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Be that as it may, I do have work in the pipeline.

At last check, my trusty word-count cum progress indicator Excel file shows that my current short story base stands at 29,955 words. This is divided into ten WIP stories, but there is one much larger than the others. It is called "Nueva Congo" and it is my first attempt at a novella-length Scifi story.

It is funny how these stories sometimes start to guide their own development. "Nueva Congo" is the result of a short article on long-hau space trips that I read somewhere. That article dealt with the pressures that would face people on trips to Titan and other far-flung places, when the travel time exceeded a year per direction. Generation Ships, then, have travel times of decades or more. The fact that those who left on the trip and those who eventually end it are of different generations does give rise to many interesting thoughts about such a project.

My own take on the theme doesn't deal with the internal workings of a generation ship as such, but more with the whole feasibility of such a trip, and especially, is such a trip to be made in the first place? Many a night I have pondered upon this theme before going to sleep, and the name of the ship serves as a hint for you - I do not intend the voyage to be smooth and the ship to unload its cargo onto a new colony. But I will leave it at that for now.

The other stories then? There's a sparky one of an old woman who wants a tattoo; a mellow one on the end of a marriage when Alzheimer claims one of the spouses; a short one on a kid who loses a fiver that belongs to the neighbor guy, and my pet project, a horror story called "Synodikon", featuring Ivan the terrible.

This story, for which I have had help from my author friend and PfoxChase colleague Maria Kuroschepova, deals with a list of people who perished in Ivan's lunatic purges, and is a good example of a story that waits patiently to be written, but gets better by the wait. I wanted to write it at one go, but instead it is still at 300 words, waiting for me to come back to it and finish the job. During the hiatus I have changed the focus of the story and honed the ending in my mind, and I believe it is now better.

All that remains is to write it all down...

I have also found that a backlog of ten stories, plus two book ideas, block new story ideas. I haven't added one idea to the palette in six months, and that is simply because I can't keep adding ideas before I get the old ones processed. That's all right, having ideas all the time would be frustrating when I still want to get the old ones written out first.

Stay tuned.]]> Wed, 16 May 2012 15:31:00 http://www.tulagihotel.com/blog.asp?blog=2 You know, this is a funny business, this writing. With more than 250,000 words in a novel and many short stories you'd think you know something of this, but no. Every time you think of a new idea, it's always the same long path towards fruition. No shortcuts, no easy ones.

I've finished 38 stories, and of those, only two came about without a tiresome process of figuring out how to join the pieces. It always feels like this will never turn out to be a story that will interest anyone even remotely. And yet, when the stories are beta-read and edited and alpha-read and edited and double-checked, then typeset and printed or Kindle'd, they become something else. Some of them actually feel like good short stories, ones I can feel proud of. Others seem to be okay stories, and they have attained a readership I am fully satisfied about.

Now that "Filtered Light and Other Stories" is out, I'll have a look at some of the stories in it and give you a bit of background to them. Your opinion will of course vary, but I seem to like these stories, for various reasons. I've also been told (lately in the Short Story Special evening I hosted at a book store) that my stories can be read in 4 different ways, if there are 4 people reading them. I am all for that.

First, "The Wind in the Pipes". It's a ghost story if ever I wrote one, in the classic British vein. Lots of ambience, old books, fireplaces, and World War 2. And dead people playing the pipes of an organ. Why? Because I've always loved the English ghost story with the stopping clocks and pictures falling off the walls. In my own story, I tried to bring in the rich tradition, and therefore it is quite long, 6800 words.

I also am happy about how the namesake of the collection, "Filtered Light", turned out. It's an amalgamation of a boyhood experience, inspiration from a Finnish rock song, and nightmares. I've thought much and hard about dreams, feelings, and how they relate to everyday life. In this story I wanted to bring forth a dark internal world and the search for a way out.

Another personal memory blending with a full fictional stage is "Les Feuilles Mortes". I did go on a trip to Agadir, they had a jazz band, and yes, we had an irritating person in the team. But no one got killed, and on the whole it was a very nice trip. Sometimes you just take settings from your own life and populate it with fiction. It lets you spend less time on research and more on the storyline. The problem lies in deciding what to bring from real life and when to depart into fiction.

There's a rare story in this book: an attempt at a humor story. This came about because I saw a humorous site in which you are given instructions how to hunt Moomins, and once you've slaughtered one, how to make Moominburgers for the entire family. This led me thinking about how to depict irradical behavior among oversized stuffed theme park animals. To avoid slander and libel suits, I decided to opt for a remnant of the past - there used to be a Troll Park in Finland when I was a kid, somewhere in the last millennium. I am happy to report that a reviewer said that "particular story has one of the best laugh-out-loud lines in it that I have read anywhere."

If you like, have a look for yourself. That leaves 14 stories for you to explore.
]]> Mon, 02 Apr 2012 21:37:00 http://www.tulagihotel.com/blog.asp?blog=3
Now, with the Internet, many sites have sprung up where people chronicle the demise of urban areas. Called Urban Exploration, the idea is to enter abandoned places, usually against security rules and by crossing fences, and then document whatever can be found. The explorers find utterly amazing material, and on the best sites, every image is a work of art.

You may ask yourself, is this not what they do on Discovery Channel - ghost hunting? Well, in a word, no. Those shows are cheap thrills, fake electronic devices supposedly giving off signals of paranormal activity. Fuzzy images of dust flakes reflecting light in derelict buildings just do not have much validity or believability. Scary sound effects, added in the comfort of the post-production studio, merely add to the lack of reality.

