Reviewers' Duel

My third crime-themed novel Jäljet (Tracks) was published in mid-April as an e-book in Finnish.

As hoped, book reviewers have been active. Reviews have been mostly very good. This third Isaksson series novel has been complimented of having ”a strong narrative text, for being descriptive and engaging”.

The things I've been seeking for in my writing have also been found.

One reviewer wrote:

“The environment was described precisely and somehow very vividly. I lived in Helsinki in my times and now felt as if I was again walking along its streets. I was impressed also by the pondering of the deepest feelings of a human mind, which by no means was left any way superficial.”

Jäljet has also been thanked for containing humour, ”which lightened up the atmosphere in a nice way."

By reading these reviews I've come more and more to a conclusion that not all the books are for all readers. Easy and clear conclusion as anyone would understand.

While other reviewers conclude book being engaging, especially mentioning that even the descriptive parts don't get the narrative jammed, one reviewer feels it does exactly that.

As we take the pluses and minuses, we realize that certain reviewers clash with each other with their opinions. Of course, they are exactly just opinions. Not the universal truths either way. Could it ever be, when there are as many opinions as there are readers. Readers from different backgrounds, age groups, genders, geographical locations, levels in society, in different stages of lives, with different experiences. Plus tastes that vary over genre levels, even inside them. Also when talking about themes, style and approach.

One reader loves the psychological approach, the inner monologue and the first person pondering of dark feelings inside someone's mind. The other one hates it.

One reader has a problem with mentioning certain events happening in the two independent parts of the series, because the reader hasn't read them. The other ones thank the writer for acknowledging the readers a bit of what had happened to the characters after the events in previous books ended. Something that still wouldn't distract the readers, who haven't read the previous books and would like to.

One reviewer in the past once mentioned that ”due to many subplots, not all of them are followed to the end and tied together”. What if the writer has something in mind? That some of these untied plots end up popping up back later on in the series as in tv-series Lost? Maybe two, three, four books later? For a reason so far only known to the writer. Some readers get the hints and wait for the following books to find out.

Is the reviewer the one, who gives the universal truth? As anyone who writes, writers tend to listen to these reviewers, use the common sense and adapt this feedback to developing themselves. Surely also strongly following their own vision. That's what makes them the writers they hopefully are with their own writing style, tone and voice. The one the readers dedicated to their writing will recognize sometimes from the first paragraph.

If reviews were part of a market research, would you as an entrepreneur change fully your course of work and products based on the 20 per cent's opinions, who obviously aren't interested in your work and therefore not even part of your target group? Or listen to the feedback in a healthy way and follow more that 80 per cent of the reviewers, who like your work and would like you to follow your chosen path. Of course trying to at least maintain your level and even develop your products to become better? You can always write better.

Over the years, I've been couple of times hinted by some publishers to follow some action-based techno thriller writers who are their bestsellers. As if I'd maybe strip down my language and own voice to follow their path. Change to something that I'm not. Writing something that I'd never be good at. Not that I'd even be interested in being.

There's plenty of thinking even inside my own vision, the genres I've touched and will probably be touching in the future. Even after all these years, I'm a bit surprised how literature, which has a crime theme, is often narrowed down to being exactly a crime novel. As it couldn't contain anything else than just surprising twists after twists after twists, often for the sake of it.

I do hope that I can fulfill the expectations of the readers, who are interested in reading my works. I don't need to please everyone, but I do hope I please the ones, who really are interested in my writing.

"Are you working on a new book?"

