Black Horse Westerns on crime/western authors

I've forgotten to link to this: Keith Chapman alias Chap O'Keefe talks in lenght about British and American crime authors who've also written westerns (or vice versa). It's very interesting and gives background on British paperback and pulp authors. There are also other articles of interest after Chapman's piece.

Utterly fascinated by Mystery*File blog

Everyone blogs about Finnish politics and other important matters, but I'm most fascinated by articles, essays and reminiscences about largely forgotten mystery and other authors on Mystery*File: just take a look at these two long posts about H. Beam Piper, M.E. Knerr and Elliot Chaze.

Pictures from Cyprus

Don't have time to write a full travelogue, but here are some shots from our trip to Cyprus. Captions explain at least something, hopefully.

There are some other pictures at the Daddy Blog here. The texts there are in Finnish.

Here's Kauto and me playing minigolf in front of the hotel.

Haunting pictures

Here are two misfortunate shots from somewhere in Cyprus. Don't know what they are, but they seem like stills of an experimental film, don't they?

At the airport

We had to wait for two hours at the Pafos airport on Sunday. Kauto was able to entertain himself playing zoo with his plastic animals and empty strawberry packages.

At the old castle

On the last day on Cyprus, we visited the medieval castle in the centre of Limassol. It was very impressive spatial experience. Here Kauto and Elina are at the roof of the castle. Elina was afraid all the time that Kauto would fall off.

At the zoo

We are so poor photographers that we when we visit the zoo, we don't take pictures of animals.

Too much wine?

Kauto and Elina at the delightful meze meal somewhere in the mountains. Kauto has had too many glasses of wine (which was excellent, by the way - and cheap!). Meze, for those who don't know, is a large festive meal with some dozen plates of different courses. This one was the better of the two we had during our trip and everything was self-made, even the excellent halloumi cheese. Kauto enjoyed his bulgur, cooked with tomatoes and onions. Elina has fond memories of potatoes cooked with white wine and then fried in oil.

Afrodite and I

We climbed to a

hill on top of which had been a temple dedicated to the worship of Afrodite. The large urn had been found intact among the ruins. It was very impressive.

Kauto and I at an old church

Here we are at an old church in the little village of Lania (or Laneia).

Ellroy's Blood On the Moon

I mentioned James Ellroy and my admiration for his LA Quartet in a previous post and that reminded me that I completely forgot to make a mention that I read his Blood On the Moon (1984) just recently. I didn't like it at all. In this, for some reason, Ellroy's characters are not believable in any sense, they are just walking symptoms and manias, especially the hero Lloyd Hopkins. The plot is pretty thin and doesn't have the depth of which Ellroy's better novels are known. The serial killer angle doesn't feel much nowadays, after dozens and dozens of serial killers have stomped crime literature to death (well, boredom, at least!).

The Finnish publisher of the recent translation claims that this was the first serial killer novel. Please!

True Confessions by John Gregory Dunne

Ed Gorman posted a list of ten forgotten crime novels that should be read and reread over and over:

Odds Against Tomorrow William P. McGivern

The 31st of February Julian Symons

How Like An Angel Margaret Millar

The Blank Wall Elizabeth Sanxay Holding

Night and The City Gerald Kersh

The Far Cry Fredric Brown

Cocaine and Blue Eyes Fred Zackel

True Confessions John Gregory Dunne

On The Yard Malcolm Braly

Something in The Shadows Vin Packer

I've read, I think, three books out of the list (wanna guess what they are?) and I have Zackel's Cocaine and Blue Eyes on my TBR pile (which must be a mile long).

I'm getting to the climax of John Gregory Dunne's True Confessions (1972) and I must say that it's a very good crime novel that approaches literary novel without being pompous or "deep", like some books by someone like Dennis Lehane. There's a bit too much of inner monologue in here, too, but it's always connected to a greater scheme of politics and corruption in the Catholic church. And the book is very funny - Dunne writes great dialogue and especially the scene with the detectives in a radio show people can call their clues to is hilarious. Compared to Ellroy's The Black Dahlia, well, I'm a fan of Ellroy's LA Quartet, but the books are so different from one another that they don't compare very well, even though both are about the Black Dahlia case.

I haven't seen the film with Robert Duvall and Robert De Niro, but I remember that my dad used to like it - and he's not someone to recommend films too easily.