This is indeed far from the true explorers. When they enter a building, they do it with respect and a genuine desire to document the site for its own value, not for some mock horror show. These people have excellent equipment and at best, they are professional photographers. Many of them are of course enthusiastas, but for example www.opacity.us is chock full of pro images.

When I go to see pictures of abandoned buildings, I am always struck by the beauty of gradual decay. In many images it is nature taking over again; trees growing through factory floors, having entered as seeds from broken windows, and watered by the rain falling from the collapsed roof. In others, walls are given hues and forms more imaginative than any artist could have painted them with moulds and leakages of pipes in them.

In a theater that has been left to wither, you can still see the set of the last play performed there. Where are the players now? Or you may come across a factory with machinery still intact (albeit rusty of course), a pin-up calendar tacked to the wall next to it, and a pair of cracked safety goggles. What happened here - did someone get hurt when the goggles cracked, or did he step on them when he knew this was his last day at the plant, and the need for eye safety ended then?

Many of the images are somewhat disturbing. There may be an operating table onto which a surgery roof lamp has collapsed. Who was operated here? Did they recover, or did they expire in this operating theater on a day or night long ago? And whose medical records are those, stacked in a box with thousands of others, left to the elements and allowed to decay on the shelves of the abandoned hospital?

There's almost always a view down a corridor, along which you may have patient rooms or other spaces. You cannot escape pondering what the doors have seen: there are some, especially in former psychiatric hospitals, which show scratched marks, sometimes even text or images. Shivers may be running down the spine when you happen on an image of restraint straps fixed to a wall.

What actually differentiates these pictures from archaeological images is this: the ruins are still in the process of decay, and you get the eerie feeling something remains in the image and in the building itself, something you can't really pin a name on, but which definitely inhabits the site still. In Roman ruins the effect of humans is so long gone that you don't get the same feeling.

The photo essay that affected me the most were a set of images from the graveyard of a former asylum in an undisclosed location in the US. In this institution, when inmates died, they were buried within the perimeter of the asylum, but not with regular tombstones; they have a stone marked with their patient number. Apparently the names of the inmates could still be matched to the numbers, but the management refuses to put up a memorial with names on it.

Such human fates of course evoke sensations. Even if you were mentally disturbed, you were still a human being, and you should have been respected well enough to be given a proper burial. It is impossible to look at these images and not be touched by the fragility of human life, especially those of us who are not able to function as a cog in the machinery of society, but must leave themselves at the mercy of society. Often this mercy fails to live up to its name.

As a writer of speculative fiction, I aim to raise the same feelings as these photo essays do in me: a chill, bewilderment, sadness, and not just a whiff of hope. I have yet to write a story that would capture the essence I can see in these pictures, and I freely admit I watch these images to get into the mood to write that story with an eerie ring to it. I encourage others to have a look too - it's really an art form unlike any other.]]> Wed, 07 Mar 2012 12:24:00 http://www.tulagihotel.com/blog.asp?blog=4
There's a link to her latest book at the end of the blog, so do read on.

Heikki: You used to write historical fiction, of which your first book "To Die a Dry Death" is a strong example. Why the switch to SciFi?


Greta: Interesting question. In fact, it was the other way around. I had written what became the two Iron Admiral books and a forerunner of 'Morgan's Choice' long before I wrote 'To Die a Dry Death'. TDaDD was an aberration, a book I'd always wanted to write. Circumstances conspired to make it happen, then I returned to my true love – science fiction.

Heikki: Women writers in SciFi have been not as plentiful as men. Do you agree, and if yes, have you got an idea why that is so?

Greta: Maybe not as plentiful – but they've always been around. Two of my recent favourites are Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Moon. I would also include Bujold and Cherryh. I'd suggest that until fairly recently it was a Boys Own thing, especially for the comic book types like Dan Dare and Flash Gordon. It's much the same as boys write war books, girls write romance. Gender stereotyping.

Heikki: In your book "The Iron Admiral: Conspiracy", you launch a series around the very masculine Admiral Saahren. What is it like to focus the entire multi-book series on the viewpoint of a man?

Greta: I share the point of view between Allysha and Saahren – but if you're asking me about Saahren, I've always wanted to write about a man at that very senior level. A field agent may have to kill a few people or face the very real danger of being killed but a senior officer must make decisions which may result in the deaths of thousands of troops and civilians. Sure, command officers don't usually face the physical dangers that Saahren does in 'Conspiracy' (but in that book, he'd been
sacked, so he was acting as a civilian). In the second book,
'Deception'', he's back as the grand admiral and forced to make some mind-blowing decisions.

Heikki: Is it hard to write a man's POV?

Greta: Not especially. I've done a bit of research, talked to a few men, tried to find out how they tick. I think I've done it fairly well.

However, this new book, 'Starheart', has two new characters, a new admiral and his lady. Saahren makes a cameo appearance, that's all, but the action takes place in the same galaxy, with the alien ptorix and the right wing fundamentalist Galactic People's Republic. It's set a short time before the events in the Iron Admiral books.

Heikki: SciFi is just as good as its technology is believable. When you write, how do you go about designing gadgets, and what are your design principles (never to do a deus ex machine etc...?)

Greta: I suppose I build very much on what's around in the literature. I keep an eye on scientific publications and I draw a little on my previous life in computer systems. I never do 'deus ex machine' – that takes us into fantasy. I'd like to think my science is rather better than what you'll find in 'Star Wars' or 'Star Trek' without being for geeks only.

