Stieg Larsson and I

Way back before the world had heard about "The girl with the dragon tattoo", I read about Stieg Larsson in Crime Writers' Asssociation newsletter. The article mentioned his death and the three unpublished manuscripts, together with a fourth one, 75% completed. I found the image poignant.

Since then, I learned that his partner wants to finish writing the fourth book, and that his translator is capable of writing in Larsson's style but has no ideas. It made me wonder what would happen to my work in progress if I suddenly was no longer here to complete it. A small thing to worry about, but it made me feel a flicker of comeraderie for Stieg Larsson. So I looked him up on Wiki and here are some facts I found interesting:

• He was the editor of Echo, a controversial newspaper. Mikael Blomkvist, anybody?
• Larsson's first name originally was Stig which is the standard spelling. In his early twenties, he changed it to avoid confusion with his friend Stig Larsson, who would go on to become a well-known author well before Stieg did.
• Larsson's first fiction writing efforts were not in crime fiction, but in science fiction.

• He was the second best-selling author in the world in 2008, behind Khaled Hosseini. By March 2010, his "Millennium series" had sold 27 million copies in more than 40 countries.