Borowczyk's Dr Jekyll et les femmes

Last night I saw Walerian Borowczyk's weird erotic horror film Docteur Jekyll et les femmes. The film is from 1981 and very weird indeed. It takes Stevenson's novel (Borowczyk claimed that he had found the original manuscript Stevenson's wife is said to have burned because of its erotic content) and takes the erotic aspects of Edward Hyde's behaviour to the extreme: he rapes and kills with his 35 cm long penis.

The film is very disturbing, because it celebrates the beauty of destruction at the same time it shows there's nothing glamorous in it. I was reminded of Luis Buñuel's The Golden Age: they both tell the same story of a man and woman who try to make love, but are always stopped by stupid rules and regulations or tepid discussions on metaphysics, religion and science. In the end, they both reach transcendence - but only through giving themselves up to lust, killing and raping. Very beautifully photographed, the film sure is one to stick to mind.

The film also reminds me of Guido Crepax's rendering of Stevenson's novel, but it lacks the political undertones of Borowczyk's film in which the world of bourgeoisie deserves nothing but the destruction.

A book out

I just saw the first drafts of the Turku crime story anthology I've edited. It looks good, with the cover by Jukka Murtosaari. I'll post the scan and other stuff later on. The book will be out Tuesday, third of April.

Viides testamentti, Turun alueen kirjoittajien jännitystarinoiden kokoelma, julkistetaan tiistaina 3.4. klo 15 Turun Akateemisessa. Paikalla on kirjan kustantaja Harri Kumpulainen, kirjan toimittaja (c'est moi), kirjoittajia sekä haastattelijana Kari J. Kettula. Kaikki Pulpetin seuraajat ovat tervetulleita!

Kirjan sisältö on seuraava. Mikäli toisin ei mainita, novellit ovat alkuperäisiä:

Pirkko Arhippa: Välikäsi, ilmestynyt alun perin RikosPaloissa 1/1987
Boris Hurtta: Ikonipuinen arkku
Harri Erkki: Tunneli
Harry Etelä: Mustaa verta, ilmestynyt alun perin Seikkailujen Maailmassa 11/1939
Totti Karpela: Perin inhimillinen tekijä, ilmestynyt alun perin Suomen Kuvalehdessä /1974
Olavi Tuomola: Hantšungin kultainen buddha, ilmestynyt alun perin Mustassa Kuussa 1/1945
Markku Soikkeli: Viides testamentti
Sami Myllymäki: [uups, tästähän puuttui novellin nimi, pitänee kaivaa se sitten esille kun kirja ilmestyy]
Aake Jermo: Hiljainen yö, ilmestynyt alun perin teoksessa Outsider (toim.): Hiljainen yö, Lehtiyhtymä 1944
Kirsti Ellilä: Pyhän kosketus

Lisäksi mukana on toimittajan alkusanat ja kustantajan jälkisanat.

Vastakkainasettelun aika on jälleen

(This is about Finnish politics.)

Sunnuntain Hesarissa kirjoitettiin kokoomuksen vaalivoitosta. Jutun kärkenä oli Sanna Perkiö, jonka boheemius kuulemma auttoi häntä ja puoluetta vaalivoitossa. Perkiön boheemius on sitä, että hänen firmansa sijaitsee Kaapelitehtaalla ja hän keräilee kotimaista nykytaidetta. Heikoissa kantimissa on boheemius nykyään. Näin ajatellen mekin olemme vaimon kanssa boheemeja, jopa varsin hurjia sellaisia.

Jutussa puhuttiin myös kokoomuksen onnistuneesta vastakkainasettelun aika on ohi -sloganista. Sanottiin, että se oli erinomainen idea, jonka suomalaiset ottivat vastaan tyytyväisinä ja innostuneina. Jutusta kävi kuitenkin ilmi, että maassa vallitsee edelleen toinen vastakkainasettelu, vasemmisto-oikeisto/duunari-porvari -vastakkainsettelua julmempi ja häikäilemättömämpi: siinä nimittäin sanottiin, että moni äänesti kokoomusta, koska tuntuu paremmalta samaistua voittajiin kuin häviäjiin.