I try to obey the laws of physics and extrapolate on what's
happening now. On the other hand, I don't claim my stuff is 'hard' science fiction. I tend not to explain. I'm not taken with authors who require an aside to explain the functioning of a particular device to the reader. I try to make sure the reader can follow along – and judging by comments, I've been successful.

Heikki: Considering your Iron Admiral series, what would you state as its main hooks for readers?

Greta: It's fun, fast-paced, space-opera. Readers like the characters and the addition of a dollop of romance adds to the story without taking over the plot.

Heikki: Have you laid out a roadmap for the entire series already or will you allow the story to form as you go?

Greta: I guess this isn't so much a series as a number of books set in the same universe. It's such hard work coming up with believable alien races, planets and tech that it seems a shame to write only one book. Then, too, some of the minor characters take on a life of their own. One reader took a fancy to Saahren's adjutant, Senior Commander Butcher, who plays a small but crucial role in the Iron Admiral books, especially in 'Deception'. I may well write a new book starring that very same Butcher, but promoted to captain.

Heikki:Do you ever write yourself in a corner, or are you able to know at this point everything that will happen in the series?

Greta: I've had to back-pedal and re-write the Iron Admiral books more than once, and 'Starheart' has been reshuffled a few times. When I write, I start with characters and I have a fair idea how it's going to end. I jot down ideas for a bunch of scenes, then I let the characters take over. If I ever write a TRUE series I think you'd have to know how each book would end and where they were all going. But, hey, this is writing. It's all subject to change without notice. Isn't it?

Heikki: If you were to give me a one-liner why I should read the series, what would it be?

Greta: It's good, escapist, fast-paced fun. With a bit of sex on the side. (Oh dear. That was two sentences, wasn't it?)

***** THANK YOU! *****

Greta van der Rol loves writing science fiction with a large dollop of good old, healthy romance. She lives not far from the coast in Queensland, Australia and enjoys photography and cooking when she isn't bent over the computer. She has a edgree in history and a background in building information systems, both of which go a long way toward helping her in her writing endeavours.

See Greta's latest book at http://amzn.to/zmGZmK. Here's the blurb:

"She's lost her husband, her best friend is missing. What else has she got to lose?

Slightly shady freighter captain, Jess Sondijk, thought she had her life under control until Admiral Hudson's Confederacy battle cruiser stops her ship to search for contraband. His questions reopen matters she had thought resolved. What if her husband's death on his way back from Tabora wasn't accidental? Jess decides to investigate, while keeping Hudson at arms' length.

While he's attracted to the lovely Jess, Hudson is also concerned about what might be happening on Tabora and how that may involve the Confederacy's enemies.

Jess and Hudson's interests collide in more ways than one. But while Jess is more than willing to put her life on the line to protect what's hers, Hudson must balance the risk of inter-species war at worst and the end of his career at best, in a deadly game of political intrigue, murder and greed. At the end of the day, how much is he willing to lose for the woman he has come to love?"]]> Sat, 25 Feb 2012 22:09:00 http://www.tulagihotel.com/blog.asp?blog=5
I sometimes wonder if the world was slightly less inclined towards insanity whether there would still be a place for comedy. Maybe that’s why our global problems will never be resolved. Years and years of all those Miss Worlds in favour of world peace and – so far – no discernible result. There has to be a reason.

Maybe it’s because we all need stuff to laugh at. After all, in the face of some things, what other choice do we have?

Like last year, very soon after my first book-signing for Evil UnLtd (Vol 1: The Root Of All Evil), I received a hate email. Alas, I can’t repeat the language used here, but it made use of both the f- and the c-word and it’s general import was that I should die and/or get the bleep out of my home county of Cornwall. It was signed GODOFGOOD. Needless to say, I was disturbed – although clearly not nearly as much as the sender – but I did my best to shrug it off.

A short while after that I discovered that someone had disposed of all my business cards that I’d left on display – thanks to the kindness of the manageress - at my favourite local cafe. What was this? Some sort of campaign?

It was all a discomfiting mystery until two weeks later when I received a phone call from an unknown number. Some guy who said he believed he owed me an apology because – and I quote – he’d “thought [I was] promoting actual evil.”

On one level, this was horrifying, grossly unsettling and all the rest. On another, it’s comedy gold. Heck, it’s not like I go door to door handing out Evil Watchtower pamphlets. It’s a thought, but no, too risky. There are a lot of nuts out there. Probably gathering up squirrels for winter.

In some respects I wish there were more fellows like this idiot, willing to speak out against my book. I can’t help feeling it’s easier to make a name for yourself as an author by offending God than it is by merely entertaining people. And while God himself (beg your pardon, Himself) is generally quiet on these issues, there’s no shortage of folks ready to speak up on his behalf. Bless their hearts.

Anyway, as my second Evil book hits the electronic shelves – there is a paperback version for those who prefer, but our primary focus is on ebooks – my first impulse is to clarify that although our title does brazenly use the word ‘Evil’ and advertises it’s Unlimited nature, it is only a work of fiction. And it’s worth bearing in mind that the majority of actual evil organisations tend to avoid drawing attention to this aspect of their operations – indeed, many claim to be the exact opposite.

Then again, I’m torn. Because maybe – just maybe – what I need to do is capitalise on this. There was that Rushdie chap and a Danish cartoonist who really raised their profile by upsetting fanatical religious sorts.

