Books, Manuals & Other Escaped Objects
This is the publication shelf.
It is not a clean shelf. It does not prove that there was a plan.
There is In Itself, a book of philosophical essays by my mentor, Lajos Mura, which I helped bring into print because some debts cannot be paid with money. There is Finnish Sign Language Material, because sometimes the real problem on-site is not the machine, but the fact that two people in the same room do not share a working communication system. There is Ventilation Info Kit, a pocket handbook for ventilation professionals, because useful information has a bad habit of hiding in expensive books, scattered standards, old PDFs, and the head of the one person who is currently on holiday.
And then there is After the Chaos, a tabletop role-playing game that began as a side pipe from a much larger fantasy world and is now, somewhat rudely, becoming more finished than the novels it came from.
So no, the category is not elegant.
It is philosophy, accessibility, ventilation, practical field knowledge, fantasy, rules, systems, unfinished novels, finished side projects, and the general human tendency to solve one problem by accidentally creating four more.
Which is probably my brand, whether I ordered it or not.
In Itself
Lajos Mura, 2013, 68 pages
This book was not written as a book.
It was assembled from the letters, emails, notes, and scattered writings of Lajos Mura, my mentor, and in many ways a father to me. He died in 2007.
Lajos took me in when I was homeless in Hungary. He fed me, stayed up with me, and learned with me when I was preparing for school. He did not teach in the usual sense. He had a way of creating the conditions in which you had to become yourself.
When I was preparing for my final exams, he claimed he was bored driving around the country and asked me to read my textbooks aloud onto recordings, so he would have something to listen to on the road. I do not know whether he ever needed those recordings. I do not even know whether he listened to them. But I made them, and I got the best grades.
That was often how he helped. He did not drag people forward. He created a reason for them to walk.
The book gathers his reflections on life, struggle, work, family, freedom, self-creation, mortality, and the strange business of being human while pretending we have a manual somewhere. It is philosophical, personal, sharp, funny, sometimes harsh, and very Hungarian in the best possible way: one moment it is looking at death, the next it is talking about money, children, goats, freedom, and why people are the way they are.
The cover is built from a photograph of the two of us eating on the terrace when I was about twenty. The final image is the same place after I removed us from the table and turned the sunny day dark.
Getting his words into print was a small act of gratitude.
Not enough, probably.
But something.
Sign Language Material
IVAeris Oy with Helsingin Kuuloyhdistys ry, Finnish and Finnish Sign Language, 20 pages
Finnish Sign Language Material was made for practical work situations, especially in HVAC and building services.
The idea came from a real problem: deaf and hard-of-hearing people are often left outside proper service, not because anyone necessarily means harm, but because the communication system breaks before the technical work even begins. And once the communication breaks, everything else becomes guesswork with tools.
The material gives basic guidance for communicating with deaf and hard-of-hearing customers, then collects useful signs for everyday work: numbers, greetings, tools, problems, maintenance, cleaning, measurements, electricity, keys, water, air, home, coffee, tiredness, and other things that become surprisingly important when the sentence has to land correctly the first time.
I appear in the photos signing the words, which means this is one of the few publications where the authorial method was literally standing still and doing something useful with my hands.
A rare event. Worth documenting.
Ventilation Info Kit
Ventilation Info Kit is a pocket handbook for ventilation work in Finland.
It exists because the same problem kept appearing: people needed information, but the information was scattered across training, standards, old books, drawings, manufacturer instructions, and that one experienced person who knows the answer but is currently driving, drilling, or ignoring his phone for mental health reasons.
The goal was simple: collect useful ventilation knowledge into one place and make it easier for professionals, trainees, customers, and the generally curious to understand what is actually going on.
It covers ventilation systems, airflow terms, occupational safety, warning labels, drawing symbols, abbreviations, air volume measurement and adjustment, heat recovery, installation, sealing, insulation, supports, cleaning, maintenance, filters, belts, documentation, CE marking, and site handover.
Not glamorous.
Useful.
In ventilation, useful is usually the thing you wanted before the ceiling was opened.
After the Chaos: Core Rulebook
The World of Elshore, complete draft in editing
After the Chaos is a tabletop role-playing game rulebook set in the same world as my fantasy novels.
The main project is not actually the game. The main project is four interconnected novels: A Blow for the Wretched, A Prince for the Abandoned, and the rest of the series waiting in the machinery. The first book is finished, but I cannot really publish it alone, because the books are tied together in ways that make publishing one piece feel like installing only the left side of a ventilation system and hoping the air will understand the intention.
Meanwhile, for fun — and to play in the world with my son — I turned the setting into a tabletop role-playing game.
This was supposed to be the side project.
Naturally, the side project is now the one that looks like it may actually get finished.
The rulebook includes the world and concept, core rules, characters, the living world, and material for the game master. It is a way to open the door into the setting before the novels are ready, and maybe also a way to keep the world alive while the books continue their long campaign against completion.
The draft is finished and currently going through editing.
So the novels are still in the forest somewhere.
But the game has found a road.
