Hi!
I very seldom do anything here but follow the
discussions and only speak up when I am asked a direct question.
I am pleased by how much people are saying they
liked my Kalevala story! It was the longest story that I've worked on so far.
I'm afraid that I don't think it's one of my best stories, as some kindly
readers have opined, but it had some nice touches.
So far, the response to the story has been beyond
overwhelming. I knew it would be popular in Finland, but I didn't expect to be
the single most famous person in the whole country when I visited two weeks ago!
Huge press conferences, jammed bookstores and shopping malls.... they sold out
the first printing *instantly*. Does that ever happen? It was the best-selling
book in Finnish history. I will reportedly actually get thousands of votes in
next month's presidential elections. No kiddin'! Remember that 70's show,
"Fantasy Island", where people would pay $10,000 to live out a
particular fantasy? I get to do that, and I don't even have to pay the dwarf's
boss the ten grand! (And yes, if I got any royalties, I'd be dictating this and
somebody would be typing this for me while I sipped a fine port!)
But I'm approaching my point obliquely. Even
before the story was published, my gratification was great! I was *voluntarilly*
contacted by the translators and editors in Finland (of course, from the start),
but later also by their worthy counterparts in Sweden (ML member Stefan Dios!),
Norway (ML member Nils Lid Hjort!), and Germany... and I worked with all these
nice folks to help them do a good job and follow all the story's intentions and
plans. This particularly relates to the Kalevalian texts which were shown in the
script as being planned as being written in the proper rune-o-meter, and
lettered in a special font. And it looks like that in all these countries the
translators went to *great* effort, did extra research, and probably even
*improved* on what they had to work with. Everything was done perfectly! I am So
proud!!!
But now I am getting first reports from readers in
Denmark who are confused. Now, I CANNOT READ DANISH... so I only know what I'm
being told. But what I'm told is that the Danish editions have made no effort to
write the Kalevalian rune-o-meter or research the proper wordings, and the
dialogue was not even printed in a special font, as simple as computers now make
that. And if you've seen the story, this would mean that the point of the final
panel will be lost! If the rune-o-meter and font are not used on the dialogue in
that final balloon, how would readers know who the old man really is who is
speaking? All that extra dialogue work, creating poetry, counting syllables,
timing phrases.... lost completely. (sob)
Anyway, if this is all true, my point is to
apologize to any Danish readers here on the ML, and assure them that what they
are seeing is not what my intention was. These are the sorts of things, as I
always say, that I have no control over. Once the story leaves my hands, I lose
all ownership and control (after all, that's the reason I'm typing this myself
rather than sipping that port).
So, I can't do anything in a case like this but
THANK the folks in places like Finland, Norway, Sweden, Germany (and certainly,
I fully expect, later on also my publisher-friends in France and Greece and
Italy) who *do* offer me the opportunity to help them in their extra efforts to
make a story be everything it was meant to be for the readers.
THANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOU!!!!!!!!!!!
