Finished things

I feel like a million bucks. The reason: I finished some hours back the first draft of the translation of a major new American hardboiled caper novel. I'm a bit too busy to write about the whole thing more fully, but you can guess what that novel is, when I tell that I burst out laughing when I received a spam e-mail two or three minutes after completing the job - the message "came" from "Wachovia bank". (And you may remember that I've hinted at the past on this blog and probably elsewhere, too, that I'll be editing a series of crime paperbacks. More on this later. Stay tuned.)

The translation is not the only thing that was finished lately. Yesterday I picked up from the printers the latest issue of Ässä. You may remember that my hobby is to publish small press crime magazines (or fanzines; I don't know what word I should use). Ässä is the kid brother of the family. It contains only stories under 1,000 words, preferably even shorter. It's the world's smallest pulp mag, a magazine with flash fiction stories.

The newest issue, No. 2, is a bit smaller than the previous one, from the last year, but it was only due my lack of time. There's not, for example, an old story from the archives (the last issue had two, one by Otso Kantokorpi and one by Jussi Kylätasku, both Finnish writers). There are more translations than original Finnish stories - Ässä has stories by JT Ellison, Patti Abbott, Patricia J. Hale, Pearce Hansen, Todd Mason and John Weagly. The Finnish writers in the issue are Pasi Karppanen, Tapani Bagge, Salla Simukka and myself. (Well, okay, Tapani's and Salla's stories are old - they were published in a flash fiction series I edited for a weekly paper, Valo, last year.)

The picture accompanying this post was just too hilarious not to use: when I went to the printers, the magazines were wrapped in a pink paper. That's just too cute!

The cover illo is by anonymous - I found it in a sixties' book that dealt with media violence.

Happy Midsummer's Eve to everyone!