Various stuff

It seems that my blogging consists mainly of pictures and covers nowadays. While I know many are interested, I thought I should blog something personal here as well.

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I got today to the end of the short crime story for Tapani's anthology. The ending didn't turn out to be very satisfactory, so I'll have to deal with it later on. Maybe I'll have to rewrite the whole stuff, there's something unconvincing in the whole set-up. Tapani told me to hold my horses, since he heard from the publisher that they might still want some famous writer for the book and that this might drop some newcomers from the crew. Not very far-sighted thinking. Tapani said not to worry.

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I also made a breakthrough in the YA book. I changed only one thing and it more plausible later on. Funny that you don't have to do much.

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The end of "Nothing Personal" is near. Some ten pages to go. I think I won't do any translating for a while, even though I like it. There are no sure results of the book getting published, so I'll have to cut it down. Even though I'm going to translate a short story by a veteran pulpster D.B. Newton for Ruudinsavu. But hey, it's only a short story! I've been toying with the idea of translating Russell Banks's "The Rule of the Bone" on spec , but the language Banks uses isn't very easy, so I don't know.

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I also edited the manuscript of a book we are doing with my friend Jukka. It's a joke book about famous last words - not real ones, but invented ones. There are some quite absurd ones in there - "But the eyes don't move" is one example. It will be interesting to note what publishers say about this. I see it as a picture book, but not with the usual picture book illos - I see rather something absurd.

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We are also doing another book on first names, with our friend Rea who has amassed quite a collection of first names all over the world. This one will be about new names, the ones that haven't been used. We'll see about that one, too. We just know it would sell if done and marketed properly. We did a similar book a year ago, but it was from a very small press, so it didn't get much coverage. And it was very small, only 300 names in it. It seems to be popular in the libraries, though.

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There was an interviewer today from Kouvolan Sanomat. The guy drove three and half hours just to chat with me for an hour or so! It was about the movie book, as you can imagine. We talked about the movies based on computer games. While I'm not an expert on computer games, I managed to say that the films based on them are not a new phenomenon in any sense, since there were cartoon-based films already in the first decade of the 20th century. They are just a continuation of adapting popular media on the screen. We only lack the stage adaptation. Just think: Lara Croft, Max Payne, Doom II...

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As you can see, my work methods are not very sensible. I try to write everyday at least for three hours. I start with my own prose, then translate some pages and then move on to non-fiction. I wrote today a bit about another Hank Jason I finished last night and dabbled with the last famous words book. Then I read the e-mails and then the interviewer came. After that I've done pretty much nothing. Maybe I should write more or do my stuff in a different way, since sometimes I feel I do to much at the time and can't concentrate properly. There's stress in the air. I shouted both at Ottilia and Kauto yesterday (for which I was later ashamed) and thought that maybe I should relax for a while. At the moment I'm going to lay on bed with Elina and Kauto and maybe take a nap.

Have a nice weekend!