Maybe I should be approaching fundamental Christian groups in the US, asking to be condemned. They might be interested to know that we take a passing crack at religion in Vol 2: From Evil With Love. It’s not a massively major plot thread, but hopefully enough to offend them a bit.

But please, don’t get me wrong. You can’t necessarily tell because I’m not slurring my typing, but my tongue is firmly in my cheek here.

I mean no disrespect to people of faith. I have no time for intolerance, unless it’s dairy, which I just have to live with. And that’s going to get a lot tougher, believe me, when the cheesemakers inherit the earth.

There are just some out there who take things a tad too seriously.

Same goes for science fiction fans. Not quite so many issue death threats and what have you. Some of them probably do, but the worst I’ve had to contend with were a few who were put out that in my Doctor Who book, Drift, I didn’t introduce the Doctor until page twenty or so.

I’m glad to say, Evil UnLtd has been applauded by fans of the genre and people who don’t generally read science fiction. But I do know that some sci-fi-philes might be wary of anything that pokes fun of their beloved SF. And to them I would just like to say, I can’t claim to be any Douglas Neal Adams but I’ll bet my entire collection of Hitch-Hikers Guide books I have as much love for the genre as he did. I don’t think you could write good SF humour without that.

Indeed, I regard the really good, serious science fiction with a kind of reverence. And, for my sins, I suffer from an almost religious devotion to Doctor Who. It seems you can’t take the -atic out of the fan altogether. Fortunately, you can keep the fan in the attic if he gets out of control. But no matter how deep your devotion, I find a healthy sense of humour goes a long way.

“The secret, guys,” said DNA, “is to bang two rocks together.” Equally, the secret, I would say, guys, is to lighten up.

Yes, we are promoting actual Evil. Actual fictional Evil. We hope it’s funnier than the real thing. If not, if it offends, then please don’t write to me. Address your complaints to your MP, to the rabid tabloid press, your church leaders.

The world could use more laughter.

I leave you with a song:

“I didn’t mean to hurt you, babe.

I’m sorry that I vowed you’d die

I didn’t mean to launch a hate campaign against you, babe

I’m such a zealous guy.”

*****

Thanks, Simon! Check out his site at www.evilunltd.co.uk]]> Fri, 24 Feb 2012 11:59:00 http://www.tulagihotel.com/blog.asp?blog=6
It is one of the best books I've read on modern history, well on a par with Montefiore's work on Stalin and Service's biography on Lenin.

Rappaport traces in minute detail Lenin's ordeal in the wilderness, hampered by dissent, lack of funds, the need to find true believers to follow him, and the slow pace of the revolution. He travels between Paris, London, Zurich, Geneva and a lot of other places, never satisfied, never willing to wait a little for his dream to become true and revolution to happen in Russia.

In contrast to Service, Rappaport doesn't read too much into the execution of Lenin's oder brother as a spark that lit Lenin's revolutionary mind. Instead she puts a lot of effort into explaining how Lenin's need for a revolution arises from his pure and doctrinally perfect reading of Marx.

It is this drive for a true Marxist revolution that was Lenin's holy Grail, and in the search of it, he burned his bridges, enemies, and allies alike. If you didn't understand Marx the way Lenin did, you were not his ally, and thus, you were expendable.

Much of the book is spent showing how people come into contact with Lenin and how he quickly senses whether someone can be trusted to work for the ideal of a Marxist coup. What is utterly fascinating is how Rappaport cleanly and effectively lists all the people we've come to associate with the 1917 revolution and the subsequent Soviet rule, and exposes how the relationships with Lenin developed.

Two destinies arise from this mass to shine more brightly, and more sadly. Those are Nadya, Lenin's long-suffering wife, and Inessa Armand, who both sacrificed their own Socialist ideals in support of Lenin's monomaniacal quest for Marxist glory. Nadya especially comes across as an utterly human, loving character, who was wholly blinded by Lenin's willpower, and who deserved so much more than she ever got.

Another well-developed theme is that of the Okhrana and other Tsarist organizations, which were able to track the revolutionaries with ease and report on what pillar Lenin used to like to sit by at the British Museum. and who would attend the tragicomically conspiratorial Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party meetings. What strikes the reader is, how can they possibly have been so lax as to banish people to Siberia and then forget about them, allowing them to pop up in Geneva after four months of trekking across Russia? Surely they could have been as effective as Stalin later was, letting people freeze to death. But for some reason the Tsarists didn't really care until it was too late.

There's nuggets of information I was never aware of, even if I consider myself well read in Finnish history. I did not know, for example, that there were British officers at the Finnish grand duchy - Swedish border in the North in 1917, and that these officers were later ridiculed for allowing Lenin enter Russia on the Sealed Train. Lenin's hair-raising escape from Finland to Sweden across pack ice and other dangers was also a most fascinating passage.

No book is perfect, and this one's main fault is in the editing. Lenin's journeys covered a lot of countries and a lot of places, and I was unhappy to see names misspelt in the Finnish and Swedish sequences. For example, there's no such place as Stutorget, but Stortorget. Russians would not have referred to Helsinki as Helsingfors, the name used by the previous tenants, the Swedes. Typos are rife, and there's a strange vacillation between Finnish and Swedish names. I was surprised at this, because Rappaport credits the Finnish Lenin Museum's strong man Aimo Minkkinen, but did not have him check the names.

