A long, meandering post wherein I grind your dreams under my boot heel – and then lift you back up, maybe.

That’s a pretty grim headline isn’t it? After all, so many of us are chasing just that exact dream: Quit the day job and spend all day following our imaginary friends around our fictional worlds – in between rounds of Candy Crush and Peggle, of course. Sitting in your underpants, swilling coffee and slinging words. What’s not to like?

It’s coming… June 2015 will see the most fun and the most zombie authors I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with on one of these annual tours. 

Over the next month you’ll meet all of them and I suggest you get familiar with their work if you are a zombie fan, because these are some of my favorites as well as a few new authors I’ve just met who I’m looking forward to reading, hanging out with and hopefully having on future #SummerofZombie tours!

As well, all of the many interviews, guest posts and book teasers will be emanating from this website this year, so make sure you subscribe to it so you don’t miss a post… and feel free to reblog and share any and all posts you like to help out the authors! That’s what this event is all about… to get readers in front of new…

“Grand Ole Opry”
Nashville, Tennessee
Photo from tripadvisor.com

vagrants and vagabonds
tramp without leaving
so much as a footprint
in whindust of railroad beds
peripatetic gray phantoms
pedestrian journeyers
trekking from alley to alley
propelled by the turns in
the weather of whims
unnoticed by privilege
they carry their meager
estates on their backs
never owning a need
for a lock or a key keeping
sane if not safe mumbling
songs to themselves
music raised from mean
circumstance root-grown
resigned to serial failure
only to fall further victim
to those who will cleverly
plagiarize misery balladeer
bandits who turn these
poor stories to fortune
and twang under spotlights
bejeweling the stage of
the famed Grand Ole Opry
but on second thought
maybe this process
redeems itself broadcasting
voices of indigence
not likely otherwise heard
in the salons aloof disengaged
and exceeding respectable
quotients of Barbary ethics

In a digital world, where content is turned into 1s and 0s, piracy has become an issue. As a consumer, one often reads about Warner Brothers or other studios “cracking down” on movie pirates, or music thieves. But how often does the average reader see anything about book piracy?

Before I was an author, I didn’t know book piracy existed. Sure, I knew there were places to “steal” movies, and TV, but it never occurred to me that there were people – or websites – stealing books. yet Piracy accounts for at least 12% of ebooks in the United States alone.  I’d bet that there are plenty of other readers (and maybe even authors) as naive as I was, people who have no idea that downloading that “free” PDF of a novel is stealing. To raise awareness of the book piracy epidemic, Maegan Provan is organizing an Authors Against Piracy…

We’ve broken the 2,000 author-signed books in and I’m quite excited. The books themselves have been trickling in at a much slower pace. I’m confident more people will share the event page and especially the permanent page and get more authors involved. 

Remember… the event itself might technically last until May 1st but I won’t stop collecting books for the year… last year 2,500 books came in the first 4 months and another 500 the rest of the year. Great numbers. I’d still like to beat them both this year if possible. 

One great thing has already happened… with so many #ASOT2015 shirt sales and generous donations coming in, we will have more than enough money in the coffers to pay for at least 3,500 books! I want to thank everyone who has helped make this possible, and so quickly. 

Our goal is to do one more #ASOT2015 shirt the…