"Are you working on a new book?"
That's the question authors hear every now and then. It could be soon after the last one was published, or in case of a gap, years after the last one.
How rarely in reality would the answer be: "No." For my knowledge, most authors write at least something over the months, years. Some more than others.
If the author hasn't published anything in years, it might not be the case that he/she hasn't actually been writing anything. It just could be that the book, even several new book scripts, have been rejected by publishers. Or are still in the pile waiting to be judged. Not all of us authors get to jump the queue. Also drastic changes in publishing houses mean delays. Personnel changes. Errors in processing. Slower reading of those hundreds, maybe thousands of scripts piling up from here and there. Even misplaced piles of paper sent in long time ago, which are never found (been there).
It is somehow unfortunate from author's modest point of view. Especially when talking about novels that are planned as being parts of the series. Maybe individual stories, but subplots depicting certain years, bringing characters into account. Showing how people's lives change.
Or maybe they don't. Or maybe the books end up being published in wrong -non-chronological-  order. Or some of them not at all. Suddenly that one part of the series has a character having a baby. In the next one published she hasn't. But it's only a subplot. Meaningless, if it doesn't fit the publishing plan or doesn't go over the quality line.
Could be frustrating for an author to see how things go. Whether these novels will be published five years apart. Or at all. If there is a continuance for readers to have something to wait. How the things continued in subplots. If there are new hints about the cases left slightly open, so they could be continued maybe one, two or five books later. The planned hooks that are there in sketched novel plans that would hopefully some day come true. If there was continuance.
I'd like to ask my colleagues, how many unpublished book scripts they have written. I can tell my toll. In the past, as an unpublished author, I wrote six full-length scripts with no luck to get them published. One of them was rewritten three times for a large publisher. I did get great feedback from most of those scripts, but only one of those letters used the clear language people outside the publishing industry could understand: "Do these changes, and offer it to us again." Unfortunately, while doing this rewriting the editor in charge changed. The new one didn't want to go on with it. Personal tastes, I thought. Disappointment, of course.
I wrote more scripts.  Sent the seventh one into a novel contest and managed to reach top 3 spot. Original Finnish version of Medusa was published in print. It was republished as an e-book last year and finally in English, also as an e-book, this August.
But life is not easy with all this turmoil. After my last novel was published in print, along my jumping into e-book business, I've written new scripts and edited old ones. I could say that there are nearly ten full-length scripts needing work or normal editing process. Additionally there are nearly finished works, half-written writings, writings being done piece by piece. There are sketches for novels written here and there.
As writers know, going back to old scripts can be refreshing, even fun. But also tiresome.
New ideas, even about  fully different kinds of scripts, are already making their way in the head. Along with the new well-planned parts of the series that would tell where the events in already published books lead to.
If someone again pops me the question: "Are you working on a new book?", I nowadays answer: "Yes, which one of them?"
Only thing is that should I be adding to that: "But I'm not sure if you ever get to read them."
Unless e-book saga continues.

Ulysses and Suburb Vomit

Excerpt from a colleague's obituary six years back (translated): "He was from XXX. The city must have been dear to him, since he ridiculed it continuously."
Those words came back to my mind after I yesterday did a five-hour walking tour by myself in Dublin. Wandered from place to place having only a map and a camera in my hand.
The route in the map was from Ulysses (written by James Joyce). Showing the places where protagonist Leopold Bloom and other characters wandered during that one day novel takes place.
Time has changed. Bloom's house in Eccles Street was demolished to accommodate Mater Hospital. As was the Cabman's shelter, which apparently had been replaced by AIB trading centre. I couldn't find all the places with the plaques that were supposed to be there. But apparently what still exist from 109 years back are the pubs, though with different names. Ruggy O'Donohoe's pub is now International Bar and Barney Kiernan's pub The Capel.
I saw the shady letters 'Finn's Hotel' still in the wall of the old hotel in Nassau Street where Joyce's future wife Nora Barnacle worked as a chambermaid and whom he met first time romantically on that exact day Ulysses takes place on June 16th, 1904.
I also tried to find the place in the corner of Dawson Street and Molesworth Street where Bloom helped a blind man across the street. While I was standing there, a horse carriage passed by. As if I had suddenly jumped 109 years back in time.
It was a nice eye-opening day for me after having lived in Dublin region for over seven years. Seeing the history and today. After reading some pieces from Wikipedia I'd like to jump in the time machine, just to see what Joyce's and Barnacle's first date on that June 16th, 1904 was like. Did it really have that magic to base a full massive novel on that exact date.
And what the city was like. Were people happy? Happier than now? Did they feel like Dubliners now do? Were they then proud of their hometown, then much smaller than it is now?
And was the city comfortable to go for a walk. Spend time. Live. Did it have enough character to really base a novel on. Trying to depict it as Joyce did so people like me would be wandering around it hundred years later.
I'm not sure what Joyce's relationship with Dublin, Dalkey, Dun Laoghaire and other places nearby was. He lived most of his adult life abroad. Was there a reason to depict Dublin again and again deep inside his mind? As well as with other artists, who depict their hometowns.
I started thinking about books I've read, films I've seen, music I've listened to. All the stories in them that have something to do with processing some place. Maybe romanticizing it. Or barking at it. Processing the events, even traumas that happened there. The past. Nostalgic or the opposite. Events and memories that formed these people.
I've been dealing with the same issues through writing. Gathering ideas and memories from past times, mixing it with fiction. I recently noticed a Finnish novel written by Anu Juvonen, who is few years younger than me. The book is titled Lähiöoksennus, translated Suburb Vomit. Events take place in Kannelmäki suburb in Helsinki. Only seven minutes' train trip away from where I grew up in Vantaa.
I read a newspaper story about her memories about the times she wrote about. There were lots of similarities to my memories from that era in a similar suburb. Supposedly million children growing up in that era have the same touching surface. I could feel the angst. See the pictures in my mind. Need to ridicule those certain madnesses in the middle of concrete building blocks.
I admit: I do have a love/hate relationship with my childhood and younghood suburb. I mention it with certain pride or happiness when Formula One drivers coming from there succeed. I share the new videos when progressive metal band Amorphis does something new and interesting. Still, I mock the suburb, especially its past, whenever I have a chance. I joke about Japanese tourists trying desperately to find Mika Häkkinen Square only to realize this has actually happened.
I'm thinking, will the place ever have any aspect that would mean anything to anyone else who hasn't grown up there? I suppose novels like Ulysses and Lähiöoksennus in their own ways immortalize these places. Especially for those who know the places. And through writing and reading to someone else, who can jump in the shoes of a person, who actually lived and experienced it. The time and place then.
Even to the point when they start understanding why someone ridicules the home place instead of maybe trying to forget or live with it.

