Quick update after the holidays

I've been trying get back to work on a regular basis after the long summer holiday. We did quite a bit of travelling, mainly in Finland, but we also paid a visit to Denmark (Copenhagen and Legoland), where we'd never been. We also bought a summer cottage, so we spent lots of time there. (It's not actually a cottage, but the long explanation might be too difficult.)

Even though July and August were supposed to be a vacation, I had to read work-related stuff: I've started doing a book on the history of Finnish western literature. I also reread lots of Tolkien, since I did a non-fiction book on Tolkien with a friend of mine. I finished it up late last week and sent it off. Now I'm finishing some other lesser books, such as a small anthology of western-themed horror stories by Finnish writers. Then I'm rushing off to finish a book on Finnish war-time photography. Then I'll be able to concentrate on my book on Finnish westerns.

Sounds like I'll be busy, eh? I'll try to get back to regular blogging, but don't expect much, since I'll be loaded with work. Our son went to a fourth grade and comes back home at two p.m., so the working hours are a bit short. Maybe some Overlooked Movies and Forgotten Books every now then.

Oh, I started Nic "True Detective" Pizzolatto's novel Galveston and it seems really, really good. I also read Gillian Flynn's Dark Places (came out in Finnish as Paha paikka) and I liked it a great deal. It's almost like a private eye novel in which the protagonist is herself in the middle of the mystery. Every move, every inquiry she makes affects her own life. Highly recommended, even more so than her celebrated Gone Girl.

Just a work-related update

I've been working my ass off lately, writing articles and reviews for the magazine of the Finnish Western Society, Ruudinsavu (= Gunsmoke), getting some of my future books together (been working on several projects on Finnish history and the history of misanthropic thought - not much pulpish content here), translating Lovecraft's essay Supernatural Horror in Literature... He's an awful writer, you know? I think there must be more, but I keep forgetting. None of these bring much money, I'm sad to say. I keep reviewing some books from time to time, but for some reason or another they always end up on the boring side - the most recent example being a new thriller by Finnish writer Max Manner, which I barely managed through.

I'll try to work up some decent blog posts in the near future.

My other activities at the moment

Mentioned being busy. Well, today I submitted a new book to the publisher. It's a collection of old and new crime and adventure stories by writers of the Turku region. The oldest story is from 1939, by Harry Etelä (Aimo Viherluoto), who was also known as a songwriter, mainly specializing in schlagers. I may have to write more about him. There's a good adventure story by Olavi Tuomola, taking place in Shanghai just before the WWII.

The book, called Viides testamentti/The Fifth Testament, according to M.G. Soikkeli's story in the book, is a good collection and hope it gathers some attention. It's just no one seems to be buying short story collections anymore. So it's a bit of an experiment to the publisher. We will be doing more of this sort with the same publisher, for example a collection of Harry Etelä's horror stories that are quite spectacular given that almost no one else wrote horror stories in the late thirties here in Finland.

I'm also doing a rough translation of Tapani Bagge's Puhaltaja. Tapani, as some of you may remember, made a deal with the American Point Blank Press about his first crime novel and it was going to come out under the title The Jack. It seemed, though, that the head of Point Blank didn't have time to do the translation himself (JT Lindroos hails originally from Finland), so I suggested both to JT and Tapani that I could do the first rough version and JT could polish it.

I've done some four or five pages so far, and let me tell you that it's no small feat to translate in a language that's not your own. Especially when Tapani uses lots of slang expressions that even I don't know what they mean. There's also lots of talk about cars and stealing them, and I've been at odds with all the words. However, Tapani okayed my efforts and so I'm continuing at the pace of a page a day.

But once The Jack is out in the US, it will be a hardboiled delight: Tapani writes very sparsely and tightly and he knows his milieu of lowdown petty criminals and car thieves. There's lots of black humor and violence. (I may even up put a new blog to post the translations one day at the time, but I'll have to ask what JT and Tapani think about that.)

And before that, I have a book coming out. It was a small, but very pleasant surprise: an old friend of mine was elected a while back director of a non-fiction publishing house and the first thing he said to me was: "What if we put out your old articles as a book?" It's already in printers. The book collects nine longish articles I wrote some ten years ago about unknown Finnish poets. If it sells enough copies, there should be a sequel. Well, that won't be as easy, since I'd have to do some research for it and read the books.