Paljon on puhuttu myös SAK:n vaalimainoksesta ja sen aiheuttamasta äänten kadosta. Olisi ollut kiinnostavaa nähdä, mitä olisi tapahtunut, jos mainosta olisi käytetty aiottuun tapaan eikä media olisi ruvennut kohkaamaan siitä, miten ikävä, vanhanaikainen ja syyttelevä se on. Monet niistä, jotka omaksuivat median näkökulman, eivät ole mainosta YouTubesta tai vastaavista jaksaneet kaivaa eivätkä ole siis nähneet sitä. Mietin myös, miksei kukaan ottanut kantaa kokoomuksen järkyttäviin nami nami -mainoksiin, joihin oli isketty reivien flaierityyppisesti kaikkea kivaa sälää. Olen itse sarjakuvien ystävä, mutta silti mielessä käy, että vaalit voitti sarjakuvapuolue.

Lukekaa myös Kari Kosmoksen hieno analyysi Jyrki Kataisen työaiheisesta retoriikasta. Kari ei voisi olla enempää oikeassa.

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie and other flicks

In lieu of a travel report, here are some bits of films seen lately:

John Cassavetes: The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1974): a great, underrated attempt to deconstruct a small crime flick, Ben Gazzara's night club owner is clearly a precursor to many loser characters in the neo noir of the 1990's and 2000's (say, Jason Starr's novels). The film has a loose new-wavish narrative, but it's not really new wave and there's none of the trickstery the new wave films used. It's a bit close to some of Altman's films, but the looseness seems more improvised. The night club scenes with a weird stand up comedian and his girls are quite odd, but entertaining in a way.

Herman Shumlin: Confidential Agent (1945): I don't really recall if I've read the Graham Greene novel this is based on, but the film itself is very good, atmospheric and adventurous political film noir about a Spanish freedom fighter on a desperate journey to buy coal from British industrialists. Lauren Bacall should be a British lady, but she just doesn't have the right flair. That notwithstanding, she's a treat.

Joe Novak

I've mentioned my private eye hero Joe Novak here so often that I thought the thing could need some explaining. Here's an entry I wrote for Kevin Burton Smith's extraordinary Thrilling Detective site:

Joe Novak
by Juri Nummelin

Joe Novak is a private eye working in Los Angeles, getting mixed up in sleazy swindles, but usually looking at things happening as an outsider.

Joe Novak stories are somewhere between parody and pastiche, and some of them are not really stories about a P.I. solving cases, but they can also be about a P.I. getting out of the troubles in his own personal life. Novak is a WWII veteran and he has horrible memories from the Ardennes. Novak delights in reading hardboiled paperbacks, but he has also studied philosophy at university under the G.I. bill. He dates several women and has trouble finding a suitable one.

The series of short stories is written by Juri Nummelin, who is normally a non-fiction writer. The Joe Novak stories have been published in the Isku magazine, a Finnish small press zine specializing in hardboiled crime fiction.

The stories:

Änkyttävän naapurin tapaus/The Case of the Stuttering Neighbour, Isku # 5 (2006).
Eripuraisten naapurien tapaus/The Case of the Quarreling Neighbours, Isku # 4 (2006).
Merirosvoaarteen tapaus/The Case of the Pirate Treasure, Isku # 3 (2005)
Kävelykeppien tapaus/The Case of the Walking Sticks, Isku # 2 (2005).
Ikkunattoman monadin tapaus/The Case of the Windowless Monad, Isku # 1 (2004).

Another fictionmag coming - soon?

Here's a cover by Jukka Murtosaari for another fictionmag that's coming out some time later this year: it's called Mälli/Spunk, with the subtitle (do magazines have subtitles?) Tosi Miesten Toimintakertomuksia/Action Stories For Real Men. (Joo, tiedän, että kuvassa lukee "seikkailukertomuksia", mutta pitää pitää palaveria kuvittajan kanssa vielä.) It's supposed to be a pastiche of a early sixties' men's mag à la Argosy, Rogue or Man's Story or Male, etc. My story is about Joe Novak and it's called "The Case of the Sleazy P.I." I mentioned having started the story some time back and I think I managed to sneak in all the references I mentioned in the earlier post.

The logo is made alongside the old logo of Jermu, a Finnish men's mag from the seventies.

A new fictionmag

A new fictionmag came out today: it's called Seikkailukertomuksia/Adventure Stories and it contains mostly new stories by Finnish writers, but also one reprint from Heikki Jylhä from 1940 and translations of stories by Stanley G. Weyman and Molly Brown. The mag is meant to resemble a general pulp magazine à la Short Stories or Argosy and the stories have great variety: there's swashbuckling adventure, a crime story set in the late 1800's, a story about ancient Egypt, a weird Western short story, and so forth. So it should be a treat.

Published by me, of course. For the Finnish readers (and for others, too, since there's a cover), go to the Isku magazine's own blog here.

