Beginning, middle, end;
setup, confrontation, resolution.
I had a few ideas for this book’s cover, and a couple name-changes happened in the years of working on this project – which began back when Ice Road was still being written.
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The first cover I was happy with for its while, was made in the
summer of 2015 which was back when I still thought Oulunsalo
Fiction was gonna be written in Finnish and called Fiktiota
Oulunsalosta. The cute picture featured here is of a severed piece of
a wire that ran underneath the rowhouse neighboring my childhood
home. That rowhouse got taken down the spring of that year, so the
picture was taken at the clay court that remained from the ruins.
Saneeraus means renewal in English.
If I recall correctly, I’d just found out what the word apex stands for,
in the autumn of 2015. My 2-year-old godson handpainted the
picture here, and I thought the two recent events would make for a
cool cover that I could smile at from time to time, remembering the
couple of instances that, had they never taken place, this wouldn’t be
here. After editing the lighting and stuff of the picture and making it
look really radiant, I realized that I didn’t like it enough. That I could
go on and explore different ideas. But hey, it was a sweet thought.
Featuring my childhood favorite stuffed animal, Kurre, whom I’ve
written a story about when I was, like, eleven, and whom slept my
my side until I got – by an unlucky chance – over 6 feet tall and
couldn’t fit him atop my head in my bed.
And oh yeah, I was still rolling with Apex at the time. That was one
of the longest-sticking working-titles.
Kurre moved with me into my first apartment.
I was so overwhelmed thinking about how super fucking serious Ice
Road and Talisman were at a time. For days I sat on that thought,
sometime back in 2015, and planned at one point that this would
have been a noticeably more lighthearted project than its’
predecessors, and what better to accompany that idea, than an image
of my meme self doing a le funny? Also yellow is the most attention-grabbing
color to the human eye and I thought having it fill most of
the cover would have made the punch of seeing my stupid mug even
more amusing.
Out of all the ideas for cover art, this one was scrapped the quickest.
Took half a week, I think.
At a point of my life, even before making these occasional new
Helicopters-covers, I noticed that a 26th of a month was always a big
day for me, spiritually. That’s why the working title stuck.
The untouched version of the gloomy photo of clouds ended up
serving as one of Talisman’s back-cover arts, so that was the second
reason this idea got dumped. The first was, I was too hasty with the
effective editing and on second or third sight of the final product,
found those rays of light to be ugly. I just didn’t find them to have
the longevity I required from the trilogy’s ender’s cover art. I have
all the cover-artworks of my novels on the wall and will for any
place I’ll live at.
The cool breeze-like atmosphere of a J. Cole song inspired this color-scape.
I was thinking about minimal artwork for a long time, since
Talisman’s art was already a step in that direction, from that of Ice
Road. The turquoise was a nod to the album at hand – 2014 Forest
Hills Drive. The song was January 28th. I still like the song even
though the album isn’t anything I listen to regularly; hasn’t for years.
Writing the words ”written by” before my name was an idea I was
sometimes for, sometime against, but it would have been pointless
since the other two books’ covers didn’t have that, and this would
look too off-pattern.
A minimalistic design like this could be cool though, maybe for a
future project.
The chess-pieces were another idea that I scrapped in early 2015.
Those were meant to represent the heavy focus this book was about
to take, on the fact people get ranked in everyday life – in their jobs,
domestic situations even. There’s always a hierarchy that’s
unwritten, or otherwise impossible to break free of. Or, maybe that
was just my gloomy outlook-on-life talking, at the time of making
this cover-candidate.
Then, the green scope was meant to add a whole ”two perspectives”-
angle to the idea. It was inspired by the cover art Van Morrison’s
Astral Weeks, a highly conceptual classic Folk/Rock album that
separates itself from anything else in my favorite artist’s discography
by the genius use of contrasts, even higher and lower registers
ingeniuously interplaying with one another in, sometimes ways that
shouldn’t work, but do. I’ve talked about that album being an
inspiration to Oulunsalo Fiction before, in-brief, in the
acknowledgments-section of Ice Road. Listening to the title track one
tired December’s morning in 2014, is when the story of Ice Road
first started forming. Astral Weeks is my second-favorite album of all
time. I’ll reveal #1 much, much later in this book.
I still like this cover, but I do think it would have been a little too
explicit for my tastes. I’ve always liked how the only thing keeping
these three books from being completely different creatures is that
they have the same characters, and each one’s name begins with
”Oulunsalo Fiction, Pt…”. The intention always was to make three
different books. The emotional, the superstitious, and the conclusive.
This cover got scrapped after I thought it was a little too straightforward
and striking… And of course, a little ways down the road I
realized that it wasn’t about the cover, but the name. I needed a
book-title that would echo the glory which the bells of destiny chime.
