Monthly Mayhem in the life of a semi-retired music journalist-turned fantasy writer and oddball Canadian in Finland (2.25)

Hey look, a descriptive title!

Mar 04, 2025

It’s the first Tuesday of the month, which means my Monthly Mayhem newsletter is invading your inboxes once more, wherein I talk about the far-too-varied things I have found myself doing over the past month. I’ve been learning a little more about Substack this year and I realized that I should perhaps consider more descriptive and engaging titles for these emails! Let’s see how that goes.

So, comin’ at’cha from a freakishly balmy Finland (for February) once more…

Someone’s turning back into a muffin again

CREATIVE PROJECTS

One of the first things I published this month was a personal musing on how social media over-connects people that I was tossing around in my head and felt like writing, simply because I haven’t heard people talking about this troubling aspect of socials before.

I also had a Zweihänder (TTRPG) game where I put four players at a rally for a made-up Sun God. They had a few factions they could side with or cause general chaos. And we all know there’s only one person whose nonsensical babble could have inspired this bloated wannabe, yes?

The Vitmar Chronicles

For the first half of the month, I dedicated a great deal of time to rewriting “The Living Dream of Chartholaine” for the people who’ve bought “The Vitmar Chronicles” from me directly (that’s going to be the only way to get your hands on this story for the foreseeable future, by the way—otherwise it’s getting saved up for a print collection). I made really good headway into it, but making the Zweihänder campaign was tapping too much from my creative well and I had to pick one over the other. Since I need more social life and don’t actually have a deadline for this short story yet, I made the decision to prioritize a game night with friends and get back to work on that story later.

Regarding that story, I did rework the plot a lot, went a lot deeper into the antagonist: who they were, how they were motivated, and how the other characters were influencing things. It also turned out to be a lot more of a horror-ish story than I had initially noticed, which is interesting because I’ve never intentionally written horror before.

Speaking of “The Vitmar Chronicles,” by the way, I am still hoping to have a new volume out as soon as I can manage this year (my non-strict goal is the first half of 2025). Since I still wanted a break from “The Living Dream…” I decided to start organizing some lore, long-term plots, antagonist profiles, character relationships, and all sorts of world-building. Following this, I mapped out the entire plot for the next volume. So I am feeling pretty enthusiastic to get writing that sooner than later, now that I know how it’s going to go.

Oh and hey by the way! If you haven’t checked out “The Vitmar Chronicles, vol. I: An Ending & A Beginning,” it just so happens that it’s available again for free right now at Smashwords’ Read an eBook’ Sale! So if you feel like checking it out, you can get it completely gratis over there! Click here to learn about the series and click here to read the first ten pages!

Off the Record

Catch-up at last! I finally released the interview I did in May 2024 with Robert Soeterboek and Arjen Lucassen after the release of Soeterboek & Lucassen’s Plan Nine’s killer “The Long-Lost Songs” album last year. We talk about that release, as well as Ayreon, the incredible antics of Damian Wilson, and even Arjen’s collaboration with Simone Simons for her debut solo album, “Vermillion.” I do find this one quite funny, because of the way it ends (that’s my clickbait for the day, I apologize).

PS, for Substack users, you can also listen to these interviews on Substack too! Here’s this one!

Gathering of Geeks

Stay tuned for some cool stuff coming in spring/summer!

PS, for Substack users, you can also listen to this podcast on Substack too!

PROFESSIONAL PROJECTS

No professional projects underway at the moment, which means my time is more dedicated to creative writing! If you’re looking for an English expert though, please check out my Wordsmithy to see what I might be able to do for you! Everything is negotiable.

It is worth noting that the first issue of Fabled Magazine has announced that the first issue will come out on October 1st, 2025 now! So if you’re curious to read the article I wrote about the magic of Finnish forests for this Australian fantasy magazine, I do recommend you check it out!

ALSO! Don’t forget that Kathy’s book, “Aphrodite Rising,” is out now! This is really a great testament to what the combination of hard work and passion leads to and I am really proud to have been a part of it.

Enslain Metal Merch

I abandoned poor Merta this month yet again, but they only had one show in Seinäjoki, so hopefully they survived without me.

The tour with Marko Hietala this month was very good fun and I wrote a combination live show & tour report about the Roses from the Deep Tour’s Finnish leg.

Bobby is scientifically proven to be irresistible

Lady Enslain has taken over for the big leagues of Eastern Europe, and I have returned to the fuzzy warmth of my cat-stuffed house. I have to shout out a great crew though—everyone was awesome to work with, they were all great guys with a really well-functioning crew. This was my longest tour so far and I managed to get through without any huge catastrophes beyond a very bizarre out-count for the hoodies on my (admittedly very rushed) last night. I hope Lady Enslain has an equally good time with them in Europe. It tickles me every time you send me selfies with her from this tour, so please, keep doing that!