Bill Clinton in a Finnish pulp story

Here's a snippet from a Finnish horror story from 1939 that I'm editing for a collection of short horror stories of Harry Etelä (about whom I'll have to write more in a near future):

At first I couldn't remember who the boy resembled, but when he got nearer to us and I could see his pale face clearly, I felt like my brain had turned upwards and a freezing cold filled my body. Bill Clinton.. Bill Clinton.. kept pounding in my head. The boy dressed up in work overalls was Bill Clinton... without a doubt.

(From Kauhun kahleissa/Frozen In Terror, Seikkailujen Maailma/The World of Adventures, 4/1939. Transl. by JN.)

A quick follow-up

Sorry, I must've seemed quite pissed off and grumpy in my posts lately. So I duly apologize for any incovenient use of language and all that.

Nevertheless, I finished the book on Tuesday. There were some minor glitches that needed working out on Wednesday, but nothing serious. I don't remember the last time when I did two full eight-hour workdays back to back. I'm quite washed out and I think I'll go lie down on a sofa.

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention that the cover illo that was supposed to be waiting in the mail arrived on Monday morning, so I got it in time. I would post it, but you'll have to wait till the book comes out - it's the book with old and new crime stories by writers from the Turku region where I live. It'll start a new series of short story collections, but I'll have to write about some other time.

Thanks, guys

Thanks to pHinn, Bill and Peter for their happy holiday wishes!

The Just Got Back Blues

Just got back home. Um, well, two hours ago. It's fucking 11 p.m.! Go to sleep, you moron! We travelled 12 goddamn hours, with four hours on a plane, which is never nice. And I'm exhausted in a way I didn't think was possible.

But nevertheless, great time was had by all, but I'll report back later, maybe with pictures. Now, only bad news:

1. A publisher turned down my crime novel.

2. I haven't as yet received all the entries for the thriller reference work and the goddamn latest fucking final deadline was today, on March 18!

3. I was told that I've got a cover illo for the Turku region crime short story anthology in the mail. But, well, no, I haven't got it. There's nothing of the sort in my mail. It should've been in the printers a week ago.

4. Do I sound like I've been on a holiday?

Heading off

We are soon leaving to Cyprus and I won't be blogging for a week. Take care!

(I didn't finish Dunne's True Confessions and won't be taking it with me, even though it's very good, sentiments ranging from grotesque to dark noir and gritty politics. The publishing year, by the way, was 1972, not 1982, as I wrote earlier. The plot is quite familiar, but that's because of the James Ellroy film and the De Palma movie, The Black Dahlia.)

Tired of slackers

As I've mentioned couple times before, I've been editing a reference book on thriller writers. I ordered some 15 articles from guys I know are good and capable writers. Little did I know. The deadline for the entries was 15.2., and I'm still waiting for the majority of the entries. The publisher sent me a note saying that all the entries that come after 15.3. just won't get in the book. Luckily that day I'll be away and I was able to negotiate that I'll deliver the finished manuscript by 20.3.

Now, what really bugs me is that we are going off to a holiday. We'll be at Cyprus for a week and immediately after that I'll have to edit the late entries and patch up the book - in a day! And I can't relax fully knowing that I'll be with my hands full of work that other people knew they had to do a month before! Christ! (I'd like to say worse things, but this is a fuckin' family blog after all.)

Okay, another bad news concerning work: a publisher phoned me yesterday and told me that the big compilation of Finnish pulp fiction crime and adventure stories that I've put together won't be out until next Spring! In 2008, that is. Aw Christ... Lord knows I need money next year, too, but still... I compiled the stuff in the Fall of 2005, one and a half years ago.

And the said publisher had some bright ideas about splitting the book in two, putting out first a book with only old stories and then, if that one sells enough copies, putting out a book with newer stories. I don't think a book with only stories from the 1930's to, say, the 1950's will interest anyone but some collectors and some veteran readers who may remember some of that stuff from their own youths. Here I was thinking that I could grasp the whole phenomenon of Finnish pulp fiction with one sweep, putting together stories from the early thirties to the present day. But no such luck.

Okay, calm down, calm down, these things happen. Worse things have happened to writers. (They shouldn't, though.)

The good news was that the said publisher will bring out a paperback-size biannual anthology of crime fiction short stories. I'll wish him luck (in the country where even the best known names won't sell even one thousand copies of short story anthologies).

