This is cannon fodder for Lee Goldberg

American-British author (or at least someone who calls himself an author) has been caught plagiarizing Mika Waltari's large historical novel Ihmiskunnan viholliset/The Roman. Colin Slater's novel Lindum Colonia is comprised of, only with some word changes, the English translation of Waltari's novel.

Why Lee Goldberg? Because Slater's novel was published by a POD press, Virtualbookworm, and Goldberg has been criticizing POD (or vanity) presses' mode of action for years in his blog, Writer's Life. And it seems it's easy enough to publish something not your own through these channels.

Slater hasn't answered the e-mails or calls of the Finnish newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat. He seems to have a LinkedIn page, in which he claims he was a road manager of The Bay City Rollers in the seventies. How famous can you be? (It seems, though, that being a Bay City Rollers road manager means that you took the guys' money and ran.)

Slater also says he's worked in Hollywood, producing commercials and animated TV series. Here's a comment on one of his productions. His LinkedIn page says that he in 1990-2001 he "instructed course on film music royalties and copyright issues" at UCLA.

Maidokkeesta

(This is about what "whitening" or "topping" should be called in Finnish.)

Oma ehdotukseni Hesarin järjestämään whitening/topping -keskusteluun olisi ollut järkevä ja ymmärrettävä "maidoke" - en vain muistanut osallistua. Tämän päivän lehdessä ollut lista ihmisten ehdotuksista oli kuitenkin hienoa luettavaa - kaiken maailman "wannabe-maitojen" ja "surrogatejen" seassa oli kohtia, jotka tuntuivat siltä kuin olisi lukenut Rauha Hammarin nimilistoja:

..huitu, hyve, höyste...
..kerme, kermi, kermike, kermoite, kermoke, kermuli...
..lise, lisike, lisis, lisu, lisuke...
..litku, luila...
..vispe, vispo, viti, vitike, vitikeli, vortsa, vuokko.

Finaaliin päässeet ehdotukset olivat aika vaatimattomia. "Valko"-sanasta voisi johdattaa sanan "valoke", mutta se voisi sekoittua kantaan "valo", jota tässä ei haeta. Ihme muuten ettei kukaan ehdottanut peräti 17 ihmisen käytössä olevaa etunimeä Kermo.

Lisää Rauha Hammarista täällä ja täällä.

Mysterious prose writing

I've been occasionally posting some stuff I've written with my old typewriters. They've been usually stories that I've done while trying to entertain my kids, and some of them have been written from Ottilia's dictating. This is one of the more mysterious pieces, which may've gotten its start from Ottilia's story (and perhaps based on reality), but eventually I ended up writing it as a piece of flash fiction, with an emphasis on stream of consciousness.

Translated, it goes something like this:

Kauto Teerijoki is playing with his cart: it's a nice business: We were flying in the first class. Then I realized that a new world had been discovered. It was in my wife's purse that was made from a finest sivet cat. I didn't anymore feel like writing the new verses to the Holy Bible that I'd promised to deliver to my publisher.

Pelecanos

A long interview with George Pelecanos. It's a crime that a writer of his fame, stature, quality and readability has had only novel (King Suckerman) translated.

Richard Stark graphic novels

Darwyn (JLA: The New Frontier) Cooke will adapt the first four "Parker" novels by Richard Stark (Donald Westlake) as a series of graphic novels for publisher IDW. The titles, which have a "mild continuity" as Cooke explained, will be: The Hunter (aka Point Blank), The Man with the Getaway Face, The Outfit, and The Mourner. The first title, according to Cooke, is targeted for a late 2009 release, with the successive
three titles coming out in two year-intervals after that. (...)

The graphic novels will be fully endorsed and approved by Westlake, as Cooke has been in contact with the author, and referred to the process between himself and the original author as a collaboration that will reflect the tone of the original novels.

In regards to his art style, Cooke said that Parker graphic novels will be similar to his usual style, but will be "choppier and grittier - a far rawer look" than his mainstream superhero work. The art will be in black and white with one color.

From Newsarama.

Some more attitude

A friend of mine sent me some pictures from the birthday party I had with another friend of mine. Here I'm spinning some records - perhaps it's "Touch Me" by Samantha Fox - and rocking to the tune. Rock on, baby!

(As for the possible videos of my playing DIY masterpieces... well, you'll just have to wait. They are coming, but slowly...)

