Shifter School: Gwendolyn Druyor

Please welcome Gwendolyn Druyor author of Shifter School

Shifter School

by Gwendolyn Druyor

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GENRE: Urban Fantasy

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INTERVIEW:

1. What or who inspired you to start writing?

Mr. Frasier – 6^th grade

There were four total losers in my elementary school. I was number four. I couldn’t tell you what made me a loser but I suspect it was related to the fact that when Mike Ebner was running around mocking all the girls in fourth grade chanting, “You’re a virgin” like it was a disease. I responded, “Yeah, cuz I’m nine.” And when Wendy Nemith taunted, “Your mom wears combat boots,” I informed her, proudly, that my mother was in the Navy, not the Marines. It was my Godmother who wore combat boots.”

Then came 6^th grade with Mr. Frasier. Mr. Frasier took an interest in me and decided to raise me from my loserdom. He saw me reading under my desk all day, every day and instead of punishing me (like every other teacher before him), he instituted Friday Creative Writing.

Every Friday, each kid had to get up and read a story they’d written. Most of the other kids hated it. They hated the writing. They hated the reading. It was hell for Mike Ebner and Wendy Nemith. But I loved it. Until Mr. Frasier told me to, I had no idea I could write my own stories!

I wish I still had them, but my writing was seriously illegible and I suspect I improvised half the stories since we never had to turn them in.

My social life didn’t transform. The kids all still treated me like loser number four. But I saw them while I was telling them stories. They liked my stories. And more importantly, when they called me a loser, I didn’t believe them anymore.

How did you come up with ideas for your books?

I get ideas from everywhere, all the time. I just outlined an epic, futuristic, vampire romance in my head during the January flu hell. Most of it was inspired by fevers and dream of not needing to breathe.

WereHuman: The Witch’s Daughter came about because of a frayed vacuum cleaner cord, a series of nightmares, and the fact that my dog Lyman insists on sitting in my lap while I write.

Shifter School was inspired by Laylea’s novella in The Wyrdos Tales series. Her relationship with Kyle intrigued me but I felt like she had a lot to learn before she could help him any more. I also wanted her to get away from her brother so he could go a little bit more crazy.

I got the idea for my first book from a bad relationship. A horrifically bad relationship. I didn’t know at the time it was a bad relationship, but I must have had a clue. I decided that True Love was real. That this asshole and I had True Love but that one of us was going to have to die like Juliet or Jack or Anna or Tony, or I was going to have a nervous breakdown. [When you build a time machine, could you please go back and tell my nineteen-year-old self to dump the jerk? Please.]

I wanted an epic love story with true love, high drama, and no dead lovers. So, I wrote my time and universe-twisting masterpiece Geoffrey’s Queen.

4. What would you want your readers to know about you that might not be in your bio?

I love stories. I read constantly. And when I’m not writing stories, I’m inhabiting them. I have narrated over 150 audiobooks.

5. As far as your writing goes, what are your future plans?

I’ve got five more books to write in the Shifter School series and four more for WereHuman. Then the sixth book (working title: Mother of All) is going to bring both series together. I am going to write Amal and Jane and Morioka’s versions of The Wyrdos Tales. And of course, I need to make time to pull all the clues together from Geoffrey’s Queen and Hardt’s Tale to wrap up Mobious’ world-jumping quest in Callie’s Crown. Plus, there’s that futuristic vampire thing that keeps morphing – they don’t have to pump blood through their systems so they don’t have to breathe. Are all astronauts really vampires?

If you could be one of the characters from any of your books, who would it be and why?

Yeesh. I’m not very nice to my characters. I love the idea of shifting but I’d want to wait until Laylea gets through puberty (because I am NOT doing that again) except she was fixed as a puppy so she’s not going to ever hit puberty. I could be her mom, Rhea, but Rhea had to give up all her kids and hide. That does not sound cool.

I’d love to be Kissy from the Killer on Call series. She’s talented and snarky, plays the guitar and the ukulele, tap dances. She can hack computers. Two gorgeous if dumb men adore her. Yeah, Kissy’s life would be cool.

Oh! I want to be the Impundulu from Doug vs. the Boogeyman. She’s a lightning bird from Africa who was smuggled to America in the shell and lives with a witch and two tooth fairies. I adore how fiercely she loves and how innocent she is. Plus, she can fly.

9. When did you first decide to submit your work? Please tell us what or who encouraged you to take this big step?

I finished Geoffrey’s Queen around 1999 and started submitting it to agents right away. I finished Hardt’s Tale during a North American tour with a Shakespeare company and started submitting it. After a slew of rejections, I quit submitting them. I moved on. I focused on acting.

My friend Betz knew I was frustrated and sad. She told one of her chiropractic clients about my troubles and asked for his advice. He asked her for my number.

David Foster Wallace, Pulitzer-finalist author of Infinite Jest called me the next day to encourage me to keep trying. He was rejected 73 times before he first got published. If work as genius as his garnered 73 rejections, I reasoned, I had to keep trying until I got twice as many.

11. Do you outline your books or just start writing?

I outline and then my muse completely ignores my outline. I had no idea going in that Kyle was going to be such an important character in Shifter School.