Okay, enough of complaints. I hope I'll have enough time to read unread books during our stay at Cyprus. I've packed these books:

Leigh Brackett: (um.. what was the title.. one of her Mars story collections, with Eric John Stark)
Richard Matheson: The Shrinking Man
Algis Budrys: Rogue Moon
Reed Farrel Coleman: The James Deans

And I hope I'll be able to finish John Gregory Dunne's True Confessions (1982) before we leave.

James Reasoner's private eye stories

James Reasoner has been reminiscing his career from the seventies on and written two lengthy posts about his private eye heroes. It's an interesting piece of history of hardboiled literature and fictionmag publishing - the story goes from the last of the hardboiled fictionmags to small press magazines and to theme-edited anthologies.

It's sad, though, that I've never seen any of these stories and I've never seen a single issue of the Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine James wrote for! I've read his sole private eye novel, Texas Wind (1980), and it's a very good piece of writing.

Bill Crider's blog project story

Here's Bill Crider's great blog project story that's meant for the Quertermous-White blog project. Bill didn't just want to write a crime story about blogging, but instead he put up a blog to tell the story in the form of blog posts. It works, even though I have my doubts about whether anyone would really post something starting with "Frank was killed today". (The same problem is with all the letter and diary novels. "Oh, here he comes, he bangs on the door, now he opens it, now he grabs my hand, oh, what cruel fate this is!")

A music video by my pals of Kompleksi

Well, actually I know only one of the guys of the duo... Nevertheless, here's the first music video by pHinn and Mike Not, also known as Kompleksi. The video was made with the artistic cooperation with Australian experimental filmmaker Tina Ulavik, and there's sure nice artistic touches. The track is great too, check it out - if you're at all into electronica.

Films seen recently

I've been forgetting to write about films I've seen lately:

Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo from 1961 is one of the most hardboiled films I've ever seen. Toshiro Mifune in the lead (not "as the hero", since he's quite far from a regular hero) could beat the shit out of any other hardboiled hero. I mean, anybody. The film is effectively edited and photographed and the fight scenes are expertly staged. I seem to remember that the sequel (it was called The Samurai Sword in Finnish, was it so in the English-speaking countries as well?) is even more hardboiled and Mifune cooler than ever before or later. (Well, he doesn't exactly look cool in that picture.)

Marx Brothers' Animal Crackers: one of my all-time favourites. I said to Elina watching this: "You need to remember that when I die you print these words in my obit: "I'm dead today, shutting out all beautiful tomorrows"." That's what Groucho says when he mimicks Eugene O'Neill ("Why, you couple of baboons, do you think I would marry either one of you? How strange the wind howls tonight. It reminds me of poor old Marsden.") The film itself is very, very poor, poorly staged and photographed and clumsily edited. Yet, one of the very best. I haven't been as fond of Duck Soup as many others and I should nominate Monkey Business the best of the Marx films. "If a nightingale could sing like you..."

Aleksandr Dovzhenko's Zvenigora from 1927 was a very pleasant surprise after his abysmal last fiction film, Under the Red Flag (1939), a disjointed narrative that was filled with Bolshevik propaganda. Zvenigora was cryptic, poetic, delightfully and surrealistically stupid, with some great dream sequences. I detected that many people in the audience didn't understand all of what was going on - especially the scenes with Russian emigrées in Paris (or in Prague?) were a puzzle. I'd like to know whether the contemporary audiences knew what was happening.

My newest book

I think I mentioned this earlier. I wrote once, some ten years ago, a series of articles about little known Finnish poets to the Kulttuurivihkot magazine. Now, the editor at the time, Tuomas Kilpi, was recently nominated editor-in-chief of the BTJ publishing house. He e-mailed me and asked whether the articles could be reprinted as a book. What do you say to an offer like that? "Umm, yeah, I'll have to think about that, let me get back to you next year, I'm a bit busy at the moment..."

I received my author's copies today and it seems to be up on the publisher's website. Check out the contents here.

And, um, yes, it's in Finnish.

What we've got

Haven't done a meme in ages. Well, I may have taken part in three memes altogether, but this seems fun. Via Urpo, who's an old friend reblogging. Sooooorry, this is in Finnish. I was first thinking I could translate the terms, but then I said to myself: is this really what I want to do with the rest of my life? It's a list of things we've got. I'm sorry it didn't ask how many ties I've got - it seems I've got some sixty or seventy of them. 90 % of them came from flea markets and other such places.