Peter Rabe's masterpiece out from Stark Press

One of the books that finally convinced me that American hardboiled fiction is the best literature in the world was Peter Rabe's Anatomy of a Killer (which was translated in Finnish in the early sixties as Tappajan anatomia; you can find it (and the seventies reprint) easily from the thrift stores and such). I remember reading it for the first time when I was writing my first book, Pulpografia, in 1998-1999, and really getting hooked up on the book, from the first page. I went, why do people talk about all these boring new writers, when this is the real deal?

The reprint from Stark House Press is out now, with another Rabe novel, A Shroud for Jesso (which I haven't read, even though I have the original paperback). Here's Bruce Grossman's review on Bookgasm.

Here's attitude for you

I was cleaning my work desk and found some old photos of me that I got from my father and his wife some months back. Here's a picture of me from 1990 (I think). I'd been in a hospital for a back surgery and someone brought me a shaving machine. I don't know why I'm doing it in the yard. Yeah, I've had hair. As you can see, I also almost had a full beard.

Taannoin taannoin taannoin... koettakaa nyt jumalauta!

Ottaako ketään muuta päähän taannoin-sanan pahoinpitely? Jarkko Jokelainen kirjoitti Nytin kolumnissa jokin aika sitten tehneensä "taannoin" Kissin konserttiarvion - se oli ollut edellisviikolla. Tänään Jussi Karjalainen arvioi Väkivallan vihollinen -elokuvan ja päätti arvionsa toteamalla, että vigilantismi palasi valkokankaille "taannoin", kun Jodie Fosterin uusi elokuva tuli teattereihin - ja sehän oli jumalauta tämän vuoden ensi-ilta!

Tämmöinen taannoin-veistely on pahentunut viimeisen vuoden aikana ihan järjettömästi. Eikö kenelläkään ole enää mitään käsitystä siitä, mitä se tarkoittaa? Taannoin ei ole sama asia kuin viikko tai edes kolme kuukautta sitten!

Kirjoitin aiheesta muutamia kuukausia sitten (ilmeisesti "taannoin") Aamulehden Valo-lehden blogiin. Koska sitä ei sieltä lukenut kukaan, laitan sen vielä tähän:

Taannoinen vai eilinen?

Lehdessä luki tänään, että ruotsalainen hittileffa Fucking Åmål oli "taannoinen". Saman päivän viikkoliitteessä lukee, että tv-sarja Laakson kuningaskin oli "taannoinen". Samanlaisia juttuja on ollut näkyvillä useamminkin, joku kolmen vuoden takainen juttu voi olla vaikka "takavuosien menestys".

Muistellaanpa: Fucking Åmål oli vuodelta 1998, eihän siitä ole kymmentäkään vuotta. Laakson kuninkaan teko alkoi vuonna 2000 ja sitä tehtiin vielä 2005!

Kysymys kuuluukin: mikä helvetin taannoinen? Minkä takavuosien? Onko ihmisten - toimittajienkin - historia näin lyhyt? Loppuuko se kymmenen vuoden taakse? Eikö takavuosien jutuksi voisi ehkä sanoa jotain, joka tehtiin esimerkiksi vuonna 1969 - jolloin vaikkapa Fellinin Satyriconia voisi nimittää "takavuosien kummajaiseksi". "Taannoisena" voisi ehkä pitää jotain Kuplaa eli Soapia, jonka ensimmäinen Suomessa nähty jakso esitettiin Lake Placidin olympialaisten avajaisten kanssa samaan aikaan.

Vai onko kyse syvemmin ajateltuna historian lopusta? Koska menneisyydellä ja sen kiistoilla ja saavutuksilla ei ole mitään väliä, parin vuoden takaiset jutut ovat jo mennyttä aikaa ja maailmaa?

Pictures from our trips

If you want to see some pictures I took from our trip, go here. The texts are in Finnish, but you should be able to fathom what the pictures are about. The first two are from the Ähtäri nature park in the midwest of Finland. (Or some such place.)

Just got back

We got back from our family trips yesterday, but our holiday still continues, so there won't be much blogging. Would post some pictures, but I forgot the camera at my uncle's place in Mänttä (where we spent time swimming, barbecueing and going to the modern art festival).

New cover by Jukka Murtosaari

I've keeping up with my friend Jukka Murtosaari's appearances on book covers. As you know (or may remember from this blog), he's a Finnish guy and lives in Portugal and tries to get along without a net access and does everything by hand (he even writes his letters by hand!). His covers are usually nice oil colour works and he handles the pulp/paperback style with ease.