That is minor still - I recommend this with five stars to any student of the Russian Revolution and the madmen behind it.]]> Sun, 19 Feb 2012 12:07:00 http://www.tulagihotel.com/blog.asp?blog=7
The other day, I was actually asked why I don't write novels but short stories. I told the person asking me that it's not really something I choose to do - the stories choose me instead. Short story as an art form is curiously underrated even if some of the biggest name in literature have invested a lot of time and effort in perfecting it, such as Roald Dahl, HP Lovecraft, and Hemingway to name but a few.

My own entry into the world of the short story surprised me. It was after I had finished Tulagi Hotel, and my father passed away in the spring of 2008 that I wrote my first real short story - my signature piece of sorts, The Summerhouse. It is a very personal story, in effect a way to say goodbye. The bigger surprise however was that I wrote more than ten other stories in the span of a few months. Many of these have seen the light of day on websites, some in anthologies, and a few on shortlists in competitions.

In all, I have 109,000 words in 34 finished stories now. That's four fifths of the words in my novel. This would make me think that if it were just the number of words, I might just as well have written another book (and I have a couple of ideas for a book). It's just that I found the form of the short so interesting to explore that I've let my subconscious come up with short rather than long form.

If you look at the styles or genres of the finished stories, you'll see that there's 15 that can be slapped with the category "speculative", another 15 that are mainstream without any supernatural element, four flash stories, and a couple of humor and scifi stories. History also features in many of these regardless of the style. Someone might say that I am wasting my talent (if any) by not sticking to a genre, much as Lovecraft and Poe did.

To these I should like to say that my own preference in reading is to read anything I can get my greedy little paws on. Similarly, I want to try my hand on different ideas and ways of delivering a story. This is very much so in Flash work; with only 500 words to set up, plot, and solve a story, it's very interesting to go from Scifi to Historical fiction and see whether the outcome is believable.

I've had the great fortune of acquiring a set of beta readers who I can trust to tell me when I succeed, but much more importantly, when I fail to deliver. There's a few stories that I liked a lot myself, but got a lukewarm response from the gang; after the indignation and irritation at this treatment of my darlings has waned, I usually go back, read the story, read the response, and agree with the comments. Thank you one and all for that - it's been vital in my development as a writer.

So what's in the pipeline now?

There's 25,226 words in 12 stories now. They range from the supernatural to real life to my favorite, mild horror, and to scifi. For the scifi story I have already requested and received utterly valuable help from my bestest beta lady, Greta van der Rol, whose eagle eye can spot looming trouble from the first five lines of text. I hope to finish these one by one, and I will probably be camping at the PfoxChase offices to try and get a second compilation published too; however, that will only happen if the current compilation, "Filtered Light and Other Stories", actually sells some copies.

So please have a look at the book, and see whether my variety of short stories works for you. It's at http://amzn.to/wp3baL.]]> Sat, 18 Feb 2012 10:31:00 http://www.tulagihotel.com/blog.asp?blog=8
I am a big, big fan of Robert Harris. I found his book Enigma when my interest in the code breaking of Bletchley Park in WW2 was at its peak; that mix of fact and fiction blew me away and it remains his best book in my mind. On a par with it there is Fatherland, the alternative history classic, and almost level, Pompeii. Archangel is also not to be missed.

So, when I started The Fear Index, I was positively titillated with anticipation - a new Harris is always good news.

Within 50 pages, my enthusiasm was dampened somewhat, and after 150 pages, I was downright disappointed. This tale of a brilliant physicist who leaves CERN to write the best algorithmic investment system ever seen was just not what I have always liked best in Harris.

In my mind, Harris shines when he tells the tale of the single man, cast in a role by chance and personal talent, conquering insurmountable odds. Tom Jericho in Enigma, Xavier March in Fatherland, and Fluke Kelso in Archangel have all been set in a situation where only their personal integrity and hard work will win the day.

Not so in The Fear Index. Harris writes well as always, but the picture he draws of Alex Hoffmann has none of the usual charm of a Harris hero. Hoffmann is arrogant, talented, and definitely the man for the job, but his almost autistic lack of interaction doesn't endear him to the reader. Alex's relationship with his artist wife Gabrielle is superficial and uninteresting, even if the culmination point of that relationship in the art gallery raises eyebrows in the best tradition of Harris' books.

Another thing that worried me much was that Harris ventures into Clancyist methods of adding technobabble to add excitement. I was especially disappointed with the small things that he's always done really well: risking that I will be called a muppet by some people, I'll say that CPUs do not hum - transformers do, and there are no files in a computer's registry. Such small items become more and more evident towards the end of the book.

And the crucial element of any book of this type, namely suspension of disbelief, just didn't go far enough. I will not disclose the plot, but at 2/3 of the book it fell flat for me and I read the rest merely to see what happens, not on the edge of the seat enjoying every moment of it.

I will repeat that he writes just as well as ever (with a few somewhat tired similes, a first for me in his books), and to some people, especially in the world of finance, this may be more interesting than to the average lay person, but my expectations were not met, and I will remain in wait for his next book to see if he goes back to creating a truly interesting character in a complex and dangerous situation.
]]> Wed, 25 Jan 2012 09:09:00 http://www.tulagihotel.com/blog.asp?blog=9
Of course, such a situation provides ample opportunities for suspense writers. I've read about ten books on the Enigma, its precursors, and successors, but I have to say Harris delivers such a wonderful novel on the singular starting point, which is the near-invincibility of Enigma. The one flaw in Enigma was that even if it yielded astronomical permutations for its ciphertext, a letter would never get encoded in itself. With this wedge into the cipher, Bletchley Park turned the war around.