12. Do you have any hobbies and does the knowledge you’ve gained from these carry over into your characters or the plot of your books?

I’m a stage combat choreographer. So, when my characters fight, you can lift the fight off the page and stage it exactly as is. I’ve actually realized recently that a character in my book is encouraging me to learn Spanish. I didn’t know, when I created Abuela in WereHuman, that she would stick around for the whole series!

13. Do you have an all time favorite book?

Awww man, it’s hard to pick one. I still think Are You My Mother is the perfect hero’s journey tale. I reread two or three of Anne McCaffrey’s Pern series every year. I read R.A. Steffan’s The Horse Mistress twice in a row the week I got it. I have two copies of The Art of Racing in the Rain. Ender’s Game? A Wrinkle in Time? Dan Simmons’ Hyperion? Terry Pratchet’s Small Gods? The Princess Bride! Nope. I do not have an all time favorite book.

14. Have you started your next project? If so, can you share a little bit about your book?

I am currently working on WereHuman: The Warrior’s Son. It’s the sequel to The Witch’s Daughter. We get to learn a lot more about the super soldiers and some of the Hermits are showing up again with surprises of their own. Plus, we meet Laylea’s litter mate, Bayard. He didn’t get as lucky with his adoptive family as Laylea did.

15. Who is your favorite actor and actress?

Again, I have a lot of favorites. I’ve adored Clark Gregg since Sports Night and I did create Clark Hillen in WereHuman for him.

I have been in awe of Enrico Collantoni since Galaxy Quest. One night, when I was performing in Polyester: The Musical, I danced onstage to find him sitting in the front row, not ten feet from me. He stayed afterwards to say hi and I fell MORE in love with him. He’s wise and quiet and still. Yin to my Yang.

Right now, I cannot get over Daniel Kaluuya’s performance in Get Out. I hope his career takes off. (If he were ten years younger he’d be perfect to play Oscar in Shifter School.)

And then there’s the divine Allison Janney who is a freaking chameleon. I am just waiting for her and Octavia Spencer to team up and blow our minds.

16. Can you tell us a little about the black moment in your book?
    Friendship is a really hard thing to figure out. People don’t realize you need to learn how to be a good friend, just like you need to learn anything else. Laylea grew up as a dog. Her only friends were her human brother and her non-shifter canine brother. She doesn’t know that it’s normal for friends to misunderstand each other, to disagree. Unfortunately, a bully pulls a prank on her when she and her new friends are on the outs. She thinks her friends have betrayed her when they just don’t know that she’s ignorant of common shifter poisons.

Then, of course, the hallucinations don’t help.

But do they ever?

BLURB:

She’s gonna get them all killed.

So they locked her away.

Laylea has been hiding her entire life. She’s never been to school. She’s never had a friend her own age. She’s never known anyone else like her.

All that is about to change.

In a world hidden from wyrdos and humans alike, shifters are still recovering from a vicious plot to destroy them all. They have two laws they live by now:

1) Hide

2) Protect the children at all costs.

Laylea has just broken rule number one. But she’s only fourteen. So they’re sending her to school. Where she’s going to learn . . .

Anyplace can be a prison.

The Lincoln Park Shifter School is not your grandma’s uber-secret, underground academy.

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EXCERPT:

Normal fourteen-year-olds don’t wake up thinking about death. But Laylea wasn’t anything close to normal. She woke up composing a letter to her adopted parents telling them all the things she’d never get the chance to say in person. Sometimes she thought of writing a letter to her brother, Bailey. Some mornings she imagined leaving a letter for her birth mother too, in case they ever found her. Laylea had been composing the morning letters ever since she’d gone to a veterinarian’s office on a case last summer. Waiting in the lobby for the tech she was following, she’d read every pamphlet the clinic had. Including one that said the average lifespan for a twelve-pound terrier was thirteen to fifteen years.

She’d been fourteen for eight weeks now.

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

Gwendolyn Druyor was born at the Quonset Point Naval Air Station Hospital, North Kingston, RI. The ID bracelet wrapped three times around her little wrist. She could swim before she could walk and read before she started school.

She has traveled the world telling stories. After a year in Amsterdam writing and performing sketch comedy at Boom Chicago, she toured North America with Shenandoah Shakespeare and with the incredible educational show Sex Signals. From Paris, FR to William’s Bay, WI, you’ll find her gypsy life reflected in her books. If you met her on the road, read her closely, you may find yourself in there.

For now, Gwendolyn lives in Hollywood with her Irish Jack Russell, Josh Lyman Zyrga, who is still pouting over the fact that she didn’t put him on the cover of WereHuman.

For more information on Gwendolyn and her projects sign up for her newsletter at www.GwendolynDruyor.com.

LINKS:

www.GwendolynDruyor.com

www.Wyrdos.net

https://www.facebook.com/GwendolynDruyorAuthor/

https://www.instagram.com/gwendolyndruyor/

http://amzn.to/2Bl8rRa

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GIVEAWAY INFORMATION and RAFFLECOPTER CODE

Gwendolyn Druyor will be awarding $50 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

http://ww.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/28e4345f2568