Processing real life events, and reverse drama

I'm often very interested in stories, which have a connection to real life. I couldn't care less for C-level drama or true movie channels showing the lead Based on a true story. But if certain pieces of fiction in books, movies, TV or even theatre have some kind of believable, not-so-sugary and ambitiously processed connection to real events,  you might have reached me. Even more interesting it is, if the piece is based on someone's original psychological processing of a life situation.
Some months ago, I went to Gaiety Theater in Dublin to see Steel Magnolias (Mischa Barton was in it). I hadn't yet seen the 1988 film starring Julia Roberts, Shirley MacLaine etc. But after browsing theater show lists and Wikipedia, I bumped into the background story of it. Originally written as a play in early 1980s by Robert Harling.
I read that Robert had written the play to process his sorrow after the death of his younger sister Susan Harling Robinson, a diabetic.
As it is summarized in Wikipedia:
As her best friend and closest sibling, Harling found it very difficult to cope with her death. He was advised by many of his friends to write about his feelings as a coping method. It began as a short story and evolved into a full length play as Harling didn't feel that a short story adequately conveyed the complexity of the relationships and the emotions that existed within the characters. Harling felt it important to include the way the characters utilized humor and lighthearted conversations to assist them in coping with the seriousness of the underlying situations.
I had to see how it had come alive. Especially as a drama-comedy. I know people processing sad things might end up using extremely dark, even macabre humour. But somehow I had a feeling that this would be different. Lighthearted, having heart, with a bit of haunting voice towards the end. I knew how it would end even when I didn't.
I was pleased. I would've ended the story in a same way. It brought different kind of after taste. Sense of having had laughs, but also a little sadness. As if I had lost a friend.
Steel Magnolias made me think how much information we have about the play or a movie beforehand makes the watching experience different. We get this presumption when knowing the background story.
When seeing the awarded documentary film Senna, the whole watching is more intense as you know how the story will end. How the main character, Ayrton Senna himself, is nearing his death. How those small decisions made about certain safety measures by the race officials are now seen.
Sometimes this drama is reverse. Made in an innovative way. The conclusion is shown first, then certain developments leading to it only afterwards.
One decision made years ago was made in the popular TV series ER. Doctor Mark Greene (Anthony Edwards) was written out of the series by developing him a brain cancer. Only after his death was announced, the full following episode dealt with Mark's last times before his death. As he did peaceful rollerblading in Hawaii, his condition getting worse, him dying later on in the episode. The whole intensity to that overly peaceful episode came from the knowledge of nearing death.
TV, theater, movies, books. They don't always need to be utterly intense with ever-continuing action sequences.
There are great ways to create interesting, different kind of drama with simple, but bit unusual decisions.

End of the year hurry paid off

Cannot believe we're in 2013 now. The last months of 2012 went in a hurry. Especially October and November getting writing and editing done just about day and night. Keeping in contact with all parts of the team in the book process. Apparently certain rewarding success in (e-)book markets brings the motivation up...

The last months have been pretty amazing ride seeing how interesting e-publishing with all its connections to the changing publishing world, social media and its marketing mechanisms is. My debut novel, crime-themed Meduusa (originally published in 2006) eventually hit the #1 spot in iTunes Finland top100 in mid-October. After that it has made it up there again somewhat seven times. It has also kept the #1 spot in Mysteries and Thrillers chart for most December and January.

