This year too, our Best of Summer coffee box will be filled with quality summer reading in addition to delicious coffee.
Musician and debut author Antti Hyyrynen is the third author in our summer short story series. He follows Juha Itkönen and Rosa Liksom with his short story. The subject matter in the summer short story is free, the only restrictions are the words summer and coffee – you can follow or not follow the restrictions, as befits a wild summer! The short story called Cable Night is about a nocturnal encounter, but who is this year's writer?
Antti Hyyrynen is known not only as the frontman and vocalist of the nine-time Emma-awarded band Stam1na, but also as a debut author. The Last Atlantis, published in 2020, was a bestseller, with a second edition being printed even before the book was released.
The play of the same name, adapted from the novel, was awarded the Thalia Award for Theatre Performance of the Year in spring 2023. The play was performed on a small stage at the Lappeenranta City Theatre to a practically full audience. The play was directed and dramatized by Tuomo Rämö . In addition to the text, the music for the play was composed by Hyyrynen.
In Cable Night, written exclusively for Lehmus Roastery, the paths of two travelers cross in the heat of Nelostie.
Hyyrynen, who lives in Lappeenranta but is originally from Lemi, has always written. The most imaginative texts in her mother tongue lessons at school, directing plays and writing scripts since elementary school, and writing competitions as they came up at different grade levels. A strong imagination, which has not diminished with age, has helped in producing the text.
The leap into rock lyrics was therefore relatively easy: Hyyrynen wrote his first lyrics for Stam1na in English when he was 15-16. In his twenties, the language of the lyrics changed to Finnish. Although Hyyrynen has already written lyrics for ten released albums, he does not consider himself to be a lyricist.
"Even though over 100 songs have already been released, writing lyrics is still difficult and tricky. It involves playing with syllables and rhythm, it's painful. Producing prose and fiction is nice because there are no length limits in the same way."
Hyyrynen jumped into the long text genre with his novel The Last Atlantis. The science fiction dystopia, released in spring 2020, was a sequel to Stam1na's album of the same name, released ten years earlier. The second novel has been in the works for a few years now. It will be completed as soon as there is time for "rock and roll and summer novels."
Hyyrynen has not written many short stories before, so when the request came, the answer was ready quickly.
"I thought, yes, I'll be able to do something different again. The summer novel immediately reminded me of flies and eroticism. I'm a child of June and my relationship with summer is warm. As a young, skinny, long-haired person, I hitchhiked a lot around Finland, and I have many good memories from there. The rides always start in almost the same way: first we're quiet for a moment and then the driver usually asks the hitchhiker the same questions.
"I started from these backgrounds to develop the story further. And when the subject is as relaxed as coffee, some kind of summer romance has to be included. The story ended up being longer than originally needed, but I was satisfied when I was able to bring in all the ideas I had planned and paint a picture of a summer car ride."
Coffee tastes good, even when writing a short story
Hyyrynen has a warm relationship with coffee. He only learned to drink it when he was 22 years old at the University of Applied Sciences in Kouvola, because everyone else drank black coffee from the coffee maker in the lobby, and Hyyrynen didn’t want to stand out from the crowd. Nowadays, he drinks “too much” coffee, about three cups a day. Coffee was also involved in writing this short story.
“I had just returned from Japan from a Stam1na gig, and I wrote this text about the first thing I did when I got home to Lappeenranta. A big cup of coffee and then it all flowed smoothly into its final form. I'm happy with the text. Should I start writing more short stories?”
We support the idea, yes we should!
The Kaapeliö summer short story is part of Lehmus Roastery's Kesän parhaat box . Along with the short story, the box contains Juhlapaahto, Lomaapaahto and Mökkipaahto coffees . Available in Lehmus Roastery's online store and Satamatie 6 café store in Lappeenranta.
Photos: Nelli Rugojeva / NXM
Text: Arttu Muukkonen