White Houses

For the last couple of weeks I’ve been busy finishing the manuscript of my novel. I’m going to, like the other two, self-publish the novel at Books on Demand.

It’s tedious to rewrite old text, I’ve been bored to death. I don’t like to read my old texts, they are familiar, and there’s nothing surprising in them. Boring, boring, boring, but now I’ve done it.

I had this manuscript, but no name for the novel, so I arranged a query in my main Finnish blog and asked the readers to come up with a name. They gave plenty of suggestions, and the name was found.

Having got the name, I made some sketches for the book cover, and made a poll.

Doing all this, has left me very little time to visit your blogs, less leaving comments. Sorry about that.

The novel’s name is Valkoiset talot, White Houses, and it’s a story about four white houses and their residents. There’s going to be a lot of misery, hope, love, every day life in the book. It’s a novel about us, here and now.

Hopefully, the novel sees daylight in June. 

On The Bus

picture by Mick Mather

***

Buses are the worst. At first, everything is alright, you step aboard, pay your fare and sit down. The driver starts the engine, your eyes seek for the familiar landscape through the window. Forests and meadows melt into a swirling ribbon, blue, green, occasional sunny, yellow spots. The ribbon unwinds when the bus rolls to a stop, the doors sling open, new passengers mount to the bus.

The journey continues and suddenly you hear the change. Voices of people mumbling to their mobiles get sharper, words come closer, but you can’t hear what is said, you don’t recognize the words. The air is filled with sharp mutter. The ribbon behind the window turns muddy, the window becomes a glass wall, it falls on you, and you’ll be imprisoned into the transparent material.

The bus moves faster. You dare not look at the driver, you’re afraid he’s having a seizure, maybe he’s drunk. He drives more rapidly and you tremble in your glass cube, there’s no air. You struggle for breath, you want to get out, but you’re not able to lift your hand and push the stop button. You can’t move your body. Not before the bus stops for the next time, the doors open, and you feel the cool breeze pulling you out of the bus.

Your feet are shaking. There’s no bench by the bus stop, you’d like to sit on the ground, but you know there’s no way of getting up if you’d do so. You hold on to the pillar of the bus shelter, you lean your forehead and feel the jagged, cold surface, and you try to remember how to breathe.

***

I wrote this short story first in Finnish and published it in my Finnish blog earlier this week, and on the same day Mick published in his blog the pic you see above. I asked for and got the permission to use Mick's beautiful picture to illustrate my story which I translated into English. Mick's work suited the feelings of my story more than perfect. Thank you, Mick.

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