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This week Angela Wilson chats it up with author Elizabeth Zelvin, who takes a humorous look at addiction as her alcoholic anti-hero solves the murder of a friend.

Before the Web, it took some digging to find out when and where your favorite authors were on tour. Then, it wasn’t always easy to get to the venue.  If you were lucky enough to make it, then chances were you could not get any good face time with the author because of the line of people also waiting for an autograph and a handshake.

The Internet has changed that. Now, authors are only a Google search and button click away. We meet them on MySpace, share jokes with them on FaceBook, and find out what they are reading on Shelfari. With the invention of the blog, we can now hear from them directly and learn about their lives and latest projects via virtual book tours.

The Pop Syndicate Book Blog is proud to be a virtual book tour sponsor. Throughout the year, we will bring authors to you through interviews, columns and articles about their latest works. Be sure to subscribe to our RSS feed, or become a MySpace friend, so you don’t miss a tour.

Elizabeth Zelvin can find humor – and murder – in addiction.

After stints in advertising, publishing and the Peace Corps, Zelvin got a degree in social work and started working with alcohol-addicted in New York. She worked at treatment centers in Manhattan, the Bronx and East Harlem before running outpatient programs for the homeless.

But the poet never lost her desire to write – or her sense of humor. Eight years ago, she started working from home on her online therapy site. That gave her the time to write her the first in her addiction series, Death Will Get You Sober. She doesn’t make light of addiction, but she does humanize it with her quirky, relatable style – and she offers up a murder for her protagonist to solve, pronto. A short story related to the series was nominated for an Agatha award for Best Short Story.

This week, we’ll learn more about Zelvin, get a sneak peak at the first novel in her series, and find out what’s on her bookshelf.