This was inspired by a dream where I looked through a hole in a wall
to see salvation, visa vie this stuffed animal I had as a kid. It was a
little dog named Rex who’s got a scarf on him. We used to play with
stuffed animals with my brothers a lot as kids, and each of them was
assigned a personality as the games went along. My animals were
always either dangerously clever or super strong because those were
things I wanted to be in life. This particular one, Rex, was the most
alpha-male guy ever, but humble. Studly humble, Rex was. All the
other animals got along with him, he always did everything head-on
and just had leadership-quality written all over him. It was very
interesting in its plainness, what that dream was trying to convey to
me. In it, after seeing the vision of Rex, my feet failed under my
weight, after which I immediately said ”wait a minute, no, I can go
through this.”
Also around the time I took this picture (it was the beginning of
autumn 2015), there was the event of a new wall being built in our
house; separating the living room of my childhood home into two
parts. That wall is the frame of this photo.
I dumped this one because the trash on the bottom didn’t fit the
mood and blurting out or cutting(-and-reshaping) it would of been
too much of a hassle. The original, authentic picture without the
edited item-framing you see here, was deleted too, at that time. That
was unfortunate actually. This could’ve been worked into something.
At Odds was the working title for this book for a long time; months
actually. And yes, I eventually found Rex again and he moved into
my new apartment along with Kurre.
”Hey, the cover of Loveless stood the test of time!”
Eventually I found the extrasolar, colorful, distortion-y effect to be gimmicky and unfitting. Not for the My Bloody Valentine album, but just my book. It would be just an effect covering everything that a picture could have to say. Anyone who’s listened to Loveless knows that is the opposite of what a heavy set of technical effects does to art in its case.
I still like the way this picture turned out though, and it is at least pleasant for me to lay my eyes upon it still. Granted, that was the whole idea for making this image. All flash, less meaning.
Also, thinking about it now, since all the scripts of these novels have always started with the notion that it should follow a personal progression – or regression in the case of the second part – of a year in my life… I don’t know if it would’ve captured the essence of 2016 as well as something else I could possibly come up with. So I decided to keep my options open.
Helicopters represented my journey through 2016, at the beginning of which I went through another major depressive episode in the backwash of quitting high school after roughly 1,5 years. This photo of me, that all these layers are over, was taken in February of 2016. It was such a painful time for my soul and psyche that gazing upon it – although I’m quite the picturesque sight in it – wouldn’t be a good farewell to this trilogy, the project that has meant so much to me. I couldn’t have foretold the future, but even back in February, a hopefulness was still present in my mind; buried deep within. A picture like this – in hindsight – would’ve been too much of a sad image to leave this on. It was my second go-round, and I just knew it would get better eventually.
Aesthetically this cover-art would’ve been very good. Dumping it was a statement way more than it was a question of aesthetics.
I saw this picture of the cubes online and couldn’t pass up at least working out some creativity on it, even if I couldn’t use it. It was on some ”free artwork you can use”-site though, so I don’t know why I didn’t. Guess I was just being too careful.
What I did was add some glow-up, effect, red overlay & put the stick-figures in it – 4 was my lucky number in early 2016, a prominent spiritual number in my life that year and also prominent on the front cover of my printed, paperback journal I wrote that year, which I wrote an entry for once a month and which will never be released.
All things considered, I think this turned out to be one of my best edits. I’m not much of a graphic designer or visual artist, although whenever I take the time to actually learn those noble trades, I can make them turn out being of-use to me. Or good pastimes. But that’s beside the point.
No, I don’t think I particularly got it going on when it comes to making book covers. And this exhibition is definitely not supposed to be about showing off in any which way. I just don’t want these pictures to go to waste because it took me so long to find the right cover and title – more than a year. And, during that year, a lot of good efforts had to be trashed.
Wanted a stripped-back cover that’s plain but memorable at one point. This one had some real potential but ended up being turned down because it just represents the ”the darkness within” angle too explicitly and that’s not all this book is about. It points too big of a finger at just that one aspect.
The biggest reason this ended up not being the cover, is just that the name had to be changed into what it would eventually become shortly after this was finished; Helicopters. And, when I decided on the name, I also decided that with this being my most ambiguous book-title yet, the cover had to contrast that, by being more explicit than that of Ice Road and Talisman. I wanted the cover to show a Helicopter.
At the time of coming up with this title I already had planned out what I wanted the main agenda of Helicopters to be in terms of characters and especially their development. The logic with fusing ”parallel” with ”paranoia” was kind of slim, though, as paranoia was really just a thing I’d had to learn to live with in the last few years, years of me being depressed and going through post-traumatic stress and all other kinds of ups and downs; experiences of failure, loneliness, such and such and yadda yadda. I think that’s what ended up being the downfall of this working-title too. It didn’t feel like something that’d have longevity in my life although I liked it in terms of just, what it stood for. I didn’t feel like this title was gonna resonate with me, five years after the project’s done, as much as just be a nasty memory about a very annoying and constant impracticality, which paranoia was to me.
