Spooky reads for Halloween

In a previous post, I mentioned that as the nights grow darker, so does my taste in books. On those dark and stormy nights, I have a yarning to read something a bit gothic or books such as “Wuthering Heights” or “Jane Eyre”. Anything featuring wind-whipped moors or a dark, mysterious mansion seems suddenly tempting. Do autumn and the approaching Halloween affect your reading preferences? Do you have a favourite horror (or any other dark) novel or perhaps a favourite author whose work would be perfect for this time of year? In the spirit of Halloween, here's a little look of some of my favourite spooky, dark and mysterious reads.

I have never been a big fan of horror, although I did experience a brief eerie period in my teens when I read all the spooky books I could locate in the library of a small village. My favourite was Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” – and while it might not appear so very frightening to a modern reader, it is, after all, a classic and holds a special place in the dark corner of my heart.

Another classic that I’m fascinated by is Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”, which, with its witches and obscure prophesies, bloody murder and mist-shrouded castles seems like a perfect Halloween treat. Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble!

In this context, I must mention Robert R. McCammon and his excellent werewolf books, “The Wolf’s Hour” and “The Hunter from the Woods” (a collection of short stories/novellas rather than a novel) which may not be strictly horror, but work with historical fiction and lycanthrope lore to weave together stories that are a fascinating combination of adventure, action and even a bit of romance. They are gory and bloody but also rather dark and thoughtful. I’ve previously reviewed “The Wolf’s Hour”.

Another favourite of mine are the novels by Phil Rickman, whose work falls somewhere between mystery, horror and crime; in many of them, contemporary mysteries intertwine with mystical, mythological and historical elements. The writing creates an atmosphere that is hauntingly beautiful – and a bit creepy. His John Dee series is not contemporary but historical fiction steeped in mystery (my review of "The Bones of Avalon" here.)

A childhood favourite of mine, simply perfect for this time of year, is a series by an Estonian author Aino Pervik (illustrations by E. Walter). These books feature a witch, Emmeline, who lives alone on a rocky island, makes potions and gathers herbs, until she meets a sea captain called Trummi. I fear that even back when my parents read me these stories, I felt a certain affinity with the hermit witch... look, she even lives in a tree!

Last but not least – I used to love “The Witch’s Handbook” by Malcolm Bird when I was a child. Now this has become one of my daughter’s favourites, and our yearly tradition is to read it around Halloween. This is the book my daughter prefers over playing and other activities! Packed with hilarious illustrations and clever advice, this book is a must-have for anyone inspiring to become a witch.

This year, I’m also reading “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” to my daughter – and it happens to be quite appropriate (just look at the cover)!

As horror isn’t generally my preferred genre, I’ve written few horror stories. There are, however, a couple that come close. Almost exactly a year ago now, the weird tale “Entombed” I wrote with my DH appeared in the “666” horror anthology (also recommended Halloween reading material) - and quite recently, our werewolf novella, “Musta Susi” (“Black Wolf”), was published in the Finnish science fiction and fantasy magazine Portti. Since it sort of fits the theme of this post, here's the title page of our story. The illustrations are by Kari T. Leppänen, and I have to say I love them; they capture the mood of the story - and look at the detail on that ship!

Blog Birthday!

It has been three years since I started this blog! It does not feel that long! (Add all the other usual exclamations about how time passes so quickly.)

In three years, I’ve written 191 posts. No, I’ve published 191 posts; there is a number of never published drivels that are better left forgotten.

The most popular posts have been… who would have guessed… chocolate reviews! Very funny, considering this was never meant to be a chocolate review blog, it was a joke from a friend that inspired the very first review! But, apparently, people do read such things – and who can blame them? Chocolate is good. (Chocolate is food of the gods!) The most popular chocolate post is this multi-bar review of Fazer’s Travel chocolates.

The most popular posts that are not about chocolate are a review of Manda Scott’s novel “Hen’s Teeth”, a post about the costumes for the movie “The Girl King” (17^th century!), a review of Kelly Gardiner’s “Goddess” (17^th century!), my favourite books in 2015, and our visit to the Heavy Metal exhibition hosted by the Häme Castle. It also seems that my travel tales (especially ones about chocolate and cafés) have been popular as well as the little stories about seasonal celebrations (Halloween, Valentine’s Day etc.). Readers are also interested in writing, especially the science fiction anthology “Synthesis” and our werewolf novella “Musta Susi”.

