Well, not exactly. I just didn't do it, just like that, it was a long and at times frustrating process. But now it's up, after planning it and thinking about it for many, many years.The publishing company is called Helmivyö in Finnish. I'm not really sure what it should be called in English - literally it's a bit like "a string of pearls", but the word "helmivyö" is an old word originally meant to be the Finnish translation of "anthology". It's probably translated from the Italian "collana", which means both "collection" and "jewel". And so my publishing company does a lot of anthologies.
The first of which is Ajokortti helvettiin ("License to Hell", according to the short story the title was taken from), a collection of flash fiction stories I published in my short-lived Ässä magazine (plus three new stories from Rob Hart, Stephen D. Rogers and Anthony Neil Smith).There is also a collection of my reviews, articles and what not about American hardboiled crime novel, called Epämiellyttäviä päähenkilöitä ("Unpleasant Protagonists"). It turned out to be almost 300 pages! There's stuff ranging from John K. Butler and old true crime mags to James Ellroy and Gillian Flynn. (Okay, I'm cheating a bit, since Flynn isn't hardboiled, but she's noir, and that's close enough.)
The third book is Kalmankylväjä ("Deathbringer" or something like that) by Petri Hirvonen, a very short and tense action novel taking place somewhere in South America.Two of the books, my collection and Petri's novel, were designed by J.T. Lindroos, the mastermind originally hailing from Finland. The cover for the flash fiction anthology was done by Jenni Jokiniemi.
The books are available only in print-on-demand. They are not available as e-books, since there are no markets for them in Finland. (It's a long and boring story.) I have plans for future books (actually I have four almost ready), and this might be something, well, not big, but biggish. We'll see. I'm not one to boast about my possible successes. You can see more here (it's obviously in Finnish).
PS. There might be some translations in the future, as I've accumulated lots of connections through years. I'll contact you.
4 comments:
Congratulations, Juri...best of success with your new publishing venture.
Thanks, Ron!
Dear Pulpetti,
I write from Italy and I can say about the word collana that it's true that it means collection when you talk about books. The other meaning is not a string of pearls, but in a more general sense a jewel that you wear around the neck as ornament. So we've a golden collana, a pearls collana, a shells collana or a flowers collana.
I'd appreciated your old article about Frank P. Castle and I'd like to know if you by chance have gathered further infos about that gent.
Greetings from Italy,
Tiziano Agnelli
Thanks, Tiziano, for your comments, much appreciated! And thanks for the clarification of the word "collana". As for Frank Castle, I'm sorry to say there's no more info on him than I already gave.
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