Writing news (edited 21/3/21)

Things have been very quiet here for quite some time now. The reason is simple: my debut novel, co-authored with my husband, just came out! This historical adventure is set in the Thirty Years' War and called "Kuninkaan rakuunat - Upseerin miekka" ("King's Dragoons - Officer's Sword"). It was published by Otava.

Edit: there are now two more books in the series: Kuninkaan rakuunat - Kuriirin viitta and Kuninkaan rakuunat - Salamurhaajan merkki.

And the whole series (so far):

 

Lately, we have been busy with writing, editing, research and other such things, and even decided to establish a new author page for these new writing endeavours. Only a Finnish version is available at the moment, but there are plenty of pictures and even a few videos in the new blog. I won't be updating this blog very frequently from now on, but you're very welcome to follow the new site!

In other news, one of my short stories, titled "Daughters of the Frost World" was published by Fantastic Books Publishing in their latest anthology, "The Dummies' Guide To Serial Killing: And Other Fantastic Female Fables". Paperback and ebook versions are both available.

666 Anthology

This is the book I mentioned yesterday! There it is now, out in the world, ready to frighten readers... It includes 32 short (666 words exactly) horror stories. Some are written by established authors, some are stories that were submitted to a writing competition organised by Fantastic Books Publishing. The ebook is available at the publisher’s online store and the paperback (and the Kindle edition) on Amazon.

One of the stories in the collection, “Entombed”, is something of a weird tale that I wrote together with my husband, Marko Susimetsä. I had the initial idea some time ago already – but it was just that, an idea, and it left me asking, “then what”. I told my husband about it, and he immediately said, “What if this happened?” And it was just the right thing! That was how it had to go. We’ve been collaborating quite a lot recently, and this is one of the best things about it: two brains are better than one (ghouls would agree with me :P), and we often bounce ideas back and forth and inspire each other. It also helps to know that if you get stuck, you’re not alone; you can talk about the problem and try to... make it go away. And it’s also a lot of fun!

So we had an idea for something we knew would be a short story. I wrote some notes and saved them in my “thoughts” file (I lack the confidence to call them ideas). Then the competition came up, and we decided to try and see if the idea might evolve into a suitable story. Making it exactly 666 words long (or short) was a bit of a challenge, since we both tend to think in terms of longer stories. But we kept the word limit in mind while writing the first draft and thus did not end up with a huge amount of words to cut. It took some wrestling with words, but eventually we had the required 666. And we even managed to sneak in a Conan the Barbarian reference. ;)

We're still waiting for our copy (must have the paperback edition), so I haven't read the other stories in the anthology - but I have read other stories by some of the authors, and I have a feeling this is a collection of truly chilling tales.

Happy Halloween!

What do you think, did I manage to pick an appropriate book for the season? Also, this is one of my favourite songs at the moment:

I also thought I'd let you know that today (appropriately) is the launch day of "666", an anthology of bite-sized horror stories by Fantastic Books Publishing. Each story is 666 words long (or short, depending on how you look at it). This collection features a grave story (yes, pun intended) which I wrote together with my DH. And I'd like to welcome you to the launch party tonight! It takes place at 6:66... or 19:06 UTC in Facebook. You can find the event here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1044691382276161/

"Synthesis" is out!

I’m very excited to share this piece of news with you: Fantastic Books Publishing recently published a science fiction anthology "Synthesis", and one of my stories is featured in the book!

In 2014, FBP organised a short story writing competition for stories of 1500 words or shorter. That isn’t very many words, and there was a time when I would never have even considered attempting to condense a story into such a short form. If you meet me in person, you’ll find that I don’t talk much, but if you let me write... a different story (haha!) altogether. Back when we had to write English essays at school, the word limit was something like 200. I always ended up with maybe about 500-600 words. The cutting took much longer than the actual writing, and that is not the way to write a story. Luckily, when this competition came up, I had already written a few short stories so I gave it a try.

When the results were announced, I was stunned to learn that my story had received the third prize! That was unexpected, but, naturally, wonderful news.

And now it's out - an ebook and a paperback edition of 27 science fiction stories (Amazon has it, too). Most of them are entries from the competition, but the collection also features stories by authors who were invited to contribute. I’ve read some of the stories already, and while they’re bite-sized pieces, they gave me much food for thought. If you’re worried about science fiction being all about space battles and aliens or some sort of technical stuff that only an engineer or a physics professor would understand, no need to worry – there’s much more to this collection. I’m honoured to have my story “If We Start Killing” in this anthology.