Happy Cthristmas!

I haven't been blogging much lately, but it's only due to two facts: I've been swamped with work and family matters (you might remember we have a 10-month old kid in our house), and I also haven't really been reading any books I should be blogging about. I've been doing a book on Finnish literature, and while there might be some interest in it among my followers, it all comes down to the fact that I've had really little extra time in my hands. I've even been thinking about calling it quits, but I don't want to do that. Blogging here at Pulpetti has brought me new friends and even professional contacts (hey, I wouldn't have been publishing Kevin Wignall were it not for Pulpetti!), and I'm thinking there might be some in the future.

I've also been doing another book: I've compiled a collection of Finnish Cthulhu mythos stories, mostly new, but also with four previously published stories. The book will come out next Spring. I've been at it for almost two years, so it also took some extra energy. But the cover is really nice, as you can see. The title means "The Guardian of the Forbidden Book". I sent the finished manuscript with the foreword and all yesterday to the publisher, so you can see I'm relieved and can finally say: "Happy Christmas!"

Erik Munsterhjelm: A Dog Named Wolf

Anyone read the book? It's a book published in English in 1972 as A Tale of Wolves, Dogs and Trappers in the Canadian Wilds, and as A Dog Named Wolf in 1977. Erik Munsterhjelm was a Finnish writer, who emigrated to Canada in the 1920s and lived there for a dozen years hunting and prospecting gold. Later he came back to Finland and wrote a three-series book of memoirs set in Canada; later on he published four adventure books for young readers set in the same regions. Munsterhjelm returned to Canada in the late 1940s and lived there for the rest of his life. I'm writing on him, but can't get my hands on A Dog Named Wolf. What I'd really like to know is that if it's a fictional book or a memoir and if Munsterhjelm himself is in the lead. If it's a novel, it never came out in Finnish and I'll have to get my hands on it. (There are plenty copies on Abebooks, but I need the info quicker.)

Mind you, there's also a book by Munsterhjelm called The Wind and the Caribou, it's an English translation of one of his memoirs. I thought it was pretty wonderful, you should seek it out if you're interested in the so-called Northern genre.