Sunday, December 4, 2011

The Blue Square Press/Mud Luscious Press Mini-ini (Part I)

Blue Square Press and Mud Luscious join forces!

Last month, I heard that Blue Square Press had signed on as an imprint of Mud Luscious Press. I was all over that in a matter of minutes.  Having worked with Blue Square Press (BSP) in the past, I was familiar with their work and their history. Earlier in the year I had reviewed Ben's novel , and Blue Square Press's first release, Flowing in the Gossamer Fold. And a few weeks back I read their second novel, Jack Boettcher's Theater State (I owe them a review on this!!). Ben is a peach, and has been extremely supportive of TNBBC, even agreeing to write an article for my On "Being Indie" series.  So, naturally I was curious to know why Ben Spivey (author and co-founder of BSP) made the decision to merge. 

When interviewed for this mini-ini, here is what he had to say on the matter:


Why the merge with Mud Luscious Press?

I think of when Square Co. Merged with Enix in the early two-thousands. Square and Enix were independently publishing some of the best rpgs around. I was a fan of both companies growing up. I loved Square for games like Final Fantasy 4, 6, Tactics, 7 and 9, Xenogears and Chrono Trigger. I similarly loved Enix for Ogre Battle (SNES), Dragon Warrior 7 and Star Ocean the second story. I'm not exactly sure why they merged but I assume it was because they were reaching a similar audience and could accomplish more working together. We merged because we felt like that. We're on a similar path. We have different aesthetics but we compliment each other. Essentially we were running different paths to the same goal, but now we have a partnership with a direct red-phone-line to close friends who we'll oar through the seas and the years with.


What does the merge mean for Blue Square Press?

MLP has a large readership base and we benefit from the new eyes in our direction. We're working on a lot of new things with the support of J.A. Tyler and Andrew Borgstrom such as ebooks, different distribution methods, and new ways of acquiring interviews and reviews for our authors and their books. It's sort of like when Richter Belmont finally meets Maria Renard in Castlevania: Rondo of Blood. Things get a little easier, you can take a step back and focus on moving forward in bigger ways.  


What can Blue Square Press readers expect from you in the future?

We're ecstatic about our upcoming titles. Sean Kilpatrick's fuckscapes will be out this December. Its been an amazing experience working on that book. It's a beautiful and brutal collection of poetry. And so far for next year we have two books lined up: M. Kitchell's Slow Slidings, which I view as a innovative horror text and Darby Larson's Irritant which is a 700 page tome unlike anything I've seen before. We're working on and looking into things like publishing games that also function as literature. Things are only going to get more interesting as we go. We'll continue down this path.    


**Check back tomorrow to see the mini-ini I conducted with their new partners-in-literature, Mud Luscious Press!**

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