Last week's trip to Minneapolis and Consortium!

After three years of running the press by myself -- the last year with the wonderful assistance of Juann and Garland, without whom I'd fall apart (and yes, McKenna helps, too!) -- I am proud to announce that Consortium Books & Distribution will begin handling BFP titles, starting June 1st, 2009. As a bookstore employee for 19 years, I'm a big fan of how Consortium operates -- with bookstores, readers, and behind the scenes. They distribute such superb publishers as Soho (home of Cara Black, Martin Limón, Peter Lovesey, Rebecca Pawel, and more... we adore Soho!), Akashic (they do the award-winning, area-specific noir anthologies, such as Dublin Noir and Brooklyn Noir), Bitter Lemon (where they publish original, English-language foreign crime novels, like those by Friedrich Glauser, who is considered the Swiss Simenon), and Serpent's Tail (where authors like Ken Bruen and George Pelecanos got their start).

I met with the fine women & men of Consortium last week, and it was like being welcomed by a close-knit family. I'm honored and proud to be a part of that organization, come next summer.

The first books considered frontlist under Consortium (so, anything published from September 2009 forward) will be Tower (by Ken Bruen & Reed Farrel Coleman), a reprint of Ace Atkins's first Nick Travers novel, Crossroad Blues (with extra bonus material!... pictured at the right is the original St. Martin's cover), and further reprints of A. E. Maxwell and Cynthia Smith. In the meantime, we'll have the first two Maxwell thriller reissues due this winter/spring -- Just Another Day in Paradise and The Frog and the Scorpion -- and the second Emma Rhodes high-society mystery by Smith, Impolite Society.

Thank you so much for dropping by and seeing what's up with Busted Flush... in the coming weeks we'll offer an interview with A. E. Maxwell (who are really husband-and-wife writing duo Ann & Evan Maxwell... Ann is best known for her best-sellers as "Elizabeth Lowell"), something from Ace Atkins on the Crossroad Blues reprint, a contest for FREE (always the magic word) stuff, and much more. Stay tuned.