Enter Tom Jericho, a brilliant mathematician straight out of Cambridge's mathematical Tripos exams. He delivers crucial input for the cracking of the coded messages, falls in love with one of the girls in the Huts where the hard work is done, and suffers a mental breakdown. His medical leave is cut short when the officers who run Bletchley Park need his services again, but Claire, his love, has disappeared.

After WWII, especially now that we live in an age of information and computers, it is easy to forget what a Herculean task it was to crack Enigma, and that the basis for all British success was lain by Polish mathematicians who reconstructed Enigma from the messages, without having access to a live one. The diverse set of people, from Classical scholars to crossword and chess champs, all the way to musicians and mathematicians, performed an amazing task of intellect and we owe something to them today. Just remember Alan Turing.

Harris spins a tight web on intrigue and narrow escapes and this is a pageturner if there ever was one. Having read extensively on Bletchley Park before reading this book, I am full of admiration for his skills in taking real events and people, and embedding his fictional ones in the mesh so that there's no telling who is for real and who is not.

That question pesters Jericho all through the book too. He trusts few people, mostly himself, and is proven right in doing so. The culprit in the book remains hidden into the end, but at that point, when all is revealed, the reader marvels at the author's skill of making all facts available so that they come together so well.

The final outcome of the book is as surprising as it is convincing and believable. I can recommend Harris' Fatherland, Pompeii, and with some reservation, Ghost, but for sheer brilliance in concept and execution, Enigma remains in my mind the best of his books.]]> Sat, 21 Jan 2012 16:56:00 http://www.tulagihotel.com/blog.asp?blog=10
The Great War of 1914-1918 included many battles that have become legendary, perhaps none more so than that of Verdun. A separate effort, aimed at alleviating the pressure the French were experiencing at Verdun, became known as the Battle of the Somme, July 1, 1916. The story of this bloodiest of all British battles has been admirably told by Martin Middlebrook.

This book is the tale of human courage of the men in the trenches, dimwitted thinking of generals, unfounded belief in the power of the artillery, and above all, the honor and devotion to duty of the single infantry private. It was believed that a week of artillery bombardment would pulverize the German defences, and allow the British to advance to their targets in parade formations.

This was not to be. The Germans had dug deep, and the amount of barbed wire was staggering. Moreover, the British expected their artillery to cut the German wires and create lanes along which to advance; they also sent out parties to cut holes in the perimeters and marked them with white strips. The artillery didn't manage to cut the wire nearly as well as was expected, and the infantry met huge tangled obstacles along the way.

The biggest blunders were General Rawlinson's decision to delay the onset of the attack after the artillery bombardment was over; the Germans had time to man their machine gun positions, which had survived the bombardment much better than expected, and this enabled them to scythe down thousands of men who walked towards their positions. The Germans couldn't believe it when they saw the British advance methodically and slowly, and the murderous cross-fire slaughtered the British.

Another unbelievable error was not to use the only breakthrough on the right flank to attack the Germans from the side and behind - as well as the decision not to use cavalry. It was the end of the era of the cavalry to be sure, but in this battle, the large cavalry contingent could have made a huge difference, had it been let to advance through a breach and cause havoc in the rear of the Germans. They could only wonder at this decision when their lines became thin and tenuously held, but the British never released the cavalry and thus lost the only chance of success at the Somme.

In a way this battle reminds me of Tarawa and the US Marines. There, too, the belief in the intense naval bombardment caused casualties when the Japanese re-manned their positions right after the bombardment lifted. Hundreds of Marines were killed as they waded ashore in the direct sight of Japanese with their machine guns and artillery.

The US did not lose 57,470 men in casualties as the British did, however. This single day cost the British more than any other day in any war, or indeed, months of other wars. The heartbreaking tale of innocence lost is a key part of this book as Middlebrook confidently relates the fates of men who joined up with their friends to form units such as the "Manchester Pals" and "Grimsby Chums". These men fought and died with their friends, and in the process, those who survived ceased to believe in their country which had sacrificed them.

This book is an excellent starting point if you want to read quality books on war. Middlebrook's series on the Bomber Command of WW2 is unrivalled, as is his book "Convoy" which tells the story of the bitter sea battles of the Atlantic through the eyes of men on one such journey.
]]> Mon, 16 Jan 2012 08:23:00 http://www.tulagihotel.com/blog.asp?blog=11
The biggest thing of course was finding a new publisher for Tulagi Hotel. Diane Nelson of PfoxChase Publishing is one of the powerhouses of the new Indie publishing world. She incessantly finds new people whose writing appeals to her, and as she publishes these books, more people get a chance to see them. Needless to say I am very happy that my writing was to her liking, as she has done a massive amount of work to promote the book.

I am even happier of the fact that Diane will publish my short story collection, "Filtered Light and Other Stories" in both book and e-book format. In these days it is not a given that a book will see the light of day in both formats, but for me, up here in Finland. having it in book form will be a big part of the marketing campaign. The book will be out in February 2012.

What else? I was mentioned in a couple of newspapers, namely The Helsinki Times, which wrote an interesting article of the new breed of Finnish writers, namely those who write in English. The link to the article is to be found in the Reviews section.

If you ask a Finn today to name one, chances are they will only remember Hannu Rajaniemi and his brilliant "The Quantum Thief" but there's more than just him and me; especially in the field of science fiction and speculative fiction, there are many who are about to make the quantum leap into writing in a foreign language. The Finnish Scifi scene has been given valuable exposure through Jeff Vandermeer, a premier proponent of Scifi globally.

