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You see single shoes on the beach all the time. Some are tied to power lines by the laces, others lay along highways. Some dot sidewalks, just sitting there, waiting patiently for their mate to return. Discarded, sometimes battered, these solitary shoes have a story to tell, and author Julie Ann Shapiro became obsessed with telling it.

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.

You see single shoes on the beach all the time. Some are tied to power lines by the laces, others lay along highways. Some dot sidewalks, just sitting there, waiting patiently for their mate to return. Discarded, sometimes battered, these solitary shoes have a story to tell, and author Julie Ann Shapiro became obsessed with telling it.

After months of obsessive exploring and writing, Shapiro hit a theme that led to an entire novel about single shoes.

You might think it is crazy, but it’s not. The flash fiction author has tapped into one of the most unique story ideas I’ve seen in a while. In her breakout novel, Jen-Zen and the One Shoe Diaries, Shapiro writes and a photographer who becomes obsessed with shooting single shoes after his girlfriend dies.

Shapiro is a talented flash fiction writer who talks about the genre at writing conferences throughout her native Southern California. the lifetime writer has published numerous short stories and essays, and works as a freelance writer. Her style is dubbed magic realism, which puts a little bit of fantasy into the real world, offer up a unique and off-kilter view of life between the pages of her work.

This week, we chat it up with Shapiro, offer up sneak peaks of two chapters in Jen-Zen and the One Shoe Diaries, and hear more from the author about what she’s working on now.