Still about my early writing

I was actually lying when I said that my private eye hero Joe Novak debuted in the first issue of Isku. He debuted in a little booklet called "Joe Novak pinteessä" aka "Joe Novak in Trouble" that I self-published in 1997, after I graduated from the university. In the book there were several very short parodies of hardboiled P.I. fiction. One story was about Sam Odessa who went to Amsterdam to look for the missing rock star Mike Monroe. There was also a piece about Bill Harzia, which I think is still quite a funny name.

The title story can be read in English in here:

http://www.sci.fi/~phinnweb/livingroom/joenovak.html

Erkki Rautio of the pHinnWeb fame liked the story enough to translate it and put it on his website. Check it out.

The print run of "Joe Novak pinteessä" was 25 and I gave them away free. If anyone ever comes across a copy, be sure to grab it! If you already have a copy, hang on to it! (If you ask nicely and buy me a cider (preferably something French), I can try to locate the proofs and make a second edition!)

I wrote earlier about my big brother, who also wrote all kinds of stuff when he was around 10 and 14. I remember one quite long story, a novel almost, that told about the Soviet-British invasion of Iran in the early summer of 1941. It must be only fiction ever written about that war!

(And it is a true story. This is what Bartleby.com says:
"INVASION OF IRAN by Soviet and British forces. The Allies occupied Tehran on Sept. 16. Riza Shah abdicated and was succeeded by his son, MUHAMMAD RIZA SHAH. The presence of Soviet and British troops, and after 1942 of American advisers, sharply reduced the power of the shah and the government for the duration of the Allied occupation (1941–46).")

(If someone knows about fiction written about this war, let me know.)

As for the other members of my family, I remember that my mother tried to write a short story for a romance magazine when she was unemployed. I remember seeing the draft. A woman meets a man, etc. I don't think it was published - have to ask her, though. My dad once did a outline for a satirical novel set in the last days of the Nazi Germany. The Nazi officers had a plan to clone the best of the Nazi leaders and they had to produce lots of sperm for this purpose. There was a very good line in my dad's papers: "Kädet käyvät/Hands go to action." I've been toying with the idea of writing his outline for a full novel.

So, it's a literary family. And it doesn't actually stop here. My dad's second wife has published a bibliography of books about composting (!) and has studied the works of Arvid Lydecken, Finnish fairy-tale and adventure writer. My kid brother has written - as you may remember from the story of the Demars - some quirky rock lyrics for his several bands and my little sister does comics.

***

Kauto goes on all fours already! He's only six months old! And he clearly has a plan of standing up pretty soon. It's amazing. And he says words. He says something like "ääitä" every time Elina comes to room. We are wondering if it's just a coincidence or are there some strange forces working? Kauto said also "tteeerve" when I said "terve/hi" to him.

Bloody goddam Mozart, that kid!

Saturday we had a flea market trip to Loimaa which is a small town near Turku. We've been there couple of times already, since we think it's the best flea market town in all Finland. That's true. We came up with four bags of all kinds of stuff, from a groovy seventies velvet jacket to loads of terry cloth children's clothes from the seventies. (Actually 18 of them from one flea market alone!) We also found some seventies and eighties toys for Kauto. They are way cool. Not many books, though. It's possible that I found the first Finnish translation of Pablo Neruda, in the year book of Finnish Communist Party in 1952! Loimaa has had a used book store, but the only remains are stickers in the windows of an empty building.