Smart Chicks Kick It Tour starts today!

I'm so super excited that the Smart Chicks Kick It Tour starts today in Austin, TX!  Wahoo!  For those of you who haven't heard about it, the Smart Chicks Tour was the idea of Melissa Marr, Kelley Armstrong and Alyson Noel who wanted to put together a tour of authors from various houses (usually, if authors get to tour in groups at all they're all from the same publishing house but they wanted to break this mold).  All told there are 17 authors going to 12 different cities over the next two weeks -- holy cow!!  Only Melissa, Kelley and Alyson will be at each stop so the mixture of authors will change from city to city.

My stops are in Chicago and San Diego -- here are the details:

September 21st, 2010 6 PM
@ Encinitas County Library, hosted by MYSTERIOUS GALAXY, San Diego, CA
Melissa Marr, Alyson Noel, Kelley Armstrong, Mary Pearson, Rachel Caine, Rachel Vincent, Carrie Ryan, Margaret Stohl & Kami Garcia.

September 22nd, 2010 7 PM
@ Wentz Concert Hall at North Central College, Hosted by ANDERSON'S Naperville, IL
Alyson Noel, Kelley Armstrong, Melissa Marr, Jackson Pearce, Jennifer Barnes & Carrie Ryan
NOTE: for this event, it is free with the purchase on one book by a featured author or $5 without purchase.


Here's the full schedule.  Here's the list of authors.  And here's the blog where you can follow along with all the fun shenanigans (and get FAQs about the tour answered).

I'm just super excited about this tour because I love meeting and chatting with readers and I'm also pretty psyched to meet and hang out with such crazy awesome authors (I just started Rachel Caine's Morganville Vampires series -- why have I not read these before! I'm addicted!)

After the Smart Chicks tour I'll be at the Baltimore Book Festival and will post more details soon!

Other than that, I'm sick (which always happens after I hit a deadline and my body realizes that it's okay to relax and get sick) and working to catch up on all the things I let slide over the past month: emails, interviews, snail mail, etc etc.  My to-do list is long enough to make me weep but I'm determined to prevail!

The Living Dead 2: Flotsam & Jetsam (free!)

It's been the summer o' anthologies for me!  First my short story about Sister Tabitha as a teen, Hare Moon, came out in Kiss Me Deadly, in a few weeks my short story set in Curacao (which explains where the term Mudo comes from) will be out in Zombies vs. Unicorns, and just a week ago another short story, Flotsam & Jetsam, came out in The Living Dead 2 anthology edited by John Joseph Adams! (for links to more information and how to purchase, click here).

Flotsam & Jetsam is about a group of teens who go on a senior cruise right when the zombie apocalypse happens (they clearly were unaware).  Infection breaks out on the ship, two boys escape into a life raft and one of them's infected (cue dun-dun-dun music).  I really love this story -- it's the first time I've written from a male POV and wrote something actually in the range of short story length.

I can't tell you how amazingly thrilled I am about this anthology and it's been getting a lot of love out there -- a starred review from PW and even Simon Pegg (of Shaun of the Dead fame) called the collection a "must for any self respecting zombie completist."  It's packed with stories (44!) that are a mixture of reprints and originals and the author list blows me away: Max Brooks, Robert Kirkman, David Wellington, Charie Priest, Jonathan Mayberry and Kelley Armstrong to name a few -- there are so many wonderful authors!

Honestly, I'm still stunned I got to be a part of this anthology.  And not just be a part of it, but have my name on the cover.  I'm not lying, I cried when I saw it (I'll blog more on that later).

John's set up a fantastic website for the anthology here.  There are interviews with various authors (my interview is here) and even free stories (you can read Flotsam & Jetsam for free here).

Yes, that's right -- you can read my short story FOR FREE! Yay!

I hope y'all like the story and love the anthology as much as I do.  Being such a big zombie fan, I'm thrilled to have so much to sink my teeth into :)

Decatur Book Festival!!

Yay for Decatur Book Festival weekend!!!  I've heard such amazing things about this festival and if the rest of the weekend is as awesome as today it will rock!  I spoke to 8th and 9th graders at Decatur High School this afternoon and they were an amazing amazing group -- I felt like the luckiest author to be talking to such avid readers and engaged students.  Now I'm all pumped up for tomorrow!

On Saturday I'll be on the Zombies vs. Vampires Smackdown panel with Alyxandra Harvey.  It's billed as a very audience involved panel so I'm really hoping a lot of y'all come out!  The list of authors here this weekend is both awesome and intimidating so if zombies and vampires aren't your thing, I'm betting there will be another author and panel right up your alley!

The panel is at 3pm at the Escape at the Old Courthouse.

I also got to meet up with friend and author John Bemis (whose second book, The Wolf Tree just came out -- the first, The Nine Pound Hammer, was so much fun) at Little Shop of Stories which is just one of my favorite bookstores.  One of the things I love about this shop, other than just the ambience of it, is how enthusiastic everyone there is about books and reading.  I pretty much love anyone whose first question is "What are you reading now" and then you can both geek out on awesome books.  Terra and Krista were super helpful getting me to the event and just being excited about the whole weekend.

I'm not going to lie, it's strange to be sitting in my hotel room thinking "there are people out there who love books and I need to go find them and talk to them!"  I also haven't eaten all day so... I think I'm going to find some book lovers to join me for some food!

Hope to see many of y'all tomorrow!  I'll also be around before and after so if you can't catch the panel just come say hi (I might be wearing a kraken shirt... haven't decided...).