On the speculative fiction front I was glad to gain access to The Cosmos Pen magazine, which allowed me a short story space as well as a chance to write of my path to publication. This work is now contiuing in the next edition of the Finnish language version, Kosmoskynä. I translated my short story "The Dispatchers" for it, and it will be out in January. Anne Leinonen, a Finnish author, has been of enormous assistance in this field for me.

In August I took advantage of the wonderful Arkadia International Book Shop's offer to come and give a talk on the origins of Tulagi Hotel. The bookstore is truly unique in Finland, and the event itself turned out to be a warm and lively discussion on the new paradigm of publishing, on top of the tale of the book. I will probably go and arrange a book launch for the short stories there too, as the proprietor Ian Bourgeot has an extensive mailing list of literary-minded people.

At the writing of this, I have some 23,000 words in diverse short stories that are labeled "work in progress". I have to confess I have not worked on writing in the past 3 months due to work pressures, but I am confident I will again start writing soon after I get the new courses running and have some spare brain capacity. .,You may therefore expect to see some new stories appear along the Sun that now begins its slow but sure crawling towards our Northern hemisphere.

I wish all my readers a very successful and enjoyable year of 2012!
]]> Thu, 29 Dec 2011 18:20:00 http://www.tulagihotel.com/blog.asp?blog=12 To start off, I don't usually read courtroom drama. I've done the Legal 101 reading books by Grisham, and I have enjoyed the early two or three, but since that I've not touched the genre.

One of the causes for that is that the American legal system is very different from the one we have in Finland, and it's like learning a new game to be able to understand what happens. This usually leads to info dumps and lots of backtracking for the reader to understand what happened.

Pete Morin's book succeeds brilliantly in carrying the story and offering the uninitiated reader just the right amount of information; the legal story is easy to follow and it is very interesting too. Paul Forté's plight in the maelstrom of a corruption trial is believable in the extreme. There is none of the "As you know, Bob,..." type of explanatory tirade.

Mr Morin cuts the picture of Forté so close he becomes very real. I happen to have a brother with the same attitude towards the game of golf that I could relate to people that Forté has to explain his stance on the game. It also serves vey well as the glue that bonds together the world view of honor codes that Forté has.

The human interest side of this book is also handled very capably; I was hooked by the character of Shannon right after she had the nerve to ask Forté a question at his first meeting with the jury, and it had precious little to do with the trial. I should also say that Morin is an adept observer of emotions and the effect they have on humans - his portrayal of Forté's broken marriage is on a par with John Updike's Rabbit books.

The variety of characters appearing in the book is quite large, but they all serve a purpose and there are no superficial, pasted-on personnel. Of the side characters my favorite was Sidney Hartfield, the 90+ year old former SEC official. Morin has considerable talent in imbuing his characters with just the right feel; Hartfield especially brought chuckles to me as I read. Ah, chuckles: there's many a moment in this book when you laugh out loud because Morin knows the world he writes of and has the linguistic wit to bring it out too. I am envious of his one-liners and sarcasm.

All in all, I think you can't go wrong if you are in search of a quick-paced book with twists and turns, intriguing plot, wine and osso bucco. This book is to be highly recommended.
]]> Sun, 11 Dec 2011 10:16:00 http://www.tulagihotel.com/blog.asp?blog=13
Now I have read the entire book in its final form, called Quintessence, and Andrew Meek has put together a really strong debut novel.

Alexander Staalman, physicist, husband, grieving man, an altogether human character, takes us on a tour of mental breakdown, quantum physics, cosmology, and the deepest questions possible: what is this thing called Life, and how can we, conglomerations of atoms consisting of mainly void space, be able to think about it?

The eminent plus points of the book are (in no particular order) depth, honesty, force, intellect, inquisitiveness and beauty.

By depth I mean the way Meek has invested countless hours and massive effort to write a book that manages bind together quantum physics and cosmology, as well as everything that walls in between these two extremes. Staalman ponders believably and interestingly how it can be possible for humans to think - it's just electric current flowing between synapses that are mere atoms in close proximity. And is thinking real? If someone has a thought, is that thought real? Is anything actually and verifiably real?

Honesty is apparent in Staalman's anguished quest to set right a horrible injustice rendered on his beloved wife, Millie. The guilt he experiences over the pain he caused her is rendered in such detail that the reader is wishing to absolve him all the time, but the need for Staalman to correct past deeds, which is of course not possible in our concept of time, forces him to think about time in terms of non-linearity. This is where the book gets to be somewhat challenging, but the author invests sufficient time and space to illustrate his ideas, and all becomes clear at some point.

The force of the book is in the mental breakdowns Stallman experiences. I have often wondered what it must be like to have one of these, and after reading this book I can safely say I wish such events happening to no one. Meek writes with such terrifying clarity of what it's like to feel sanity slip away that the text actually had me shivering more than once.

Intellectually this is one of the most challenging books I've read in a while. Sure, I am a longtime fan of Carl Sagan and cosmology, and I have read all the reports on quantum teleport and how Schrödinger's Cat must be doing these days, but man... this book gets you going really. Meek binds together thought experiments and real-life science so effortlessly that I found myself checking Wikipedia every five pages. I have nothing but admiration for his capability of bringing all of this together.

Inquisitiveness is a natural part of this book. We all wonder about life from time to time and then check to see what's on the telly tonight, but Andrew Meek sets the table for a full feast of questions. How can it be that when he thinks, then writes, then sets to type, uploads the book, and as I download it, I get to see what he thought? But surely all is just electric charges between our synapses! There can't be anything more than electric signals - or is there?

