Really? How did that happen? I’d ask where the time went but I’m afraid someone might tell me, and there are certain things we’re better off not knowing.

If you’re about to wax philosophical…

No, I’ll rein myself in. What I’d rather do is tell y’all about a batch of items. Some of them should have been in the last newsletter, but, um, I forgot. Others are new, and the first one’s a local New York event that’s taking place today or tomorrow, depending on when you opened this email. So let’s lead with it.

Florida Happens is a dandy anthology of crime stories set in the Sunshine State; it was compiled by Greg Herren in conjunction with this year’s Bouchercon in St. Petersburg, and has been very well published indeed by my friends Peter and Kat at Three Roms Press. My contribution is The Burglar who Strove to Go Straight, abstracted from one of my Bernie Rhodenbarr novels, and Bernie’s in good company here.

And I’ll be in good company myself the evening of Friday, November 2 (which is a day away as I write these lines) at the Cornelia Street Café, on the program with Hilary Davidson, Eleanor Cawood Jones, Debra Lattanzi Shutika, and Reed Farrel Coleman. (Address is 29 Cornelia Street in Greenwich Village. The program gets going at 6 pm; there’s $10 cover charge but it includes a drink.) Not sure what I’ll be reading. Possibly the piece from the book, but possibly something new. If you’re in the neighborhood, come say hello.

And now shall we switch from Bernie to Keller? We can cross an ocean while we’re at it.

Keller, the Urban Lonely Guy of hired killers, has starred in six books to date, most recently Keller’s Fedora. While he’s developed a strong following at home and abroad—in France and the UK and throughout Asia—most of the EU has yet to meet up with the fellow.

But, through the 21st Century miracle of self-publishing, that’s beginning to change. El sicario, Maria Carmen de Barnardo Martinez’s Spanish translation of Hit Man, has been well received, and MaCa’s at work on the sequel. In Italy, Luigi Garlaschelli’s having great success with Il Sicario; he’s completed his work on Hit List, and we expect to have it available by the end of the month.

And Sepp Leeb, who together with Stefan Mommertz has managed to make Matthew Scudder a household word in Germany, has turned his attention to our wistful assassin with Kellers Metier. We’re excited about this one, confident that German readers will respond strongly to Keller once they make his acquaintance, and Sepp, already at work on Kellers Liste, is very enthusiastic about the series.

Kellers Metier is eVailable from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple, and Thalia. It’s also on sale in a handsome trade paperback edition. And if you read it and like it, could you do us a favor? Dash off an online review, and even more important, tell your friends about it. The biggest challenge with self-publishing books in translation is getting the word around.

OTOH, some books don’t need to be translated.

But they need to be published. And the word does need to get around.

The English-language ebook and paperback editions of all eight Evan Tanner books and ten of eleven Bernie Rhodenbarr books are very effectively published in the US by HarperCollins. But in the rest of the English-speaking (and English-reading) world, I hold the rights, and for some time now I’ve been publishing ebooks in both series. They’re steady sellers in Australia and the UK, as you’d imagine, but find their way to readers throughout the world.

And I don’t know why it’s taken me so long, but I’ve finally brought out the Tanner and Burglar books in paperback editions. You can’t buy them in the States, though. That’s HarperCollins territory.

Are we done now? Is that all you have to report?

Well, yes, I guess it is.

Except that I was thinking of floating a notion to all of y’all. Lately I’ve found myself ruminating wistfully on the vision of myself ensconced for a while on a college campus, serving as the institution’s writer in residence. I don’t know how realistic a fantasy this might be, nor am I sure to what extent the attraction is attributable to autumn leaves and football season, but it does feel like something I might want to pursue.

Now I don’t even have a bachelor’s degree, but I can claim six decades of street cred as a professional writer, and I’ve written more books on the subject than anyone should have to read.

So why am I telling y’all about it?

Well, a dozen years ago I was setting up a tour in aid of The Burglar on the Prowl, and it struck me that I might be able to speak at libraries for a fraction of my usual fee if I could fit them into my book tour. So I wrote something to that effect in my newsletter, and some librarians read the item and told other librarians about it, and, well, one thing led to another. And I wound up driving all over the country and presenting a program at over sixty libraries.

(I drove all over the place in a rented Chevy Blazer. I’d hoped for a Ford SUV, so that I could be the Schnorrer in the Explorer, but it didn’t work. Never mind.)

So, if an idle remark in a newsletter could net me sixty speaking gigs, who’s to say it won’t lead me to a spell of camping out in one of the Groves of Academe?

One never knows…