Sunday, October 30, 2005

Back from the book fair

Just got back from Helsinki where we were at the book fair to publicize our talkkuna book. Everything went well, except when we were on the way to Helsinki: Kauto kicked Elina's coffee and my tea over, with his yoghurt. It was one of those "always-need-to-be-ashamed" -situations.

I met some publishers and talked about books. There's now a chance that I might be able to edit a series of paperbacks with the real new American hardboiled and noir! This is just what I've been looking for... I'd like to introduce an idea of having some classics of the genre translated for the first time - Gil Brewer's The Red Scarf for example. And ask some Finnish crime writers to do short snappy books for the line. I have some in mind already. (I didn't remember to ask if they would be interested in the Visa Mäkinen novelizations...)

We talked also about a series of game and quiz paperbacks. We'll see about that. We've had a proposition about such a book for at least two years now, but it hasn't caught fire. I don't know if it did this time.

I think I also got a publisher hooked on the famous last words book we have made with Jukka. We'll see what comes out of that - I just sent the guy the manuscript. It's a very small publisher, but a real publisher nevertheless.

I had a pleasant chat with Jukkahoo who's the other editor of the pulp SF magazine we are doing for the Helsinki University SF club. We came up with some great ideas. The Giant Brain of Titan! Urho Kekkonen fighting the Ancient Gods! I hope this will meet with great applause and will be published annually. We talked about fake commercials for the mag. I said that there could be one about ordering stuffed girls' heads, put as trophy on the wall. I have a picture of that somewhere, I will scan it and put here for everyone to wonder just how marvellous creature a human can be!

Afterwards we spent a nice evening with Marja and Matti, our friends who live in Espoo, near Helsinki. Mari and Juha were also present. The morning wasn't so nice after all the alcohol consumed, but now, at 18.42, I feel just about normal. It's just those damn hangovers...

2 comments:

Tosikko said...

John Green's young adult novel Looking for Alaska has lots of famous last words in it. No doubt they can all be found neatly lined up elsewhere too, but it's a great book anyway. Mitä mä tässä englanniksi kirjoitan? Harmi ettei törmätty kirjamessuilla. Oli, kuten viikonlopun henkeen tuntuu kuuluneen, krapula.

Juri said...

This is a great interdiscursive and multilingual blog, that's why.

Joo, olisi ollut hauska nähdä messuilla, mutta oli aika kiirettä välillä. Sanoin Elinalle, että tulen kolmelta - tulin seitsemältä.