It’s a good title, though, just not for this book.
Also, the image is just a repeated collage of Ice Road and Talisman’s covers next to each other, woven together by heavy usage of effects. After some meditating on it, I figured I can do a little better. Make a more standalone cover-art. This book is about ending the trilogy, but it is about more than that as well.
I’ve never been good at drawing, okay?
But, yeah, this image is the result of a 30-percent serious, 70-percent playful idea. I thought, if I really could muster up an applicable drawing, then it’s all gravy and I won’t have to use an edited image I found online. Was hesitant to call up any visually talented friends and asking them to draw me a helicopter at the time, too, could you imagine?
This picture was ditched as a cover-art-candidate as soon as it was finished (that’s why there’s no writing on it) but I made it while drawing with my nephew Mikael and I thought that’d be a memory worthy of saving. I’m godfather to Mikael and have been, devotedly so, for five and a half years.
I would have LOVED to use this cover, it was the cover I was set on for more than a year, but then decided one day, after Talisman was already finished and published, that I want to use a picture I’ve either taken, made from-scratch, or paid someone else to make, as I’ve done with all other books.
It’s a great cover; it’s a perfect cover, but it goes just a quarter-inch outside the boundaries of my standards, as I did make it by photoshopping a photo of three Apaches at sunset, that I found via Google images.
Eventually I asked my visually talented friend, Santeri – the same one I mentioned in Ice Road’s closing words – to draw me a picture of a Helicopter.
and that is how this book’s front cover came to be.
”The more and more I reminisce […] The more and more I realize there’s no point in reminiscing […] It’s just… we all have to be down sometimes, so we can remind ourselves of how high we would’ve needed to be, to let hitting the ground feel like such a disaster. […] Oh, the heights we can accomplish. Peace, world.”
— Samuli Leinonen, Ice Road (2016)
”They just happened to happen – those attacks in Paris – at the very same time I was at the literally most confused place I’ve ever been in my entire life. I was running away from the past, making everything worse for myself. And then, in the middle of me running, from outta nowhere, something happened and the whole world took notice. The whole world, everyone, was scared stiff of this. The world’s not been an innocent place for a long time, but when those sick fucks started blasting people in the theater, it felt like everything changed. Sure, the lights in big cities – separate communication-points of the world, centers if you will – switched colors of their monuments to those of the French flag, to commemorate everyone that lost their loved ones, lost their lives in those attacks when it didn’t need to happen. But, while the world mourned, it also knew that this isn’t over. People I knew online, people I’ve met through my online music-communities – this is how far the message of terror reached this time – turned into completely different people. Viral messages about the neccessity of a gun in every household, and how the new state of the world is upon us, stuck in my mind all through the ’Tobers and the ’Vembers and the ’Cembers of 2015.
The worst part about it was, there was no way I could look myself in the mirror after that.--
--What I did, what I have done, was nothing more justifiable. What I took away from this bitter realization, was very plainly that people just can’t plan some things. You know, all my life, ever since I was little, I’ve been so sheltered that I could actually be able to list all of my fears. Losing my mind, completely falling out of reality, has always been the biggest one. Every single encounter with borders of my psyche – the paranoia of living in this dark fucking house alone with my memories all winter only scratches the surface of what I’m describing here – has just been… it’s all been getting to me. To the point where I’m now past exhaustion. I’ve felt so uncertain and weary about things that aren’t even practical, that a sleepless night is more of the norm for me nowadays. I try to get it together, soldier through being the only one I can count on. But it’s fucking excruciating.
Anyways, since that shit happening, since the whole world took notice, and turned upside down like it hadn’t since 9/11… my biggest fear, only fear in life, has been… that it’s all been for nothing. I don’t even have to be me, with where I’m at and what kind of a past I have, for it to be a frightening reality to me that life can end at any moment without any reason at all. That goes for all of us, everybody out there. And I can’t plan bad luck.
You know, I’ve been following the way I thought, acted, dealt with feelings and such, back when I was in my phases, and living the fast life… and I noticed a pattern. Every time, my drive to achieve could be traced back to one fear. No, one primal instinct. I can’t leave this life without leaving some kind of a mark. I know I do a lot of bitching, a lot of worrying over nothing. But the thought of everything just ending and no one remembering me after I’m dead… that’s the worst. That’s now my biggest fear.”
Sitting on his computer with an impressive afternoon stubble and an ergonomically poor posture, Viktor stopped typing for a while, to quietly reflect.
