Age of television and reading magazines

Many years I picked up a book from the fifties called The Age of Television. I'm not sure what I was thinking I was going to do with it, but there were these somewhat fascinating diagrams of magazine reading (and reading in general) in accordance to television watching. I'm sure someone will find these of interest. The diagram that shows changes in the circulation of magazines is the most interesting one.

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!

A new mag out

As you all know, I've been doing lots of different fictionmaggish zines for years now, Isku being the main venue. One of the others has been the decidedly haphazard Jännityslukemisto (Suspense Magazine or some such in English). In it I've published only stories that haven't been good enough to be published anywhere else. I decided to pull the plug on this one, but I had enough stories to do a fourth issue - and it's out now, with the print run of 20! Here's the cover. I think the photo in the cover is from an ad from an outdoor magazine (and it's taken with a cellphone camera!). The blurb below shouts: "Hellishly good killing action!" or some such nonsense. The logo of the magazine is taken from an old Finnish pulp mag of the same name (something I've done before, with Isku and Seikkailukertomuksia and Ässä).

The writers in the issue are me (with two stories!), Heikki Nevala (who just debuted with his horror collection Arvet/Scars from Turbator), Petri Hirvonen (who's done lots of stories for my mags) and Harri Erkki with a vintage porn story from a magazine called Cocktail. There are also two anonymous humorous horror stories - I found them on my old computer, without any note who'd written or sent them. But since they were meant for publication, I couldn't see any harm printing them. My stories are both hardboiled crime, the other one being a humorous parody originally written in the eighties and the other one being an experiment, told in imperative: "Look at the papers again. Shoot. Turn around when the corpse falls to the floor", et cetera. I tried to write this story already some years ago, but nothing came of it. When I started putting the Jännityslukemisto issue together, I decided I'd finish this, regardless of the coherent story and what I'd already written. I think it came out alright.

Here's in Finnish what I wrote about the stories in Facebook:

Heikki Nevala: Auki vain öisin (Heikin vanha novelli, jonka hän heitti ekaksi tarjokkaaksi Verenhimoon, mutta olimme sitten kumpikin sitä mieltä, että hän kirjoittaa uuden, ja se iilimatojuttu onkin tosi hyvä)
Petri Hirvonen: Kuolettava keikka (jos oikein muistan, Petri kirjoitti tämä kasarityylistä actionia edustavan novellin suomi-pulpin jättikirjaan, jota kokosin Book Studiolle viitisen vuotta sitten; kirjaa ei koskaan tehty ja novelli unohtui vuosiksi)
anonyymi: Metsästäjän hetki (jonkun kauan sitten minulle lähettämä kauhunovelli; tiedostossa ei ollut mitään kirjoittajan nimeä ja tiedostomuotokin oli txt)
Lena Erichs eli Harri Erkki: Kuinka mies vietellään (Harri Erkin seksinovelli Cocktailista vuodelta 1972, jonka piti alun perin nähdä päivänvalo uudestaan Mälli-lehdessä, jonka piti olla vanhojen miestenlehtien parodia; sitä ei kuitenkaan tehty, mutta kun tämä oli jo puhtaaksikirjoitettu, niin pitihän se johonkin laittaa)
Juri Nummelin: Paperi (kokeilu, jota yritin jo vuosia sitten, mutta jonka kirjoitin vasta nyt vähän väkisin loppuun, kauheasti juonta tai johdonmukaisuutta ajattelematta: miten kirjoitetaan kovaksikeitetty rikosnovelli imperatiivissa, siis käskymuodossa: "Ammu. Käänny kun ruumis kaatuu maahan" jne.)
nimetön: Tuopillinen tummaa (sama juttu kuin edellä, saman kirjoittajan tekemä, ei itse asiassa mikään huono juttu, mutta tarpeettoman vitsikäs kauhutarina)
Juri Nummelin: 25 donaa (puolen sivun absurdi pläjäys, jonka alkumuoto on teinivuosina kirjoitettu yksityisetsiväparodia; kirjoitin nyt uudestaan blogiini tekemän englanninkielisen version perusteella)

Homo magazines closing in

This is somewhat pulp-related: a chain of homosexual porn magazines is closing in, due to economical crisis.

Thanks for the link to Lawrence Schimel, who remembers having written his first pieces of erotica for some of the publisher's magazines.

Michael Zuroy's Holmes parody

Michael Zuroy is one of those short story writers who worked primarily in the fifties, sixties and seventies and never (at least it seems so, maybe under a pseudonym?) wrote a novel. And Zuroy, like so many others, wrote primarily for two magazines, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.

But Zuroy also wrote for Broadway Laughs. Here's his short-short story, "The Case of the Silent Witness", from that magazine. The issue is December, 1964. The story is a Sherlock Holmes parody. Click the photos to enlarge them.

I have somewhere here another humour mag, called Army Fun, but I don't really know where... It also has a Zuroy story in it.

Here's August West on Zuroy, and, well, that's about it for him in the net. But, oops, wait a minute, it seems that Michael Zuroy has a novel after all: in 1992, he published a hardcover novel called Second Death, with Walker. Seems to be a medical thriller.

Torturing Nazi baboons

Groovy Age of Horror has scans of the infamous story about Nazis experimenting with baboons. The story has an interesting sciencefictional premise (yeah, right), but the climax is a bit rushed, don't you think? The story was published in a magazine called Man's Daring - it was one of those men's adventure magazines that flourished from the fifties to the seventies.