Sources of inspiration

Author George Bernard Shaw once mentioned Dubrovnik in present Croatia being a heaven on Earth. I don't know if he was ever particularly literally inspired by the place. I can imagine it probably gave him inspirational power just like some other places for people, especially artists, writers, composers.
Author Karen Blixen spent a lot of time in Africa and was deeply inspired by the continent. Even so much that she quit painting after coming back to her home country Denmark. In her earlier years, she had considered becoming a painter.
I can easily imagine how certain cities, towns, villages or regions have had a strong impact and are in many ways shown in artists' artistic outcome. Some places are not necessarily connected to any known major works. But would deserve it.
I've been lucky to live in places that have that inspirational atmosphere. You can almost see the streets and corners, parks, beaches and alleys being placed in the stories. The kind of places that make the imagination take off, creating new shops in the side of the ones existing in real life, new fictional people starting to live their lives as if they really existed.
I understood it last year, when a truck blocked New Street in my home village Malahide to give space for evening concerts as the crowd gathered together with their beers and cheerful mood to have a good time. That atmosphere had to be caught somewhere. At least a slice of it.
Since Malahide has the summer festival starting again today, there's no better time to give free a short story about a summer festival weekend in a village, similar to Malahide. You can read it here ->
http://www.wattpad.com/story/1756799-that-little-cafe-near-the-harbor

Overcoming reader's block

I'm a mood reader. Recently having several phases of reader's block. I don't know how I'd cure it. Fully at least. One treatment is to go back to those old books that I've once categorized as highly content, personally inspirational, touching, meaningful, entertaining.
I don't know if they have much in common. Some of them have well-thought plots, off the beaten path language often with that poetic "sing", which tells about the atmosphere, humanity, writer's desire to write, finding in a natural way the inner vulnerability of the individual in place. The no-super hero human being whose skin you can crawl into.
Often my favourite tone is somehow melancholic, maybe having slight quiet sadness, still not necessarily having the story ending unhappily. I love ambitiously written survival stories. Or the ones that end up with the protagonist having inner peace, some kind of harmony.
The most important books for me have a strong touch and taste of life. Some of the books that have brought back my trust in the power of literature have been from my country of origin, Finland: The Home of the Dark Butterflies (Tummien perhosten koti) by Leena Lander, To Steal Her Love (Harjunpää ja rakkauden nälkä) by recently deceased Matti (Yrjänä) Joensuu,  Two Cities (Kaksi kaupunkia) by Harri Sirola,  Train to San Pellegrino (Juna San Pellegrinoon) by Jukka Pakkanen.
I've had similar feelings when reading certain works from authors like Raymond Carver, Anton Chekhov, Kahlil Gibran. And watching movies, which add more to it with the whole atmosphere: pictures and well-selected soundtracks.
If I went to list the films that have had the same affect on me, I'd have to mention two of my favourite Italian films: Cinema Paradiso directed by Giuseppe Tornatore and Mediterraneo (by Gabriele Salvatores).
Some of the more rough ones would include Seven Pounds (by Gabriele Muccino), Dead Mans Shoes by Shane Meadows, Seven Samurai by Akira Kurosawa, Four Friends by Arthur Penn and City of Hope by John Sayles among others.
I sometimes go back to read the full books or certain pages that have that strong emotional affect on me.
The first chapters of Brothers Lionheart by Astrid Lindgren. The pages where the big brother dies when jumping from the window to escape the fire with the little brother on his back. To save him (true brother Lionheart). Meeting again after passing to the other side, Nangijala.
It's not about that moment only. Some of the highlights in literature live in my mind again and again. But I want to find new, earthshaking reading experiences. That would make me read the whole pile of books of some amazing author new to me.
I don't know why I recently haven't found anything totally touching and new. I've browsed piles of books I've taken from the library shelves trying to make a connection to some new, touching, intelligent authors who have "that something" in the story, language and tone. Apart from some excerpts from Paul Auster and Tobias Wolff, and some new names to me such as Haruki Murakami, I haven't found anything that would have blown me away. Therefore I seem to go back to the old ones, to browse those Raymond Carver prose poems that have touched me so deeply all these years.
But I want new ones. Probably with YOUR help. If something moved you or blew you away, let me know.