I was surprised to see it being selected to iBookstore Best of 2012 collection Top Fiction category in December. This could have something to do with the fact that since its update edit and e-publishing in July, it has become one of the all-time most sold e-books in iTunes Finland.
Why? Not sure, but I have a theory in addition to thanking the decent pricing.
Did the topics about how people are suffering in their life, maybe financially during the recession, pressures in the society, friendships, work and family life, growing crime rates connect to some of those readers? Maybe certain events seen in the news, such as horrendous family tragedies and senseless school shootings, ended up being more current issues now than six years ago. Maybe.
For me possibly hitting the nerve of these years meant rewarding times. A sting of new energy. No wonder some days and weeks have been quite hectic.
After the first success I dug out the original Palava sydän (Burning Heart) file. This crime-themed novel has the same police characters, events taking place in Helsinki region in Finland. It was originally published in print in 2008.

I did the same editing trick and it was published as an e-book in the end of October. By the end of the year Meduusa and Palava sydän had held several times the #1 and #2 spots in iTunes Finland Mysteries and Thrillers chart at the same time.
I have a feeling some old time frustrations in writing have found a solution through e-publishing. I know there has to be self-criticism and hard editing work done not to put just about anything out there. Readers are selective. Surely not dumb.
But it does give hope and energy. Even so much that I went deeper in digging my file archives and lined up some older scripts in addition to editing and writing newer ones.
In the end of October the Finnish version of the short story collection My Hometown Named Love, (published in English in March) Kotipaikkani on rakkaus, saw its light. As did the two story collections in November: children's story collection Karkaileva bussi ja kaiken maailman ihmeelliset vempeleet (Runaway Bus and All Other Marvelous Contraptions) and a cross-generational story collection Haikarasaaren vauvasatama ja muita tarinoita (Heron Island Baby Harbour and other stories).
The last two haven't made it yet to iTunes due to a linking problem. In addition to blocking links to its competitor Amazon, Apple has apparently now also blocked links to Goodreads. It'll be interesting to see how originally Finnish-language children's books draw attention to mainly Disney-based children's e-book markets.
There have been many predictions on what will happen in e-book markets this year. North American e-book sales will most likely pass 25 per cent in all book sales. Europe and Finland are way behind.
But I think putting efforts there now will pay back in the future. There were 1,1 million smartphones sold in Finland in the first nine months of 2012 only (not including the newest iPhone model). In the same nine months time, sales numbers for tablet computers were somewhere between 150 000- 200 000. These numbers in such a short time are high in a country with only 5,4 million people. More people are using these devices and e-readers in addition to reading traditional paper books.
The tradition of buying hardcovers and paper covers is and will be there. But what will be the future of e-reading when new devices come up? And when new generations grow up? Using technology for things my generation wouldn't, can be very natural for young adults in only a few years, not even yet talking about ten or twenty years from now.
This doesn't have to mean the death of a traditional paper book. They can go side by side depending on the needs, origins of the book, which edition is more easily available and whether someone wants to carry ten books on a safari in Africa or take the e-reader along.

Holy moments

I believe anyone who has ever experienced finishing a big process, knows what a great feeling putting the dot to it is. Finishing it fully. Maybe years of work.
For a creative person it's a huge point to come to. Letting something you created go. See the pile of papers, whatever you've been working on for months, maybe years, right there.
It also means letting the work go. For a writer, it means sending it to a publisher or an editor. There may be more editing rounds coming up, but the first holy moment is when the pile of prints stands on the desk waiting to be slipped into that big envelope. Or the file attached to the message going somewhere waiting for someone to click the send button..
The second holy moment -later on- is getting the box of recently printed books from the post office. Opening the box and seeing the name and title on the cover. Touching the paper. Browsing pages. Seeing the writing that was only an echo of words some time ago in the head. Making its way to a story. Now materialized for someone out there to read.
When writer gets hard copies in hand, it's time for celebration, maybe raise a toast. But already then there's been a process of giving up. Processing the emptiness. You've let your characters go. You might miss them. The whole process. Sticking small pieces of papers you've written in the bus so you don't forget the idea you came up with. Placing something you suddenly thought of in the timeline of the story. Getting excitement when finally solving the puzzle with something you bumped into while walking the streets, reading the paper, seeing a person who reminded you of something.
Letting the script go in the first place is a bigger thing for many writers. Some medicate the sudden emptiness by getting drunk, maybe spending the whole week or two smashed or in a soft room. Some hop in the plane or train. Change the scenery.
I've had my own methods. Some years ago, after finishing a novel, I was considering taking a last minute trip. It didn't matter where. Anywhere would have done the job.
Instead I developed A Day. In fact, An Afternoon. No glasses of champagne, no cigar once a year as Paul Sheldon in Misery. Just a bus ride to the city. Little stroll around. Lunch in a quiet place by myself on a weekday afternoon. Choosing a film of my taste. Sitting in a nearly empty movie theater alone. Letting it all go.
In the early evening I'd take a bus home. Purified. Until the creative machine would soon start turning itself on again.