After three years, I can't quite decide what to do about this blog. My DH and I recently signed a publishing contract for our debut novel. What can I say? It’s something I’ve been daydreaming about since I was quite small. I learned to read when I was about four or five years old (I’ve been told; I can’t remember) and since then have loved reading passionately. I wasn’t even at school yet, but I still remember very vividly the first time I realised that people actually have to write all the books (I even remember exactly where I sat… with a book open before me, of course). So... someone gets to write books! I knew that was what I wanted to do, and although that dream was buried many times, for years and years, and very, very deep, and mountains of dirt was packed on top of it with a heavy shovel... I could never quite get over it.

So now that the revision process of our manuscript is in full swing, I wonder if there’ll be much time for blogging – and, considering that the novel will be published in Finnish, perhaps I should also blog in Finnish. Furthermore, should I blog about more important topics? Stop with the chocolate reviews and other frivolous matters already and become a more… um, all right, somehow I have a hard time imagining myself as a serious blogger! 😁

Review: Dangerous Women

As soon as I heard about the anthology titled “Dangerous Women”, I knew I wanted to read it. The theme is fascinating, and the collection features stories by some authors whose work I’ve enjoyed – plus it’s a massive anthology with 21 stories!

As I’ve said before, anthologies are great in that they give you lots of different stories in different voices – there’s always bound to be something you like. However, that is also their weakness: they probably feature stories that you’re not too interested in. Still, it is a good way to sample works by new authors. In ”Dangerous Women”, I was already familiar with the works of George R. R. Martin, Diana Gabaldon, Sharon Kay Penman, Joe Abercrombie and Jim Butcher. So, many new authors for me to sample!

“Dangerous Women” certainly gives you a wide variety of stories. There’s historical fiction, fantasy (urban and more traditional), SF, crime, mystery... This is something I enjoyed very much; each story was definitely different and the genre-hopping made the experience versatile and exciting (love those ”Ooo, I wonder what I'm going to get next!” moments). Just as I expected, there were some great stories but also some I did not enjoy so much.

Some of the tales did justice to the theme, but there were some where you had to be rather... creative and generous to accept that women featured in the stories could be called dangerous. I don’t know what this means exactly. I hope it isn’t that the authors really did have such a hard time coming up with situations/worlds/characters that would fit the theme. That was a little disappointing, but I decided not to mind; I still got interesting stories to read.

I won’t go into each individual story, but there are a few I want to name:

Joe Abercrombie’s “Some Desperado”, an action-packed bit with something of a wild west feel, shows an intriguing character in a very sticky situation. Loved the voice. Apparently, the character features in one of his novels, “Red Country”. (I’ve read ”The Blade Itself” but wasn't intrigued enough to continue with the trilogy – maybe I should look into this one.)

Diana Gabaldon’s “Virgins” is a sort of prequel to her time travel series (“Outlander”), depicting adventures of familiar characters (Jamie and Ian when they were young mercenaries in France). A novella rather than a short story.

I expected much from George R. R. Martin’s – who’s also one of the editors – “The Princess and the Queen”. And it is indeed very well written (I wouldn’t expect anything else), but it reads like a history book... which was probably the author’s intention. I don’t have anything against history books, quite the opposite, but I happen to prefer my fiction in the form where I get to experience events through the characters. Still, a must-read background story for serious “Game of Thrones” fans.

”Wrestling Jesus” by Joe R. Lansdale is gritty but humorous and even kind of sweet coming-of-age story where a young boy meets a mentor figure, an old boxer, and his obsession/one true love, the story's femme fatale.

A little surprisingly, my favourite was “Second Arabesque, Very Slowly” by Nancy Kress, an author previously unknown to me. I didn’t expect much from this post-apocalyptic story – that is really not my genre – but it was intriguing and thought-provoking. It’s set in a brutal world where most women have become infertile, and those who haven’t are little more than precious commodities. It is told by an older woman, no longer capable of bearing children and therefore a burden to her ”tribe”. I loved the theme of contrasting the need and will of survival with the love of beauty and art. Is it enough to simply survive from one day to the next, or is it part of human nature to crave more – and risk everything for that? I liked this story so much that I later read Kress' science fiction novel ”Probability Moon”.

All in all, ”Dangerous Women” is a collection of widely different stories. If you’re a fan of just one or two genres, this might not be for you, but if you like switching between genres or want to experiment without committing to entire novels, you might want to take a look at this one.

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.

New blog feature

I’ve been putting this off for several months now – I don’t know why, but it makes me nervous. However, I've been told that I should have an “About me” section somewhere here in my blog, so... there it is now. Up there, below the title image (or whatever that’s called, I’m not familiar with the terminology... but that would be the picture with the sword) you can find links to my Facebook page, Goodreads author page and now to the “About me” section.

"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.