Testing the e-book revolution

It's been an interesting year.

Last year, around September, I started diving into the world of e-publishing by following what an American author Vincent Zandri, one of the very successful authors in the e-markets, had achieved. Some months later I wrote a story about him and the e-book markets in the big world for a newspaper in Finland.

After having browsed some sites for weeks, I realized I suddenly had a big light bulb flashing over my head. I figured out, why wouldn't I do the same thing. I had had two novels published in the past years, was working on new ones, editing old ones. I had recently finished a short story collection, which I had already partially translated from Finnish to English.

So I translated the rest of the book in only a period of 1,5 weeks, wrote three new stories directly in English to replace the ones I dismissed at this point. Sent the package to my wonderful editor Alisa. After the editing rounds were finished, cover designed, author pictures taken, the e-formatting done, the e-book was uploaded into distributors' meat grinders and sites. It was similar to those holy moments years before. Receiving the package with 12 or 20 author's copies of those just printed novels. Magical feeling of touching the book. Seeing it there. Finally. After all that creative work.

But this time it was different. Books were not waiting in the storage room of some warehouse, hoping someone would order them to their bookshops. Within minutes the e-book was for sale on distributor's website, soon also on Amazon US, UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain... Then within weeks through other e-retailers such as Diesel, Kobo, Sony, Apple, Barnes & Noble, WHSmith...

In addition to jumping the language fence, it was to be a nice test to see how e-markets would go.

Little did I know where this would bring me. I still don't. The whole market is expanding and bringing new dimensions to it as months and years go by. E-book has a long run.

Somehow I feel it's little uncontrollable, but can bring many chances. There are free giveaways, contests, hooks authors are throwing out to get new readers.
The numbers of books available are enormous. But markets are more open than ever before. You can reach a person in the backlands of Australia in seconds, if they just have internet connection available. There is no need for thinking  if the editions will run out or if the book ordered via mail will arrive in a week, three weeks or ever. Or is it available anywhere anymore at all.

Earlier this week I noticed news about renowned author Margaret Atwood joining Wattpad with some of her texts. I followed Atwood's path and joined Wattpad and added the title story from my short story collection My Hometown Named Love to be read there for free. It can be read HERE. (Remember to vote!) If you liked the story or wish to read more, you will find the rest of the book with its other 19 stories as an e-version on sale HERE.

Magical Soccer Summer 1982

The summer I turned 10, I spent a lot of time at our summer home in the countryside. It was the summer of 1982. The first month filled with soccer fever. The World Cup taking place in Spain was everywhere.

And suddenly our small portable TV broke down. We had to listen to some of the matches from the radio. Some of the best ones. Luckily most of the commentators were great. They really made it all come alive as pictures, even shaking feeling.

Especially the greatest match ever. The semifinal West Germany vs. France. West German goalie Harald Schumacher knocking out French defender Patrick Battiston. The match going to extra time. Two French goals, West Germans getting even with their two goals. The penalties until the seventh pair. West Germans finally taking it all and going to the final. The full drama.

1982 World Cup was the biggest and most magical for me. My favourite team was Brazil. The squad that is probably one of my top 3 all time favourite national teams along Hagi-led Romania (World Cup 1994) and "Danish Dynamite" Denmark (Euro1984). Zico, Socrates, Eder, Falcao and the guys had that great creative rhythm of samba in their play. It looked so easy as if the ball was obeying their magical touches just from their thoughts.

During those years in early 1980's, I was mad about soccer. Played in a team myself. Bought or subscribed to some magazines and read the sports comic Buster, which consisted mostly of soccer series.

I suppose kids have a tendency to suck all the information in the world when there's still capacity in the hard drive. My soccer fever has calmed down from those days. 

But now I can see the same thing that happened to me 30 years ago happening to my son. He's buying and reading all the weekly soccer magazines. Browsing internet to see which player is moving from one club to another and what kind of money figures are involved. How the world of soccer is turning around.

Generation has changed. Things are the same, technology more developed to get all that information in real time. There are more possibilities to keep up.

