ Fritz has beaten me to the punch.
I’ve uploaded a few stories to the Fiction section. Many will note with amusement that I’ve chosen to upload only an “excerpt” of my Sherlock Holmes pastiche in hopes that it may be published someday. Laugh now–it won’t be so funny when I’m paid $15 for it to be anthologized in an e-zine.
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