Photos by Joanna Orchide; Marko Hietala (top), Noora Louhimo (bottom)

Another fresh new name for me was 40 Fingers, who seem to be four very talented guitarists from Italy, who have both original music and very well-done covers of famous songs. This was an unusual gig because I didn’t come before the doors at all—I only sold after the show. The band came out and had a nice meet ‘n’ greet with people and it was a really swift and fun night.

I also had the pleasure of selling merch for Noora Louhimo during one of her Noora Louhimo Experince shows at Krapin Paja. It’s a really cute venue and she had a very well-thought-out merch set-up. I only caught bits and pieces of the show, which made me very sorry I was not attending as a writer… it was killer! Too good, too much fun, and I have to say, I can’t remember the last time I saw so many Finns so enthusiastically up and dancing and clapping their hands and singing along… incredible! Also, I happened to meet a lot of super nice people working at the event (both in the crew and at the venue), which was the cherry on top of a really nice night.

Classy setup for a first-class act!

CRITICAL REVIEWS

I have succeeded in doing no new reviews this month! The last one I did was of Marko’s new album, which you can read here if you missed it last month.

Even better? No plans to do more reviews at the moment… unless… unless I summon the energy to check out Johanna & Mikko Iivanainen’s new album. I might not be able to resist that one… it’s coming out on March 13th, I think, so even if I don’t write it up, go listen to them anyway. I definitely need to go see one of the shows on their tour this spring though…

LIVE EVENTS

As promised, I did write up the gig with arottenbit, Machinae Supremacy (one of my all-time favorites), and Master Boot Record. It was a really fun, quirky, interesting show with a ton of talent on display! A great night, and my first time seeing a show at the newly-renovated Ääniwalli venue.

Of course, there’s also that live show/tour report from Marko Hietala’s tour that I mentioned before as well!

PHYSICAL & MENTAL HEALTH

I have been to my biodynamic osteopath more times this month than ever before. I had emergency osteo on January 31st, resulting in the strain in my shoulder blade morphing into a big, meaty fist-sized knot of unhappiness surrounding the middle of my spine. Then my regularly scheduled osteo session on the 3rd moved all of the problems in between two vertebrae in the center of my spine, where it has been lurking ever since. I opted to take another session on the 10th again, because I was hoping to get those spasms under control for the tour. No dice, but I have been told to be patient, so if this beast that has tormented me for so long has only shown its face to my osteopath in these recent sessions (or so he told me, and I’ve been seeing him since summer 2021), it may surely take a fair few sessions to get it to give up its secrets and figure out where things want to go. The spasms are unpredictable. I had no trouble at all covering merch for 40 Fingers, but I had a very rough time with Noora Louhimo at times.

Mentally, I am noticing the oncoming of March, as there is starting to be a bit more pep in my step again and I can sense the preambles of the usual spring fever bubbling up. I might be able to do some preliminary spring work in March, if things continue as they have (as in, there’s not much snow this year).

GENERAL BEARSNESS

The flexitarianism has been surprisingly enjoyable so far. Okay, I admit that the new changes have been stressful for me because I can’t call back on easy things, or even some favorites, and I have relied on meat as the primary ingredient in my food for a long time… but as the secondary chef in my home, we’ve been managing the change with teamwork pretty successfully. We’ve made falafel tortillas inspired by Levant (a Syrian restaurant in Helsinki), oven root vegetables, and soup. I also tried to be as veggie-heavy as I could be while on tour, to keep it up when I could (though I could not avoid a few goat cheese chicken dishes at the road stop lunch places, I confess). Lots of stir fry too, which is nothing to complain about. Marinating vegetables is becoming a new hobby in our household… bunch’a nerds.

Quinoa salad (left), falafel tortilla (right)

I feel like I’ve managed to find a reasonable balance between work and rest in February in ways that I haven’t managed in a long while, which is encouraging. Making big life changes doesn’t result in an instantly better life. It’s slow and takes a lot of perseverance, struggle, and energy. But eventually, the more you pay attention to little details here and there, the more you figure out, the more you learn, the more you apply that, and the easier things start to be. And yeah, the change of seasons approaching and return of light doesn’t hurt either.

“There are only two obstacles on the path to mastery: not taking the first step, and not taking every step thereafter.”

—Juho Määttä

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Coming Next Month…

That’s it for now! I’ll catch you all again in March, when I have a trip to Barcelona and… about three shows that I have lukewarm enthusiasm to attend. I was really curious when I heard that Shereign was having an album release show with a fashion show from Ilmatar Couture (who is awesome, just sayin’) and a few other acts… I do love something a bit different from the norm, so I still can’t decide if I want to go or not. Other potentials are the jazz guitar club in Mäntsälä on the 10th and Game On (a video game music show) from the Tampere Philharmonic toward the end of the month. Let’s see if I go to any of them…

I finally have my Best of 2025 playlist forming, though it’s pretty sparse (translation: full of Marko Hietala songs) since it’s so early in the year: