My first sale was 25 years ago!

I've been going through my stacks and boxes of paper (the memory boxes, as we say with Elina) as I'm making a donation to the county archive here in Turku, Finland. I found the first newspaper article I ever sold: it was to the magazine my father was working at, the small Leftist newspaper called Satakunnan Työ (The Satakunta Labour News or something to that effect). I was only 14 at the time and I think I pretty much ripped the piece straight out of a mechanics journal as it was about the new car models being developed at the time in the Soviet Union! There's much to laugh about this, but then again I noticed that this was almost exactly 25 years ago, as the article was published in the mid-December 1986!

Later on I started writing movie reviews for the same newspaper (under the moniker Umberto D.*) and honestly I think that was better suited to me than writing about cars, since I still don't have a driver's license!

* Umberto D. being of course the famous neorealist movie by Vittorio de Sica. My dad thought I should use a pseudonym so that noe one could argue they favour relatives in any way. I must've been the last movie critic in Finland to use a pseudonym! They were pretty much in use in the fifties and in the sixties, but by the eighties they were gone - except for me. This car-related clip was published anonymously. 

Tuesday's Overlooked Movies: Dragonslayer

Saw Dragonslayer for the first time in my life last Saturday, after seeing its poster 30 years ago and being mesmerized. Fairly entertaining, fairly well made dragon film set in a world that looks like our Middle Ages, but differs from it in many aspects. All in all, a nice fantasy. The only thing I have actually something to complain about is that I didn't buy Peter MacNicol as a sorcerer's apprentice. The climax is a bit blown out as well. Check it out on Wikipedia and IMDb.

More Overlooked Films at Todd Mason's blog.

Merry Christmas, part two

Okay, now that we got back from Elina's parents and I'm back at my drawing board, I can finally post the Christmas drawing my daughter made and wish everyone Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to everyone!

I was going to post a nice Xmas picture my daughter did, but I just made it vanish! We are away on a Christmas trip and I can't get to the picture at the moment, so you'll just have to wait until tomorrow. Merry Christmas until then!

My weirdest book yet

I'll do a double post on this subject, in English and in Finnish.

This has gotta be my strangest book yet, and I've done some pretty strange books. Finland has a presidential election coming up next year, and we have some candidates from bygone days, some who came to politics already in the 1970's. One of them keeps coming up even though no one - but himself - thinks he has any chance to win the election and become the president of Finland. He's called Paavo Väyrynen - there's something sly about him, has always been, and he's open to parody and irony (some seem to think he knows this all too well, but some are not so sure). A friend of mine had an idea with some friends of his over drinks at a bar that one could make a short story collection with this Väyrynen guy and mix him with the Cthulhu Mythos. I heard about this early in the morning some weeks ago, and asked Turbator's Harri Kumpulainen if he wanted to publish such a book. He said yes. The result: the book went to the printers early this morning. It will come out just before the first round of the election. The book is hilarious, ripe with good parodies of both Lovecraft and Väyrynen. Some of the stories should work even after the election and if there's ever going to be a proper Cthulhu anthology in Finnish, I'm seriously hoping some of the best stories in this book are going to be included. - The cover is illustrated and designed by Ossi Hiekkala, who's one of the best classic illustrators working in Finland at the moment.

And now, in Finnish:

Kyse siis kirjasta nimeltä On Suurten Muinaisten aika, joka valmistui parissa viikossa parin kaverin baari-illan aikana saaman idean perusteella: miten yhdistetään Lovecraftin Cthulhu-jumalat ja Väyrynen? Helposti - näin ainakin pitää päätellä siitä, kuinka nopeasti tarinat tulivat. Lisäksi Turbatorin Harri Kumpulainen innostui ideasta välittömästi, sanoi että tehdään ihmeessä, että päästään edes vähän vittuilemaan.

Osa tarinoista on muokattu suoraan jostain tietystä Lovecraftin novellista niin että henkilöt ja paikat on vaihdettu Väyryseen ja Suomeen sopiviksi, osassa on viitseliäämmin kehiteltyjä juonikuvioita. Oli miten oli, kaikki jutut ovat hauskoja ja nautittavia ja sisältävät sopivassa määrin vittuilua Väyryselle (sekä Kekkoselle ja Jyrki Kataiselle ja Sauli Niinistölle ja muille). Jotkut ovat kyllä jo ehtineet sanoa, että tästä sataa äänet laariin Väyryselle - käyttääkseni kulunutta ja ärsyttävää fraasia. Mutta tuli vaaleissa mikä lopputulos tahansa, niin takaan että jutut naurattavat ja viihdyttävät vielä pitkään! Jos joskus tehdään varsinainen Cthulhu-antologia suomeksi, niin lupaan, että tästä tulee siihen juttuja.

Idean toimivuudesta kertoi sekin, että kuvittaja Ossi Hiekkala teki aivan erinomaisen kannen nopealla aikataululla. Kirjan julkkarit on maanantaina 9.1. Kekkosen patsaalla Töölössä, jonka jälkeen iltabileet ovat Lepakkomies-baarissa. Facebook-sivut sekä kirjalle että julkkareille löytyvät täältä ja täältä. Kirja tulee myyntiin varmasti ainakin Akateemiseen sekä nettikauppaan mm. Zum Teufelin sivuille, joten sitä pystyy ostamaan aivan normaalisti sen ilmestyttyä. Painoksesta tullee pieni ja kirjasta keräilyharvinaisuus, joten siihen kannattaa tarttua nopeasti!

Edit: here's the line-up which I forgot to put down earlier:

Juri Nummelin: esipuhe
Vesa Kataisto: Presidentti Väyrysen puhe Ikaalisten pato- ja matologisen tiedeinstituutin avajaisissa marraskuussa 2019
Harri Erkki: Kalevan uskon paluu
Tuomas Saloranta: Kari Tenho Väyrysen tapaus
Vesa Sisättö: Paavo Väyrysen Ääni
Jussi Katajala: Paavo Väyrynen - elvyttäjä
Timo Surkka: Tulette ällistymään
Niko Aslak Peltonen: Varjo Väyrysen yllä
Juha Roiha: Kasvojen kutsu

The latest and last issue of Isku, my crime zine

Here's the link to the fifteenth issue of Isku, the crime zine I've been publishing from 2004. This is also the last issue of the magazine - just can't find the time and energy to do it anymore. The line-up is impressive: I've got Allan Guthrie, James Reasoner, Keith Rawson, Lawrence Schimel and Michael A. Kechula, with some very good Finnish writers thrown in for good measure: Tapani Bagge (with two vintage stories, the other previously unpublished), Tarja Sipiläinen, Tuomas Saloranta, Henry Aho and one writer who wanted to use a pseudonym to go along with his rather risqué story. There's also the Finnish classic Eino Leino with a story from 1903 that might even now be classified as flash fiction!

There's also a short history of Isku (the title means "punch"), but sorry, in Finnish only. Suffice to say that this has been good training for anthologies! And practicing my own writing, as I've published my own stories in Isku as well. (Only in the printed Iskus, though.)

One more point: every issue of Isku has had a translated story, usually from American writers, but occasionally from some British and Scottish as well. I've been dreaming of doing an anthology of those stories. Some of you guys reading this blog: beware, I'll come asking for rights once again!

Tuesday's Overlooked Movies: Dracula vs. Frankenstein

Some films deserve to be overlooked and this is one of those: inept, badly acted, lousily written, full of plot holes, inane special effects... you name it. But you know what? Dracula vs. Frankenstein is - at times - funny as hell, especially near the end when Dracula tries to run from the monster of Frankenstein. You can probably guess that there's no escaping the Frankenstein monster, even though he walks slowly with stiff feet. There's also probably the least charismatic Dracula on the silver screen, a guy called Zandor Vorkov. He provides lots of laughs just trying to look menacing. The best part of the film are Regina Carrol's tits. (Carrol was Al Adamson's wife.)

I said "at times". At times this is just quite, quite boring. But the climax, the last 20 minutes, is a blast.

More Overlooked Movies at Todd Mason's blog, Socialist Jazz. Nothing up at the mo', though.

Friday's Forgotten Book: Thomas H. Cook: The Interrogation

I don't really think Thomas H. Cook is a forgotten writer by any means, but it just so happens I read this and was ready to blog about it on Friday, so here goes.

The Interrogation (published in Finnish as Kuulustelu, which is the literal translation) was my first Cook and I liked it quite a bit to keep reading his works. There was something, though, that bothered me - let's call it "over-written". The characters are also a bit over-developed - Cook makes it too sure that the reader gets the idea: "these people are doomed by their fates and their histories." I could do with less.

But the plot is so strong I'm willing to forgive Cook this. This is so intricately plotted  I was mesmerized by the last 40 or 50 pages, when Cook reveals all the layers - and why he's carrying some characters along even though they don't seem to have a place in the story at first! Something you can't help but admire. And the ending is a serious kick in the guts.

More forgotten books at Patti Abbott's blog.

Sequel to Drive

Keith Rawson reveals James Sallis's sequel to Drive is coming out in April from Poisoned Press.

Tuesday's Overlooked Film: My Friend Ivan Lapshin

This is a Soviet film from 1985. I saw it last night for the third time, and still it remains a bit enigmatic. The film tells about a a Soviet policeman somewhere in the rural area in the mid-thirties, just before Stalin's reign of terror really hit the Soviet people. There are only few mentions of any politics in the film, but the viewer still knows what's going to happen to many of the people seen in the film. The film is narrated through fragments, seen mainly by a 9-year old boy who tells the stories in the present time, being already an old man. This is a slow and at times painstakingly fragmentary movie, in which lots of dialogue don't make much sense. People talk over each other and usually about anything else than what the real issue at the given time is.

There's a long scene in which Ivan Lapshin, the policeman of the title, leads a posse to catch the band of criminals in a seedy building somewhere outside the city. It's a great scene, with long takes with hand-held cameras, done in a hectic rhythm in a dirty landscape. There are sudden outburts of stupid violence, but one act of violence outcomes them all. One of the policemen (well, not actually a policeman, but a friend of Ivan Lapshin, who sometimes helps the police out) is stabbed by the gang-leader in an absurd scene, where there's at first not at all clear what's happening. Then Ivan Lapshin hunts the gang-leader down and shoots him in cold blood. It's a great scene and makes one think that My Friend Ivan Lapshin is a rare Soviet nouveau noir film. The whole scene - the whole film - is permeated with a feeling that everyone gets killed in the end.

One of the commentators in IMDb seems to agree with me: "My Friend Ivan Lapshin is not an easy film to watch. It's dark atmosphere of early Stalin years, one might call it soviet film noir. But in contrast to classical American noirs, Lapshin adds much more realistic tones; shot in black and white with hand cameras it sometimes looks like half-documentary, making it closer to french Nouvelle Vogue." This goes well with the fact that there was a big boom of new noir films in the mid-eighties throughout the world (from Body Heat to Almodovar's films) - I just hadn't happened to think of any Soviet film as a nouveau noir. The meaning of the film is hard to discern from the fragments, but this was banned in the Soviet Union for some years and director German had a hard time to find work.

Aleksei German's few films are, for example, the war film "Check-Up on the Roads" (1971) and the film about Stalin's death and its aftermath, Khrustalyov, My Car! (1998), which, much to my dismay, I haven't seen. I don't know if any of these have been released in English language, but if you can find them, be sure to take a look. Here's a good blog post about the film.

More Overlooked Films at Todd Mason's blog.

Tom Piccirilli: The Cold Spot

I'd heard lots of good things about Tom Piccirilli's The Cold Spot, so I was very happy to receive a copy from a friend of mine. He said he didn't like it so much, but clearly he was wrong, since this is an excellent novel.

There was an outburst of books about getaway drivers some years ago: The Cold Spot was accompanied with James Sallis's Drive and Duane Swierczynski's The Wheelman. I managed to get those books translated and published in Finnish by Arktinen Banaani in the ill-fated paperback series (under the titles Kylmä kyyti and Keikkakuski, respectively). I didn't think at the time The Cold Spot should be translated, because the theme resembled so much those of Sallis's and Swierczynski's books, but now, after reading the book, I have to say this should've also been translated.

Piccirilli (can't help those who find the writer's surname a bit funny: "pikkirilli" means the little finger in Finnish) writes mean and lean prose that's sparse, but very touching and deep-felt at the same time. His grip of the material is very professionally handled, there's nothing too much, but also nothing too little. The story is about a young man, called Chase, who's taken into criminal life by his grandfather to work as his getaway driver. Still a teenager, Chase becomes very good at his job, but there are serious doubts when his grandfather kills one of his gang members, seemingly without a reason. What follows is very touching and intense. The theme of revenge doesn't in the end become the defense of revenge, nor the glorification of violence and vigilantism.

My only gripe with the book is that I didn't buy the fact the main character's deceased father was a professor of literature. And not just that, I also didn't see why it was necessary. There's a scene in which Chase mentions some classic modernist plays, but that also felt a bit unnecessary. Still, recommended highly. The book has evolved into a series: this was followed by The Coldest Mile, and there's still The Cold and the Dead coming.