Textcalibur!

I’ve always found the notion of introductory posts in blogs to be somewhat futile. The first, and hence introductory post should according to common sense provide readers with enough basic information for them to understand the context of subsequent posts; about the author, his or her subject material and the environment from which it is written.

Unfortunately that introductory post usually gets buried somewhere in the archives, eventually left completely unvisited and leaving new visitors in the proverbial dark regarding whatever it may be that the author is ranting and raving about. A summary of this post can be found in the ‘About’ page of course, but since I am not constrained by space or esthetic limitations here, I’ll attempt a brief introduction and provide a link to this blog’s predecessor in the event that someone should find themselves interested enough to learn more.

I am a 28-year old Finnish man with no particular aspirations in life other than to write. After spending roughly two decades abroad and finding myself incapable of adhering to traditional norms regarding what I should be doing with my life, I have opted to take an opportunity which was presented to me and have migrated to the Middle East – specifically, to Syria. It is here that I hope to complete my first novel, which is a historical fiction novel telling the story of an orphan taken into the care of the Order of Saint John (commonly known as the Knights Hospitaller) in 12th century Jerusalem.

Now you know about as much about what this blog is about as I do. A previous version of this blog is available on Blogspot, specifically at http://ollik.blogspot.com where you will find previous musings on a variety of topics. I have opted to switch to WordPress for two reasons: firstly, I cannot view blogspot.com pages from Syria due to governmen-regulated surfing and secondly, I have a perpetual need to re-organize myself.

That said, this blog will be divided into three main categories: Writing, Travel / Tourism and Personal / Other. Writing posts will consist of my sentiments on writing itself as well as my own project, including possible excerpts from my current project. Tourism posts will include photos and travel diary-like posts about visits to foreign places. Personal posts will be posts about anything else I might happen to feel like writing about, and for everyone’s sake will hopefully be relatively scarce.

In the event that someone should peek at my profile and wonder how a Finn has a name like Oliver Duillier – they don’t. It is a pseudonym I have opted to use for future publishing purposes (fingers crossed!) as my given name is completely unpronouncable to anyone not from Finland.

Well, there you have it! Hopefully you enjoy reading this blog as much as I enjoy writing it.