BuccFest: Day Two

Welcome to Buccaneer BlogFest! It's hosted by Sharon Bayliss and Court Young as a means to build our platforms and learn more about our fellow writers in the blogging community.

You can still sign up HERE.

Why did I start blogging?

The one where Lucy tries to get an eye full of Bill Holden

I love rubbing elbows with writers. I want to be a best-selling, world famous author some day and I'm hoping some of that writerly magic will rub off on me. But I'm not the starstruck Lucy Ricardo of the writing world, I swear. If anyone says I am, just ignore them. I'm a bit of a stalker, that's all. Despite rumors to the contrary, I did not break into Stephen King's hotel room and steal his, uh, um, anything. And that wasn't me who showed up sloshed to J.K. Rowling's suite demanding she bring Dobby back to life! It was just someone who looked like me. By the way, is there anyone out there who can get me an intro to J.K. Rowling? Just asking.


Okay, all joking aside now. I touched on why I started blogging in my last B.B. post. I began my blogging career writing about running and health, until I came across the writing community. I had no idea you all existed! It was like fate, with everything falling into place as it should, as it was always meant to. It was all part of my new beginnings as a writer.

Of course, I'm no expert. Not even close. My blog topics on writing started out pretty meager, indeed. What did I know? Not much. But there are tons of people who know more about the subject than I do, and I've learned so much by following them on their journeys.

Here's why I blog:

• To befriend like-minded people, to give/receive encouragement
• To follow writer's with more experience to learn from their accomplishments and mistakes, and to receive advice
• To follow writer's with less or equal experience to swap and share information, and yes, I learn from them, too
• To learn the craft of writing (strong verbs, weak verbs? Huh?)
• To learn how to edit (you mean I can overuse "was"?)
• To learn about publishing options
• And finally, to build a platform for when I'm ready to publish.

What are my goals for my blog?

I've thought a lot about this lately. That's why I split my running blog from my writing blog. I'm preparing to publish and become an author and wanted a blog make-over that was professional and focused more on that goal.

Here are some goals for my blog:

• Post 2-3 days per week on a schedule (MWF?)
• Post about what I'm learning, whether it's the writing, editing or publishing process
• Host and interview more authors (I love helping authors with their platforms and getting the word out on their work)
• To promote myself and my work more

Why do you blog and what are your blogging goals?

End of Days Book Review

First, let me say that Roland Yeomans is one of the kindest bloggers in the blogoverse. I commented how much I adored one of his characters, Alice Wentworth, and he gifted me the book, End of Days, featuring her as the protagonist! Thank you Roland!

Also, this is my first book review. Ever. And I'm kind of nervous. If I mess this up, it's my fault, not Roland's.

So here we go!

Blurb:

St. Marrok's. The most eerie high school in which you will ever die. Some call it the high school for the damned. The damned merely laugh.



Located in the lovely, Katrina devastated French Quarter, it stands as it has always stood since the sky chariot of the Queen of the Tuatha de Danann was shot down over Roswell, New Mexico in June 1947.


St. Marrok's is a school run by the Sidhe for all the preternatural children of America. A few mortal teenagers are invited for the amusement and education in the frailties of humans for the Sidhe.


Now, the celestial configurations are almost in allignment. The Nameless Ones are nearly through the frayed barrior between their dimensions and ours. The plan set into motion in 1947 by the Tuatha de Danann are finished.


Plots and counter-plots by Sidhe, revenants, and Olympian/Asgardian factions are all coming to a head. The End of Days is at hand.

And only Alice Wentworth, a Victorian ghoul, with a rag-tag group of misfit students and human teachers stand a chance at stopping it. All it will take is their lives and all they hold dear.

My Review:

Protagonist Alice Wentworth is a 175-year-old Victorian teenage ghoul. She is the sweetest ghoul ever, never mind that she must eat human flesh to survive. It gives "fast food" a whole new meaning, but it's only the scum of the earth that she consumes, so no big loss. I mean, what's a ghoul to do?

The cast of characters is eclectic to say the least. A ghoul, a revenant priest still in love with his ex-wife, wolfling, hellhounds and other creatures, not to mention the real-life historical characters who weave in and out of the story. The characters are mostly larger than life, with egos to match, but even larger hearts.

Alice and her rag-tag group of friends, in particular sisters Trish and Becca, infiltrate St. Marrok's, a school for the preternatural with a few humans thrown in (proving they're not biased - everyone has the same right to die), where the master plotters reside. The plan is to thwart The Nameless Ones from taking over the world, fight the other wannabe's along the way, and in danger all the while of President Bush pushing The Nuke Button.

But first and foremost, they must stay alive.

No need for too much worry, though, because Alice "The Wentworth" is one kick-butt ghoulfriend. Her sense of right, wrong and justice for all is highly tuned. With her super powers and the dead love of her life, Victor Standish, advising from inside her head, the ghoul can't lose.

End of Days is a dark urban action-packed fantasy. A plot expertly weaved with a mix of Indian and Celtic lore, preternatural and human beings, fictional and real-life historical characters, all occupying the devasted streets of the French Quarter in the aftermath of Katrina in a post apocalyptic setting.

But at the End of the Day, End of Days was about love and friendship. And that's why, in my book, End of Days gets five stars!

You can buy Roland Yeoman's books at Amazon.com.



Buccaneer Blogfest: About Me

Ahoy, writing mateys. Welcome to the first day of the Buccaneer Blogfest hosted by Sharon Bayliss and Court Young. It's all about building our platforms and meeting new writers and friends. The plan is to post Monday, Wednesday and Friday based on prompts given, between July 9 - August 3. To read more about it, or to sail with the rest of us pirates on the high blogging seas, go HERE.

Day one involves telling you a little about me and my blog. So here it goes!

Some of you already know me as Lady Gwen from Run Gwen, Run! Write Gwen, Write! I have been in the blogosphere since 2010, first to write about my endeavor to get healthy and lose weight through running. THEN! I discovered a community of writer's I didn't know existed! It was divine intervention - I had given up a good paying job in San Diego and moved to the Rockies to write. So my blog became a mixture of running and writing posts, before it turned mostly to writing. Run Gwen, Run! became very crowded, so I shanghaied some of my followers and started a new author blog here.

And here we are!

I'm fifty-two years old. A little older, I think, than the average blogger I mix with here. Most of you are my daughters age. *snort* What can I say? I'm a late bloomer. I graduated from college with a BA in English when I was forty-one. In my family, IF we graduated from high school, we knew we were going to work. College was for rich people. I didn't know it was an option. But I felt so blessed when I finally did go, that I worked my butt off and graduated magna cum laude.

Have you ever said to yourself, some day I'm going to do this or that? Maybe it's travel, skydiving or scubadiving. Or writing a book. My "some day" finally came. Life is way too short to not follow your dreams, and that's why I'm here.

I write young adult fiction. My first book, Givin' Up The Ghost, is in final editing (I hope). I just finished the first draft of my second book, A Guilty Ghost Surprised. They are both part of The Indigo Eady Paranormal Mystery Series. I'm seriously thinking about self-publishing.

I hope you're still awake after reading this!

I can't wait to blog-hop around to read about your adventures riding the high seas of writing.

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