Axel Kilgore: The Terror Contract

For some days now I've been reading Six Seconds by Rick Mofina which is only remotely interesting, though it got off to a good start. After a while I got bored with Mofina's over-anxious way to make his humans alive and four-dimensional and his a bit too obvious story about Muslim terrorists, and as I was going through some boxes here at my study I came across a copy of  men's adventure paperback from 1987: The Terror Contract as by "Axel Kilgore". (The Finnish title of the paperback is Tappava enkeli that means "The Deadly Angel". The series title was translated literally as "Palkkasoturi".) I thought: "What the heck!", and as there was some leisurely time at my hands at the moment I started to read the book. It was way better than Mofina's.

Axel Kilgore was really Jerry Ahern, who's better known for his science fiction series called The Survivalist. I've pretty much avoided them, but The Terror Contract seemed so well-built that I might try one or two Survivalists one day. The hero of The Terror Contract and the whole Mercenary series is Hank Frost, one-eyed freelance spy, a tough guy who really knows his way in a battle. The book is about helping a Leftist terrorist to elope the Eastern Europe - there are lots of complications, though, and plenty of shoot-outs. The book is very fast, with no empty holes in it, and the action scenes are crisp and not overtly long, though they can go on for pages. Seems like this type of thing was something I missed.

There are many differences between The Terror Contract and Mofina's Six Seconds, even though they are aimed at similar markets (of course in totally different times). Mofina tries very hard to be convincing and make his people feel personal to the reader whereas Jerry Ahern couldn't care less, but with this gesture I care more about Hank Frost than anybody in Six Seconds. There's a longer story arc in The Mercenary books in which Frost seeks his girlfriend who was killed in a terrorist bombing, which makes for some melodramatic reading, but then again it's pretty nice compared to the lukewarm and forced emotionalism of Mofina. The Terror Contract is honest in its crudeness and simplicity, while Six Seconds is a mediocre attempt to bring depth into a simple spy thriller.

Having said all that I must add that I'd never share Ahern's political views. But then again he doesn't go on and on about them in The Terror Contract. There's also lots of gun porn, which seems like Ahern's trademark, but I can live with that. At least the action usually starts from the next page after Frost has described his weaponry.

The new issue of Ässä

I wouldn't be me, if I didn't hurry up a new issue of a magazine just hours before the New Year. Here's the cover for the new issue of my self-published flash fiction mag, called Ässä (Ace). I've done three issues of Ässä earlier in 2007, 2008 and 2009. I missed 2010 for some reason or another, and I was going to make an issue for 2011, but time kept running out. I noticed, though, that I had an almost finished issue by Christmas, so I asked around in Facebook if any of my writer friends had something to fill this up. I wound up getting three short-shorts from good writers, so late last night, just before heading to a party, I did the final edits and finished the layout and made the PDF file and sent it off to the printers at six p.m.

The cover illo of the issue is something I found somewhere - can't actually remember where. Hope no one gets offended... The translated writers in the issue are Sandra Seamans, Allan Guthrie, Ray Banks, Peter Farris and Michael Kechula, and the Finnish writers are Johanna Sinisalo, Vesa Kataisto, Jukka Laajarinne, Juha-Matti Heikkinen and me, with the added bonus of an ancient crime story by Eino Leino, one of the most revered classics of Finnish literature. He had some crime-related short-shorts in one of his early books and one of them already found its place at the last issue of Isku here.

Speaking of last issues, this also marks the last issue of Ässä. I mentioned the possible anthology of the translated stories I've published during all these years, and I was thinking I could very well include the best of the flash stories I published in Ässä. (Or then I could do a mini-anthology of the flash stories. I am doing a Finnish flash anthology some time in the near future, but that's stritcly for Finnish stories.) I'm still developing the fifth issue of yet another mag, Seikkailukertomuksia (Adventure Stories) and it's also gonna be the last one. I had some good stories there as well, but not enough to fill an anthology. But these are only ideas, we'll have to see what actually comes of them.

Happy New Year to everyone, no matter what anthologies I'm gonna make!

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