Unluckily he gets too few job offers, so I'm hoping that keeping his name up will earn him a bit more fame. Here's his latest cover for Gary Lovisi's Gryphon Books - the book collects all the Sherlock Holmes pastiches the rather recently died short story master Edward D. Hoch wrote. You should be able to find more details at Gryphon Books's website here.

A bit of news

Just noted that Hard Case Crime will be reprinting Jason Starr's masterpiece novel Fake I.D., sometime next year. This will be the first time it's actually published in the US - the only edition has been British, by No Exit Press. The novel is simply great, one of the best noir novels ever.

And by the way, I just finished reading Bust, the first in the series of books by Starr and Ken Bruen. Great fun, that was.

The new Isku almost out

Just sent the new issue of Isku to the printers. It contains "Layover" by Ed Gorman, one of the masters of American noir fiction. The other, Finnish writers are Tapani Bagge, Heikki-Antero Laurila (who won Ooli's crime fiction novel contest last year, with his fast-paced novel Paketti), Matias Latvasalo and myself, with yet another Joe Novak story. This is the first time my story is featured in the cover (the illo is by Timo Ronkainen).

With this announcement, I'll be leaving for vacation. Won't be updating any of my blogs for at least a week. Bye now!

The last issue of Hardluck Stories

Dave Zeltserman's great webzine Hardluck Stories has - sadly - come to its last issue. You can find the pulp-tribute issue here. At least the stories by Bill Crider and James Reasoner should hook you. Bill Crider's opening is simply great.

The University of Chicago Press reprinting Richard Stark

The covers of the first three reprints of Richard Stark's (AKA Donald Westlake's) Parker novels leaked out. You can see them here, here and here.

They're already diggin' it

Duane Swierczynski seems proud of his forth-coming Finnish edition. And he should be. (I should be, too. Elina told me I should be proud of this finally happening. Ossi Hiekkala should be the proudest of us all.)

I also posted the covers on Crimespace. Couple comments on the covers:

Wow - love it.
What a great cover.

And on Allan Guthrie's book's cover:

Double wow.

And finally.. the paperback line

I've been hinting for at least two years now that I may start editing a crime paperback line. Now it's finally official. The Finnish publisher Arktinen Banaani that has been producing mainly graphic novels or comics will start a paperback line that will feature also crime novels - and they will be handpicked by me. You've probably guessed already that the line focuses on hardboiled and noir.

The first books, out in October, will be Duane Swierczynski's The Wheelman (under the Finnish title Keikkakuski; which is the Finnish title for Walter Hill's classic getaway film, The Driver) and Allan Guthrie's Kiss Her Goodbye (under the title Viimeinen suudelma; this may still be subject to change). Both are excellent noir thrillers, although very different from each other. While Duane's book is a violent non-stop ride through a professional heister's worst nightmare, Allan's book is more into character (even though his hero, Joe Hope, is necessarily not one you want to get into). Its violence quotient is still quite large.

The paperback line will have three more novels the coming Spring, but more about them later.

Must admit that all this was mainly caused by Hard Case Crime. It was too cool a concept to leave undeveloped. The first two books will have illustrated covers done by Ossi Hiekkala, a young Finnish guy whom I've already dubbed "the Robert McGinnis of Finland" (even though there are no near naked babes on these two covers, sorry 'bout that). I'm hoping I'll find some use to my friend Jukka Murtosaari, too.

The illustrations on this post don't have the titles as yet, as I have those only as PDF's on my computer and I don't have the right program here to convert them into embeddable pictures. (Is that a word? Embeddable?)

Arktisen Banaanin pokkaridekkarit

Aiemmin sarjakuvakustantajana tunnettu Arktinen Banaani laajentaa ensi syksynä pokkareiden ja myös dekkareiden puolelle. Sarjan dekkarit keskittyvät uuteen kovaksikeitettyyn ja noir-dekkariin, jotka ovat tällä hetkellä vahvassa nousussa sekä Yhdysvalloissa että Englannissa, sekä isoissa kustantamoissa että erikoistuneissa pienkustantamoissa. Arktisen Banaanin dekkaripokkareissa kunnioitetaan lajityypin perinteitä tyylikkäillä kuvitetuilla kansilla.

Sarjan ensimmäiset kirjat ovat Duane Swierczynskin Keikkakuski (The Wheelman, 2005) ja Allan Guthrien Viimeinen suudelma (Kiss Her Goodbye, 2006). Kirjat ilmestyvät lokakuussa.

