Houston, we have t-shirts!

So… because my mother-in-law is completely awesome AND because the people at Custom Ink do such a good job AND because Go Daddy's Quick Cart is so reasonable… we have T-shirts, and we can sell and ship them!

Those of you wanting WELCOME TO THE VOID t-shirts of your very own can go to my home page http://authoratlarge.com/ and click on “shop” or you can just click here.

If you haven’t read Staked yet, then you might be interested be wondering what in the world these WELCOME TO THE VOID t-shirts are about.

Staked is set in Void City, a place where average folks are kept from discovering the supernatural by a fragile artifact called the Veil of Scrythax kept in a vault in the depths of the Highland Towers building – one of the most exclusive vampire residences in the area. In Void City, the police and local government are in on the cover-up. If vampires or other supernatural beasties don't do a good enough job cleaning up after themselves, the city does it for them with the help of the police and the Mage Guild.

The Void City Music Festival happens every summer in Void City. It’s a huge party and it is also the only time of year that the supernatural residents are not allowed to prey on the unsuspecting portion of the populace. For that weekend and that weekend alone, all the norms are safe and the supernatural residents do their best to make sure no one gets hurt – even in mundane on mundane violence.

Like so many music festivals aroung the world, the Void City Music Festival had annual t-shirts... but one year... “WELCOME TO THE VOID CITY MUSIC FESTIVAL” was supposed to be printed on the front and the year and the list of band names was supposed to be printed on the back, and when the shirts were delivered from the printer “WELCOME TO THE VOID” was printed on the front and the words “CITY MUSIC FESTIVAL” plus the year and the band list were printed on the back. The festival attendees loved it, and bought so many shirts that the festival head honchos dropped the correct version altogether in favor of the misprint and there was much rejoicing. There's a new Welcome to the VOID shirt every year.

In Staked, Eric, my male co-tagonist, loves the t-shirts and wears them all the time, even though he generally only remembers half the story behind what they mean.

In the real world, my wife surprised me with a prototype one day made with a printable iron-on. I loved it so much that she found a company that could actually screen print replicas of the t-shirts and we did an order for all the members of the WTF as well as folks who had helped out in major ways… you know like my agent and my editor, plus about six for me. I tend to wear one every Friday for casual day at my corporate day job.

Look for me in my WELCOME TO THE VOID T-shirt at upcoming conventions like ConCarolinas, HyperiCon, WorldCon, ComiCon, and DragonCon... At conventions I tend to wear a WELCOME TO THE VOID t-shirt on Friday and Saturday (not the same one, a different clean shirt each day) and either a GET STAKED t-shirt on Sunday or something non-related like one of my Amber t-shirts or my Mesopotamians t-shirt from the They Might Be Giants concert that the WTF attended here in Birmingham.

Anyway, we have the shirts in stock from an Adult M through a XXXXL, and we'd be happy to ship you one, two, ten... whatever. Also, we are working on having prizes for non WTF-members caught wearing their shirts at conventions I am attending.

Now you know.

J