Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Again: trouble at work

After having felt pretty good about work for a couple of days, I received yesterday and earlier today several drawbacks:

1. We didn't get a grant from a publisher that was interested in a lightweight reference work on erotica classics I proposed with two writer friends of mine. Not knowing if anything will come out of this.

2. Just read a review of the latest issue of Isku from Body Culture, the magazine of Finnish Whodunnit Society. I tried to evade this as long as possible, as I'm very touchy about reviews of my own work, but simply couldn't hold myself longer. The writer was polite and said it was nice of someone to do this kind of a non-profit, small press magazine, but the stories clearly didn't appeal to him. Almost none of them. Mediocre and disposable, he seemed to say. I know that the latest issue of Isku wasn't as strong as some of the earlier ones, but these things happen.

3. A writer friend and I have been trying to scratch together a collection of essays on Outsider, the most prominent Finnish pulp writer from the thirties to the fifties, but today I received two e-mails from proposed contributors that they won't have the time do their essays. They sure have other, more important work, and I can't blame them for anything, but after other drawbacks it just adds to the depression. We already have three of the articles and I don't really know how to tell the authors that they won't be used, if we decide not to waste our time anymore with this project.

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