[ ] akvaario
[x] arabian astioita
[ ] arkkupakastin
[ ] astianpesukone
[ ] autotalli
[ ] digiboxi
[x] digikamera
[ ] digitaalivaaka
[x] dvd-soitin
[ ] epilaattori
[ ] farmariauto
[ ] henkilöauto
[x] hiirimatto
[x] hiustenkuivain
[ ] höyrysauna
[x] iittalan astioita
[ ] ilmakiharrin
[x] ilmakitara (soittelen useammin kyllä mitä tahansa käteen osuvaa, kuten peffaliukuria)
[ ] ilmankostutin
[x] jenkkisänky
[x] kahvinkeitin
[x ] kahvipannu
[ ] kannettava dvd
[x] kannettava tietokone
[ ] keittiövaaka
[x] kenkäteline
[ ] kerrossänky
[ ] keskuspölynimuri
[ ] kirkasvalolaite
[ ] kopiokone
[ ] kotiparturi
[ ] kotiteatteri
[x] kottikärryt (lasten muoviset!)
[ ] kuisti
[ ] kuivausrumpu
[x] kultaisia koruja
[x] kuntolaitteita
[x] kylpytakki
[x] laajakaista
[x] lankapuhelin
[x] langaton hiiri
[ ] leipäkone
[x] leivänpaahdin
[ ] lemmikkieläin
[ ] litteä tietokonenäyttö
[x] luistimet
[ ] maasturi
[x] matkapuhelin
[x] mikroaaltouuni
[ ] moottorikelkka
[ ] moottoripyörä
[x] mp3-soitin (mää en oo vaan kertaakaan käyttänyt sitä!)
[x] musiikkisoitin (vinyylisoitin, cd-soitin, kasettimankka)
[ ] navigaattori
[ ] oma ranta
[ ] omakotitalo
[x] ompelukone
[ ] pakettiauto
[x] partakone
[x] parisänky
[ ] parveke
[ ] pelikone
[x] polkupyörä
[x] polttava cd-asema (ei toimi kannettavassa)
[x] porakone
[ ] poreallas
[x] pyykinpesukone
[x] pölynimuri
[x] pöytätietokone
[ ] rappuset
[x] rikkaimuri
[ ] rullaluistimet
[ ] salarakas
[ ] sauna
[x] sauvasekoitin
[x] silitysrauta
[x] skanneri
[ ] suihkulähde
[ ] sukset
[ ] suoristusrauta hiuksille
[ ] sykemittari
[ ] sähköhammasharja
[x] sähkövatkain
[ ] sälekaihtimet
[ ] takka
[ ] taulutelevisio
[ ] tauti (ellei neurooseja lasketa)
[x] teepannu
[ ] tekohampaat
[ ] tietokonepöytä
[ ] traktori
[x] tulostin
[ ] uima-allas
[ ] ulkorakennus
[ ] ulkosauna
[ ] useampi televisio käytössä
[ ] vapaa-ajan asunto
[x] vedenkeitin
[ ] vene
[ ] verenpainemittari
[x] vhs-videonauhuri
[ ] videokamera
[x] viinaa
[x] villamatto
[ ] vohvelirauta
[ ] voileipägrilli
[x] vuodesohva
[ ] web-kamera
[ ] wokkipannu
[x] yleiskone
[x] yläkerta (siellä on metelöiviä naapureita)

Everything's settled

I wrote once here about trying to acquire rights for a reprint from a writer's heirs who seemed to be in constant fight. Now, a grandson of the said writer phoned me and told that it's been settled and I can move on with the reprint! Yii-haa!

A healthy break from Ridley Pearson and Sidney Sheldon

I decided to let my own entries in the thriller reference book rest and took Lawrence Block's Tanner's Twelve Swingers (1967, a No Exit reprint from the nineties) from the shelf. It is indeed much better than anything I've read by the said writers. I'm no big fan of Block, but I've liked his early work.

Nothing much else here, except work. I was yesterday at the university library studying old Finnish pulp and other fiction mags and came up with quite a bunch of photocopies of old stories for possible reprints. It seems nowadays that typing is my most recent profession. I said to Elina that if someone asks about my hobbies, say, in an interview, I say: "I collect photocopies of stories from old fictionmags." (Now, what label should I have for this post? I say nothing substantial about Block and I don't really know what category the latter paragraph should belong to. I'll put up here a new ephemera label. My life is just a big piece of ephemera, so it's fitting.)