Friday, April 21, 2006

Work update, pt. 1648

Started again working on Pulpografia Britannica, as I wrote earlier. I just agreed that I'll write articles both on Hank Jason and James Hadley Chase for the Ruumiin Kulttuuri (= Body Culture) magazine that The Finnish Whodunit Society publishes. It's Chase's centennary year. He's a boring writer, but then again I make my living writing about boring authors.

Also started on the movie book for the 12-14 year olds. That's how I figured it when I looked at what I'd written before. It couldn't be for any younger ones. I took some insights on how to write for kids from couple of recentish books - the other one was the Finnish history for 10-14-year olds, with fictional stories and lots of nice illos thrown in, and the other one was a history of art. They were both very good. I should start contacting publishers. (Which is always the hardest part, especially when the publishers won't respond to queries. Frustrating - you know what I mean?)

Just today - Kauto had slept pretty badly and I didn't feel like doing any serious stuff - I opened The Dostoyevsky Reel with Joe Novak, my P.I. hero, and began Finlandisizing it. It felt pretty weird (Joe Novak is now Harri Tanner and I'm not sure yet if he'll be a P.I. from now on), but somehow necessary to get it published somehow. I'll do similar changes to my horror-quasi-religious-cop-conspiracy novel The Blood Orgy of the Void God. Maybe I'll have to change the title on that one. Won't give up Dostoyevsky, though.

I also started a new short story. Just began from scratch and an opening sentence: "Look at the papers again." It will be narrated in imperative in a somewhat Ellroyesque manner. That's all I know at the moment. I've been toying with the idea for quite a while. I don't know if it works, but I want to know.

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