Saturday, October 16, 2010

Finished two books yesterday

This Fall is proving to be a bit futile bookwise: two books that I've said are coming out before Christmas have been delayed until next Spring - this means the collection of article on copyrights that I edited and the reference book on historical novelists that I've been writing with two friends of mine.

I'm hoping one of the books I finished yesterday would at least come out this year - we'll see, we'll see. It's a book that I compiled from old Finnish hunting and outdoor stories, ranging from the early 20th century to 2007. (The latest and the last story in the book is a hunting-themed horror story by Juha-Pekka Koskinen, published in the Usva webzine.) I took also stories from old pulp magazines, while these kind of books are usually compiled from the stories in outdoor magazines. I'll post the table of contents later on, and possibly my foreword. The book will be published by Turbator. Doing this book was both fun and frustrating at the same time, since I didn't know much about this kind of literature going in, but I found there were many interesting aspects in the genre, especially in the old days. And some of the Finnish outdoor writers are very good, especially in the fifties and the sixties, with the (mildly modernist) literary influence creeping in. The problem is that I found out there were already many books done with the same theme and it was pretty difficult to find stories that hadn't already been reprinted. (Nota bene: I'm still waiting for the response from Erno Paasilinna's heirs, but it won't take long to type his old story and add it to the manuscript.)

The other book I finished yesterday was a book of Finnish absurdist stories - it's definitely coming out soon. I have a story in it and I did they layouts, other than that it's not my book per se. Here's the cover for the book, the title is "Tales from the dark" (with a pun that's untranslatable). The book features stories by Tiina Raevaara, Miina Supinen, Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen, Sari Peltoniemi, Tapani Bagge, Markus Nummi, Tuuve Aro, Alvari Lume, Juha Huhtakallio, Harri Kumpulainen, Jukka Laajarinne and myself (my story was also originally published in the Usva webzine I mentioned earlier.) The cover illustration is by Alvari Lume, one of the writers.

2 comments:

Todd Mason said...

Congratulations...untranslatable, but darkness and absurdism have a stronger link in Finnish than in other languages?

Juri said...

I meant the title of the book is untranslatable - it might be "Tales from a Dark". There's an intentional typo in the title, that's what I meant.

As for your question: one would think we have affinity towards absurdism, but actually it's not a very popular genre in here - has never been, for that matter. There have been of course attempts and one-offs here and there, but nothing one would think of a country that's neatly situated physically and mentally in the Eastern Europe.