Tässä Tulemme!

For more years than she’d ever let me put in writing, my mother has held on to a Finnish elementary workbook that her mother gave to her. The title of this book is Tässä Tulemme! — Here we come! When thinking what to title my first blog post on my first website about my first rather smutty vampire romance novel, I couldn’t get the phrase out of my head. So I stopped fighting the inevitable and just wrote it.

This process has been bittersweet for me. On the one hand, it was deeply satisfying to write a novel out of spite. Further, I’ve had a fun little foray into YouTube university trying to figure out how to publish the book. I won’t say InDesign and me are friends now, but we’ve been intimately acquainted and neither of us are better for it. And if someone says “reflowable epub” to me I’ll spit on the ground like any gentleman of honor might if you mention their enemy. Mark me, Reflowable Epub, you swine.

On the other hand, my mother’s mother, my Mummo, is gone. She left after a quick decline, no longer knowing who I was. She was my favourite person in the world. It’s been difficult completing this process amidst the grief, though I take comfort in knowing how totally not scandalized she would have been if her mind hadn’t faded, and if she’d lived to pub day. When I first told my Mummo about the book all she said was, “you should have published ten books by now.” Hopefully there are enough of you out there to justify at least another nine because I’d sure like to show her she wasn’t wrong.

So for my beloved Mummo, and all my family and friends that have supported me thus far, and you, whoever and wherever you are:

Here we come.