Keikkakuski kertoo Patrick Lennonista, pankkirosvojen käyttämästä keikkakuskista, jonka paras etu työssään on, että hän on mykkä. Philadelphialaisen Wachovia-pankin ryöstö näyttää aluksi sujuvan ihan kohtuullisesti - mitä nyt pitää ajaa autolla pankin ovi rikki ja pamauttaa lastenvaunuja työntävä nainen pois tieltä -, mutta sitten joku puuttuu peliin ja täräyttää isolla pakulla keikka-auton kylkeen. Patrick Lennonin elämän painajaismaisin viikonloppu alkaa: hän herää, kun häntä ollaan työntämässä mustassa ruumissäkissä rakennustyömaan putkeen...

Viimeinen suudelma kertoo Joe Hopesta, karusta ja hiukan yksinkertaisesta koronkiskurin apurista, jonka tärkein työväline on pesäpallomaila. Joe Hope tulee aamuyöllä keikalta kotiin vain saadakseen kuulla, että joku on tappanut hänen teini-ikäisen tyttärensä. Masennuksesta ja juopotteluputkesta toivuttuaan Joe päättää kostaa.

Duane Swierczynski (s. 1972) iski itsensä läpi amerikkalaisten dekkarinlukijoiten tietoisuuteen toisella romaanillaan Keikkakuski, joka kertoo mykästä luottoajajasta. Tämä joutuu vaikeuksiin, kun huolella valmisteltua pankkikeikkaa onkin seurannut myös venäläisten mafia. Keikkakuski on 24-tv-sarjan ja 1950-luvun kovaksikeitettyjen rikospokkareiden risteytys: reaaliajassa kulkeva trilleri, jossa ei ole tyhjiä hetkiä.
Duane Swierczynski on nuoren polven amerikkalaisdekkaristien ehdotonta kärkeä, joka on kirjoittanut myös Marvel-yhtiön sarjakuvia, kuten X-Meniä ja Cablea. Hänen muihin romaaneihinsa kuuluvat The Blonde (2006) ja Severance Package (2008).

Allan Guthrien (s. 1965) debyyttiromaani Viimeinen suudelma löi dekkaripiirit ällikällä: kertomus pesäpallomailaa aseenaan käyttävästä koronkiskurin apupojasta, jonka tytär kuolee epämääräisissä olosuhteissa, on samaan aikaan inhimillisen lämmin että pirullisen väkivaltainen. Kirjallaan Guthrie oli myös ehdokkaana tunnetussa Edgar-palkintokisassa, joka myönnetään vuosittain parhaalle ilmestyneelle rikosromaanille.
Allan Guthrie on skottilaisen hardboiledin uusi mestari, jota on verrattu Irvine Welshiin ja Denise Minaan. Hän vain kirjoittaa väkivaltaisempia kirjoja.
Guthrien muuta tuotantoa ovat romaanit Two-Way Split (2006), Hard Man (2007), Kill Clock (2007) ja Savage Night (2008).

Finished things

I feel like a million bucks. The reason: I finished some hours back the first draft of the translation of a major new American hardboiled caper novel. I'm a bit too busy to write about the whole thing more fully, but you can guess what that novel is, when I tell that I burst out laughing when I received a spam e-mail two or three minutes after completing the job - the message "came" from "Wachovia bank". (And you may remember that I've hinted at the past on this blog and probably elsewhere, too, that I'll be editing a series of crime paperbacks. More on this later. Stay tuned.)

The translation is not the only thing that was finished lately. Yesterday I picked up from the printers the latest issue of Ässä. You may remember that my hobby is to publish small press crime magazines (or fanzines; I don't know what word I should use). Ässä is the kid brother of the family. It contains only stories under 1,000 words, preferably even shorter. It's the world's smallest pulp mag, a magazine with flash fiction stories.

The newest issue, No. 2, is a bit smaller than the previous one, from the last year, but it was only due my lack of time. There's not, for example, an old story from the archives (the last issue had two, one by Otso Kantokorpi and one by Jussi Kylätasku, both Finnish writers). There are more translations than original Finnish stories - Ässä has stories by JT Ellison, Patti Abbott, Patricia J. Hale, Pearce Hansen, Todd Mason and John Weagly. The Finnish writers in the issue are Pasi Karppanen, Tapani Bagge, Salla Simukka and myself. (Well, okay, Tapani's and Salla's stories are old - they were published in a flash fiction series I edited for a weekly paper, Valo, last year.)

The picture accompanying this post was just too hilarious not to use: when I went to the printers, the magazines were wrapped in a pink paper. That's just too cute!

The cover illo is by anonymous - I found it in a sixties' book that dealt with media violence.

Happy Midsummer's Eve to everyone!