It was a hot summer’s day in 2016, and he’d been in hiding ever since last year. What is that music playing in the back anyway? He thought as he layed his eyes on the little television-tube that shone a really dim light – adjusted to barely bright enough for you to figure out what you’re playing. The main menu of Grand Theft Auto IV was what the screen was on display. The music’d just stayed there, in the background, as Viktor got into this spurt of words, with the journal.
He fell back in deep contemplation and mirrored himself – focusing on the thick stubble on his chin that made the man, looking back from a dark corner of the small TV screen, look like a homeless person.
— ”No. I’m not doing it. I’m settling for a fucking beard because I’m not going through cutting it with those petty fuckin scissors which are all I have for shaving-equipment in this house.” Vik talked to his reflection, as he would to anybody keeping him company.
He then gave an affirming smile to it.
— No more talking to yourself today though, alright? It’s decided, the beard stays as it--
In the middle of his sentence, Viktor turned his face back to his cell phone. From it, he looked up ”gta iv theme song”, and among the search results was the name Michael Hunter, with his song Soviet Connection.
That’s a cool fucking theme song. I can tell the guys at Rock-star, or whatever the company is, took their time picking--
Wait, what do I give a fuck?
He got up from his computer-chair, turned around, walked out of the room, across the hallways of his house, into the vestibule to grab a cigarette-pack from a hat-rack, took one cigarette out from it, and stopped.
After a hot second, he peaked his head out from a window on his left. He looked the other way first instead of the front yard. He was sure that’s the direction they would have popped one in his head from, long-distance style, had he checked his front yard first. I wasn’t born yesterday. Back of the head, that’s how they do it.
He then cleared his throat and lit a cigarette inside. Blowing the first toke out as far and loud as he could without sounding like a whale which isn’t necessary right now, he didn’t hear any outside noises in the neighborhood, and finally felt comfortable enough to step outside to finish the smoke.
[January 1983]
”Well that net was a waste of precious time.” A younger Tapani heard a voice of an older boy say from a moderate distance. Very pessimistically, it said those words.
It was his older brother, Ilmari.
The two brothers were ice-fishing, out a decent walk’s worth from Varjakka beach, on the frozen sea. Tapani idly scanned his surroundings and, aside from the wide open view in all corners of his field-of-vision, saw three fishing holes in front of him, made close enough to each other for a net to be pulled underneath.
He ignored his brother’s remark, and told him succinctly:
— We ain’t gonna catch any if you just stand there and leave the net tied up like that.
Ilmari left him without a response.
— ”You want me to help you with that?” Tapani asked.
— ”No, it’s fine, I got it.” Ilmari replied, opening a net and continuing to walk to the furthest of the three fishing holes.
It was under the surface of the ice where he attached the net, as Tapani got to pulling it with this plank-and-rope combination they’d brought along, stretching it into one hole after the next. There, Ilmari came in to help, and do the same until the net was successfully stretched. Between the three holes the brothers’d carved up, it would be set to hang.
It ran like clockwork; the older one’d been doing this for a number of times before.
Ilmari’s process was cut short in the middle of him attaching the net beneath the third hole, as the thing started to pull away from his hand with unexpected force, making it hard to hang on. He yelled for Tapani, with words he can’t recall. Tapani came to his aid, helping him hold on to the net quickly, and big brother left little brother responsible for holding on to the thing.
Tapani looked at the pared-down sets of equipment the boys had brought along for these fun fishin’ times: nothing but the stick they used to carve the holes and this plank-rope combo Tapani was now grabbing on to for-dear-life. Just those, their jackets, and the net of course, were brought along. Tapani heard Ilmari yell at him to ”let go of it!” and complied. He then looked as a marvel unfolded before his eyes: his older brother dug up the fishing net in its’ entirety – in it, a four-kilo trout; the thing that was yanking on the boys’ net and making all that trouble just then.
They left the spot, and for the walk home, Tapani had to settle for putting the huge fish inside his director’s jacket – between the inner surface of its’ hem and the shirt underneath. Almost there, walking past their neighbor’s house, Ilmari said something:
— Feeling proud of yourself?
— ”How you mean?” Tapani was confused by the question.
— Walking past our neighbor’s house right now, with that sea-monster in your pocket almost long enough to slap your the ear with its’ tail, and them seeing us with this type of a catch?
Tapani timidly laughed at the question, and just looked ahead, focused on getting home.
— ”Gonna be a sweet meal”, Ilmari said, ”when we get home and mom carves and salts this son of a bitch up.”
— ”Yeah, I can’t wait.” Said Tapani.
Viktor came home.
Walking past the hall and into the kitchen of his mother’s old house, he made careful work of not hitting any of the red-bottom playing cards scattered all over the floor, on his way.
Pain