Monday, May 14, 2012

Turned 40 last Thursday

Since the thing mentioned in the headline happened last Thursday, I wanted to mention some of the things I've been up to:

- I just compiled and sent to the printers a small booklet that will come out next Friday, when I'm having a ball with some friends of mine (see the photo), it contains 40 items, mainly pictures and photos, from my life and the title means simply: Juri: 40 things.

- last Friday I finished doing layouts for the new anthology I edited: it reimagines the Finland's most famous soldier, the national hero Mannerheim as a pulp hero with a secret life, mission and whole new adventures no one has ever heard of; the book will come out in the sixth of June

- the anthology of old Finnish horror stories is finally coming out, it may be out already as I write this

- I've been trying to gather some stuff for the book on the history of misanthropy, but there have been some complications with the publisher that was supposed to do this

- my project for the history of animated cinema went busted, but I'll be resurrecting it as a book for children of 10-14 years; I don't really know how that will turn out

- I've been editing the manuscript of my coming sleaze novel, called this time Runkkuloma Rivieralla (hardly translatable, as the pun in the title makes no sense to anyone outside Finland), it didn't come out as well as I had wished, but I have hopes that with corrections I can make it work

There are also two fictionmags I'm hoping to put out, the other being the fifth and final issue of my Seikkailukertomuksia/Adventure Stories and the other being an aviation mag, with two new Finnish stories, one old Finnish story and one old translated story from a pulp mag. Details later, the title will be The Sky of Adventures (or, in Finnish, Seikkailujen taivas). I've also got some book ideas for the next Autumn, but more on them later.

2 comments:

Todd Mason said...

Happy belated! It's all pretty much more of the same from here, will a few wearing-out parts presenting themselves from time to time, as you make your way through the 40s...says the man most of the way to, but not quite, 48.

"- I've been trying to gather some stuff for the book on the history of misanthropy, but there have been some complications with the publisher that was supposed to do this."

The joke makes itself!

"Runkkuloma Rivieralla (hardly translatable, as the pun in the title makes no sense to anyone outside Finland)" Yes, but even if it takes the surprise out of the wit, an explication is likely to be both amusing and enlightening...

Juri said...

Todd: it's a play on the title of Jacques Tati's film. I crowdsourced this in Facebook and a friend of mine said it's better translated with the American title of Tati's film: MR. JERK-OFF'S HOLIDAY. I know, I know, they are nowhere near Riviera in the film, but for some reason or another the Finnish title of the film implies they are in Riviera. And as there's a swimming place near Turku, where I live, that's called Riviera, I set the book there.

Yeah, I can believe this was "both amusing and enlightening"...