Virtual Tour + Review + #Giveaway: Shifter School by Gwendolyn Druyor @GwendolynDruyor @GoddessFish

Shifter School

by Gwendolyn Druyor

GENRE: Urban Fantasy

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.

Excerpt:

She ran from the dorm before they started laughing again. Laylea left her pod open. She didn’t care. Everything she owned was either on her neck or in school storage. She’d never had friends before, she didn’t need them now. She shoved through the little crowd at the curtains and didn’t look into any of the faces gathered outside the girls’ door. She couldn’t have seen them through her tears anyway.

She wanted to shift and run. A good long run through the city would feel good. Her mind would have to focus on cars, pedestrians, uneven sidewalks, shop doors, guard dogs, and dangerous litter. She’d have no room in her head for all her worries. She wouldn’t be able to think about how KC and Oscar hated her for nearly getting them killed, how if she’d run when Oscar wanted to, he wouldn’t have been here to get hurt. Her mind would be focused on her own survival rather than concerns for Oscar’s mom, the kids in ST, and her family’s safety now that she’d spilled all their secrets in front of Jase Batka.

But she couldn’t shift because she was defective. It took her eleven years to figure out she even could shift and now she was going to die without ever figuring out how. Or why.

My Review:

Laylea is a werecanid and has spent most of her life as a dog instead of a human girl. Shifters have to stay hidden from the human world. Laylea has been taught that she can’t shifter in front of humans but she can’t control her shifting. When she is caught shifting in front of humans Captain Morioka sends her to the Shifter School so that she can learn to control her shifting. Laylea has never been to school nor has she ever had any friends her own age before.  

When she arrives at the school she soon learns that more is going on at the school than just teaching. Experiments are being performed on the students and their information is being sold or given to an outside source for further testing. Laylea and her new friends, Oscar and KC all do a little investigation on their own to find out what is going on at the school and why they are testing the students and what they plan on doing with them when they get the information they are looking for.

Can Laylea and her new friends figure out what is happening to all the students before it is too late? Can they stop them from harming the students? Is the shifter school really a school or is it a prison for kids?

Shifter School is a great introduction to the Wyrdos Universe or it was for me as this is the first book in the Wyrdos Universe that I have read and I enjoyed it tremendously and can’t wait to read more by this author and to see more into this universe/world.

I would recommend Shifter School to anyone who likes to read about shifters, vampires, witches and maybe a few more paranormal creatures with a little mystery on the side and a great new world. 

Interview with Gwendolyn Druyor

Can you tell us a little bit about the characters in Shifter School?

The book launches from the world created in The Wyrdos Tales. Our heroine is Laylea. She’s a fourteen year old werehuman. Having lived under the radar her entire life, Laylea earns her living as private investigator of supernatural mysteries. She’s made for it as a terrier who sometimes shifts into a girl form. She also fights the forces of evil with her wyrdo friends; a boogeyman, a banshee, a demon, some brownies, and a god. But our heroine screws up and the dragon-demon Morioka drags her away and tosses her in school.

On their way to the school, Morioka stops at a police station to pick up a rich kid reprobate, Oscar Luke. Only Oscar Luke is the most polite and sober malt liquor thief Laylea has ever met. He’s a werepanthera with melatonin issues, an influential father, and access to the most dangerous new club drug in Chicago.

When they finally get to the Lincoln Park Shifter School, Laylea finds a girl she knows from her favorite electronics store. But Karley Carlotta Delcampo is telling everyone in the school that her name is KC Dells and that she’s a werecoyote. Apparently, her great grandfather is the Alpha of all American werewolves (in London or otherwise) and everybody fears Grandpa Delcampo.

Our heroes are three kids keeping a million secrets trapped in an underground academy with more than a few fatal secrets of its own.

Can you tell us a little bit about your next books or what you have planned for the future?

I am writing six books in the WereHuman series. Each of Laylea’s brother’s gets a book and then we meet their Mama! I’ve got five more books planned for the Shifter School series which I THINK are going to converge with the international battle in WereHuman book six. PLUS, I need to write the final book in my Mobious’ Quest series. I am super excited about tying the dragon history together in Callie’s Crown. There are so many mysteries and I don’t have the answers to all of them yet. That’s one of the most fun bits of writing; figuring out what my character’s are hiding from me!

How long would you say it takes you to write a book?

FOREVER. I am a sloooow writer and I typically get it all wrong on the first pass. It took me twenty years to write Geoffrey’s Queen. I tend to write a bit faster now. One of my problems is I try plotting a book and then my characters say, “nah, that’s not what we want to do.” I had no intention of letting Laylea have TWO best friends in Shifter School but then Oscar showed up with all his issues and I knew from his first disdainful words that Laylea was going to win him over.

What is your favorite childhood book?

The first book I remember adoring is Are You My Mother by P.D. Eastman. It’s a classic journey tale where the MC finds what they seek by returning home, with help. I’d say the most influential series I’ve read would have to be Anne McCaffrey’s Pern. I started with Dragonsinger and just inhaled the rest of the world. She might be the only reason I keep trying with cats.

If you could spend the day with one of the characters from Shifter School who would it be? Please tell us why you chose this particular character, where you would go and what you would do.

Kyle. I cannot figure out my vampire character, Kyle. He started out as a prop in my very first Wyrdos Tale, Dee. I needed a reason for Dee to be in counseling, so I gave her a partner (they’re homicide detectives) and then shot him. He first surprised me in that tale when his body disappeared. Then he surprised me by showing up as a main character in Laylea’s Wyrdos Tale and revealing that he ingested people’s memories with the blood he drank. I had absolutely no idea that he was going to show up and be so important in Shifter School. He seems relentlessly good. He became a police officer to help people. He’s a devoted husband and father. But now he’s a demon, too. Can he hold on to his human truths now that he’s dead? Laylea thinks so. But Kyle isn’t so sure, and that’s got me worried.

So, I’d like to take Kyle out on the town and talk. I want him to take me home and introduce me to his wife and their daughter, KJ, although that might be difficult since they think he’s dead.

What was the hardest scene from Shifter School to write?

The gym in the Lincoln Park Shifter School is made up of several enormous rooms that have been transformed into environments that might be more friendly for some of our shifters than the stone walls of the rest of the underground academy. There’s a jungle, and caves, and lakes, and groves, and a farm. The kids take gym class in these rooms and in one scene I had a couple dozen of different shifters playing Capture the Flag there. THAT was definitely the hardest scene to write. I had a whole subplot running through the game where two minor characters (Dove, a weretiger and Harper, a wererhesusmonkey) kinda fall in love. But, to keep the novel on track, it had to go as well as a LOT of the game.

It was soooooo much fun to write and heart wrenching to edit. 

What made you want to become a writer?

Reading. It was absolutely reading that made me want to become a writer. I inhaled books as a child. They were my escape and my best teachers. (maybe excepting Mr. Frazier and Mr. Story--not a made up name and Mr. Anderson.)

Just for fun

(a Favorite song: at the moment, Marion Hill’s Down

(b Favorite book: possibly, Ender’s Game

(c Favorite movie: Sneakers or The Sting or Inception

(d Favorite tv show: The West Wing! or Firefly!

(e Favorite Food: Vodka infused Strawberries made by Jeff

(f Favorite drink: Soy Chai Latte made by Jessica

(g Favorite website: Youtube. I’m actually watching Kevin Olusola’s KOver of Marion Hill’s Down right now.

Thanks so much for visiting with us today!

Thanks for hosting Shifter School!

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.

Website 1 ~ Website 2 ~ Facebook ~ Twitter ~ Instagram

Buy Link:

Amazon

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