And the beauty... there is beauty in this book. It's in the way electrons spin around the nucleus, and how these atoms self-assemble into molecules, substances, cognitive humans, solar systems and ultimately galaxies. All is from the same source, and yet, nothing is alike to another substance. Alexander's and Millie's love story is hauntingly beautiful too, and even if this seems weird to say, I'll say there's beauty in Alexander's madness.

If you like your books thought-provoking, interesting, fact-laden to the hilt, this is for you. On the other hand, if you are up for an easy read, pass this one by. I definitely hope you will be of the former kind and give this book a serious attempt.

If I may nitpick, I would say this book would benefit from one more run-down by an experiences editor. There's a smidgen too much of stuff in it, and some typo issues. None of this is critical; it is much more important to just read the book.

HarperCollins, are you paying attention? ]]> Fri, 18 Nov 2011 13:35:00 http://www.tulagihotel.com/blog.asp?blog=14
Even if I have always loved short stories as a form, I didn't plan on writing them myself. As you may know by now, it took me twelve years to write and publish Tulia, so during that period I didn't write anything else. Someone has said TH is essentially a collection of short stories, but I beg to differ. I tried hard to write it into solid book form (when I finally decided to push it through).

What launched the short story writing was actually the passing of my father in March, 2008. It must have been part of the grieving process, but I wrote a 1,800 word story called "The Summerhouse". I wrote that almost at one go, gave it a casual polish and asked some of my writer friends to have a look.

To my surprise, it became my trademark in a sense. It has seen publication in two anthologies, the Year Zero Writers website, Escape into Life, and the A3-sized printed Broadsheet in England. And it earned me a seat at the Book Shed author site, where my shorties have received constructive criticism on their way to the reading world.

What surprised me more was the fact that I wrote fifteen more stories in the span of eight months. The Summerhouse was somehow the key to a flood of short story ideas, and I wrote some 60,000 words in those stories. By this time I was part of Year Zero and people such as Dan Holloway and Cody James (and all the others too) helped me find issues in my writing; I like to think I have developed in their tutoring.

At this stage I learned a new word: speculative fiction. This seemed to encompass most of my stories, where there often is a sense of the supernatural or something just a little out-of-place. Dan Holloway tells me he likes my slow chill, and that pleases me very much. This trait is evident in three stories out of four.

Then there was Michael Wells and his idea: he sent forty writers forty-nine songs to be used as story names and inspiration, but nothing more. I was sent Thomas Dolby's "She Blinded Me with Science", which happens to be an eternal favourite. I combined that song title with a Russian airplane of the 1930's, namely the gigantic, eight-engine Tupolev ANT-20, and wrote a story on the Gulags in the Soviet Union. This was an important story in my own view, as it gave me trust in my own voice. The book, "Words to Music", is available on Amazon.

I have wanted to try different types of short stories too. It seems my flash fiction is attractive to readers, as "Lord Stanton's Horse" won the Flash500 competition in September 2010. A couple of others have been shortlisted there. I have also had some speculative fiction shortlisted in other competitions, as well as published on websites and e-zines. And, I am happy to note, a true-life story called "The Campsite vol. 1" made it to second place at the Global Short Stories of March 2011.

So, all in all, while I am working on a couple of book ideas at the back of the neck, it looks like I will be productive with short stories for some time to come. I have 33 finished stories, 12 in the works, and many story nuggets in the Moleskine. While some of the nuggets turn out to be chicken nuggets, some are indeed better ones that can be wrought into real stories.

I believe short stories are an underrated area of writing. The best short stories can leave you with more to ponder than a full-blown book (you can find many of these on Year Zero Writers, and I am not talking of myself here). You can take a 500 word flash fiction with you in the bus even if you only ride a few stops, and a 2,000 word story is perfect for reading just before falling asleep.

I hope PfoxChase will allow me to publish another set of short stories at some later point, but that of course remains to be seen.
]]> Tue, 27 Sep 2011 18:24:00 http://www.tulagihotel.com/blog.asp?blog=15
I’ve read Scifi since I was a kid. Lem, Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke and Bradbury filled my teen years too and well into adulthood, but then I found myself falling off the genre. For example, everyone touted Ender’s Game as something that everyone should read, but I dropped it halfway through. Since then I have taken up Scifi with lukewarm results.

Now, however, I picked up Greta van der Rol’s The Iron Admiral. I found the same elements in it that I used to like so much in the past: a solid, interesting plotline, good writing, and the most important thing: the Science in Science Fiction delivered so well that it simply doesn’t attack the reader. There are the shift-space-capable battle cruisers, stun guns and alien species, but as in the best of the genre books, they simply exist and are not elaborated upon, let alone explained to death. I especially liked the portable hyperspace gate – when can we buy them?

I have read van der Rol’s excellent debut To Die a Dry Death, in which her voice was clear and lucid already, but I am happy to see development even in this department. The way she carries the story and its multitude of characters is very readable and it is easy to follow the convoluted storyline. Allysha and Saahren come across as very human characters, complete with little quirks and habits. I have never met a live ptorix, but I am willing to take van der Rol’s portrayal of them as a species with their own agenda (and tentacles).

I am willing to recommend this book to any fan of the genre, and even to fans of just romance: you should check how romance can bloom while an interspecies war looms in the future.
]]> Thu, 22 Sep 2011 14:35:00