I wonder how much faster the hard drive fills up. Will this information coming from everywhere overload the senses as well. And if any of these today's events will be as magical for my son thirty years from now as the Soccer World Cup in the summer of '82 is for me.

Life is stranger than fiction

One of my favourite films, Magnolia, (directed by one of the those directors whose films I always want to see as soon as they are released, Paul Thomas Anderson) starts with three stories full of coincidences. Each ending with a haunting narrator voice saying: "And I would like to think this was all only a matter of chance."
Sometimes I feel the same way. It could be said that some of life's strange events could be used as a material for creative work. Sometimes life is stranger than fiction.
***
In the turn of August, 1991, me and a friend of mine were on InterRail around Europe for three weeks. At one point we took a night train and bought tickets to the sleeping cart. There must have been four other people we didn't know in the same cabin. In the morning, when the train was getting closer to the final station in Holland, one of the people pointed outdoors, showing buildings near the tracks. There were five high blocks of flats, all different colours. "There are lots of students living in them", the man said.
Almost two years passed. I graduated and started my mandatory military service. Towards the end of my service I saw a notice in the newspaper about this new international business studies program. Half would be in Finland, half in Holland. I applied and was accepted.
Already the first semester was in Holland. After arriving in Holland, we were taken to our accommodation from school. And guess what? My room was in one of those colourful buildings. The same ones the man in the train had pointed over two years before.
***
My dad died in August 1995 of cancer, after a battle that had lasted two years and nine months, somewhat thousand nights. In the weeks he was getting close to death, a slow song named Tuhat yötä hit the Finnish charts. The song title translated to English would mean Thousand Nights. Telling a story about someone being awake for someone for thousand nights. That's how I felt then. The song hit the number 1 spot two weeks after dad's death.
When me and my sister were going through dad's younghood belongings our grandmother had given us after he had passed, we found some short stories dad had written as a young man, around age 20. Some had been published in a regional newspaper in the region he grew up. One of the stories mentioned a character dying on the last Sunday of August. Dad died on the last Sunday of August.
***
World is small. Only seven billion people in it. Around 5,4 billion in the early 1990's when my sister traveled to Australia to meet some relatives and travel around. She traveled to Ayers Rock in Central Australia. One evening she spent time with fellow travelers, started talking to this German girl. After hearing my sister was from Helsinki, the girl mentioned she had a pen pal there. Told what her name was. My sister said, one of her best friends had the same name. The girl picked up her address book and showed the girl's address. The pen pal and the best friend were the same person.

And I would like to think this was all only a matter of chance.
Or was it?
This cannot be "one of those things..."
Or maybe it was.
Strange things happen all the time.

Reader- who are you?

I'm pretty sure most of us writers think at some point, if anyone really reads their writings. I'm wondering if the stories I write touch anyone anywhere. Even for a moment. Or for a longer time. And who are these people? Where are they? What do they do in their lives? What kind of daily routines do they follow? And if someone happens to like my writing, what is the basis for that? The writing itself? The reading habits? Something in their own life that raises the feeling of assimilation?
I have no clue. But would love to know.
Until lately, getting feedback was even more difficult. At least in my present home country Ireland.
My first two books were published in Finnish, and in my home village there are only a few Finns. In the whole Ireland probably somewhat 1300. Nothing compared to many other foreign nationalities in this country.
My potential audience was pretty much elsewhere. In the distance, if internet is not taken into account. Also restricted as there are only approximately five million native Finnish speakers. Small market, though Finland is one of the most hard-reading countries in the world.
In English, it's handy to connect with the surrounding literary world. Whether it's just around you or around the globe. The whole e-book system has brought possibilities. After joining some book sites and following results from some ad campaigns, it's possible to sit by the computer and see who and where happens to connect with your book.
I feel honored to see a doctor from Thailand suddenly liking the Facebook page created for my short story collection. It's great to follow people clicking the ads on Goodreads and add the book itself to their to-read shelves.
It's extremely interesting to do a small sociological research whether the person is from the Philippines, from Brooklyn, Colorado, Upstate New York, Oregon or from somewhere else. It's enlightening to see what other characteristics the person has. Whether the potential reader is a female or a male, and what kind of background and virtual book shelf the person has. And to see, if they will eventually read the book and even write a review about it.
Apart from my friends and reviewers, I hardly ever get any feedback. Especially from the people I don't know personally. Someone I might meet randomly in another occasion might ask, if I'm working on the next book. If they happen to know what I do for living.
Still it would be interesting to get back some more thoughts. I'm not sure if the people who have actually read the book don't want to interrupt. Or the book was just one of those in the line. Not worth talking about. Or if giving feedback is at all part of their priorities or habits.
Or whether they think it could be embarrassing to give feedback to a man who has written about the theme of love. If so, it would be interesting to know how much embarrassment or fear there is to give feedback to people who write about serial killers, junkies, sexual themes or about flesh-eating soft tissue robots that let politically incorrect phrases out of their mouths.
Feedback would be most welcome. At least you would feel something would materialize. That your work didn't just go out as a puff in the space when it once left your computer.

