The new issue of Ässä

I wouldn't be me, if I didn't hurry up a new issue of a magazine just hours before the New Year. Here's the cover for the new issue of my self-published flash fiction mag, called Ässä (Ace). I've done three issues of Ässä earlier in 2007, 2008 and 2009. I missed 2010 for some reason or another, and I was going to make an issue for 2011, but time kept running out. I noticed, though, that I had an almost finished issue by Christmas, so I asked around in Facebook if any of my writer friends had something to fill this up. I wound up getting three short-shorts from good writers, so late last night, just before heading to a party, I did the final edits and finished the layout and made the PDF file and sent it off to the printers at six p.m.

The cover illo of the issue is something I found somewhere - can't actually remember where. Hope no one gets offended... The translated writers in the issue are Sandra Seamans, Allan Guthrie, Ray Banks, Peter Farris and Michael Kechula, and the Finnish writers are Johanna Sinisalo, Vesa Kataisto, Jukka Laajarinne, Juha-Matti Heikkinen and me, with the added bonus of an ancient crime story by Eino Leino, one of the most revered classics of Finnish literature. He had some crime-related short-shorts in one of his early books and one of them already found its place at the last issue of Isku here.

Speaking of last issues, this also marks the last issue of Ässä. I mentioned the possible anthology of the translated stories I've published during all these years, and I was thinking I could very well include the best of the flash stories I published in Ässä. (Or then I could do a mini-anthology of the flash stories. I am doing a Finnish flash anthology some time in the near future, but that's stritcly for Finnish stories.) I'm still developing the fifth issue of yet another mag, Seikkailukertomuksia (Adventure Stories) and it's also gonna be the last one. I had some good stories there as well, but not enough to fill an anthology. But these are only ideas, we'll have to see what actually comes of them.

Happy New Year to everyone, no matter what anthologies I'm gonna make!