The 27 Club and Friend Andy

In my younger years I had a friend. Let's call him "Andy". He was a short, quiet boy, who would sit in the school classes drawing heavy metal band logos or rock lyrics to his notebooks. He was often in his own world. Thinking. Being creative. Composing stories in his mind. Trying to put them into words. Whether they were lyrics for a band a mutual friend of ours had, or for the short stories he wrote.
Andy was extremely talented. His English skills were superb for a boy growing up in a Finnish suburb. He went abroad later on as an exchange student. Ended up getting best grades in his creative writing class in the school he attended. I often waited when Andy would get published. It was to be only a matter of time. So I thought.
I remember a moment around Easter 1999. Having a dinner with a friend couple in a restaurant in the city centre of Helsinki. Suddenly the other friend of mine breaking the news. Andy had been found dead in his apartment. Andy had turned 27 the month before. He had apparently had a seizure or something. Nothing suspicious.
I often think what Andy could have become. A husband or a father to someone. A talented, published writer. I wonder what kind of stories he could've ended up bringing to this world. In many ways, Andy was ahead of his time. He was often talking about the kinds of streams in literature or popular culture that only became known or popular years or decades later.
I remembered Andy as I came across a story about a Finnish band Hanoi Rocks. I was in sixth grade in school when the band made a wonderful album Two Steps from the Move. It was to be the first step to their massive international success. Finally there could be something coming out of Finland. Surely there had been some wonderful bands, but for some reason they never made it across the big pond, not even to the other parts of Europe. Hanoi Rocks had the chance.
Then came the December 9th, 1984. Redondo Beach, California. Two friends jumped in the car to get some more booze to their party. They were intoxicated, the driver speeding. These men were Razzle, the English drummer of Hanoi Rocks, and Vince Neil, the singer for Mötley Crüe. The car driven by Neil crashed into another car. Razzle was taken to South Bay ER, but was declared dead on arrival.
Pretty soon Hanoi Rocks split. Over the years they've reformed and split again. Still for me the golden age was just before and during the tragic times in 1984. I wonder what they could've become as a band.
Hanoi Rocks has had an unusually strong impact on later glam-rock wave. They inspired bands such as Guns N' Roses. Some very well-known rockers still honor Hanoi Rocks as their big inspiration.
Somehow I feel Hanoi Rocks died as a band with Razzle. Every time I hear songs like Don't You Ever Leave Me or the one dedicated to Razzle, Million Miles Away,  I think of what waste accidents and addictions cause in this world. I wonder it in the context to my own life. Thinking it as a parent of a kid, who is getting closer to the puberty. How I should raise my child so he wouldn't end up mixing himself with substances. Even cigarettes.
We've had our talks. Discussing how my son never got to see his grandpa, my dad, who died of lung cancer at 52. How these rock stars Jimi Hendrix, Amy Winehouse, Kurt Cobain and others never got to make more powerful music as they did already during their short careers.
Why take the risk? There is nothing fancy to be on the verge of death at 27. Additionally, life can be full of surprises. Interrupting life anyway. Causing sorrow.
There will never be replacements for people who pass away. There will never be dreams that came true. And as me and my friends remember: there will never be new Andy.