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Seventeen-year-old Luke has always relied on listening to Pat, his elder sister, to help him tackle difficult decisions in life, but when Pat goes missing from a tiny island off the coast of Honduras, Luke doesn’t expect to still have to listen to her words.

A Reminder about the Banned Books Blog Hop: 

Welcome today goes out to C. K. Volnek, MG/YA Author. Her debut MG book, Ghost Dog of Roanoke Island comes out this month. It sounds fascinating and I’m anxious to see how she wove her research of the Roanoke Island mystery with the paranormal. With no more delay, meet C. K. Volnek:

CONTEST: Leave me a comment as there will be prizes! I’m offering a free copy of my e-book or a free t-shirt!

Greetings! Thanks for allowing me to visit your blog today, Rebecca.

My name is C.K. Volnek, Author and Story Teller. My MG book, GHOST DOG OF ROANOKE ISLAND, is a tween ghost story, with a twist of Native American folklore, and based on a true American mystery…the mystery of the Lost Colony of Roanoke Island. In 1587, 117 colonists disappeared fromRoanoke Islandwithout a trace. Many have speculated on what happened to them, but no one knows for sure.

I do not remember studying the Lost Colony. For years I thought the first Colonists landed onPlymouth. So when I read an article on this mystery of the Lost Colony, my muse perked up.Plymouthwasn’t the first colony. Then what could have happened to all those people fromRoanoke Island? I had to know the when, where, why and how it all happened. I had to research.

As I began my research, I found I had to go back a few years from the Lost Colony to understand the full story. Every situation has a cause and effect theory. What we do today, will determine what happens tomorrow. If Queen Elizabeth had not granted Sir Walter Raleigh a charter for the colonization of the land she called ‘Virginia,’ none of this would have happened.

But it did. In 1584, Sir Walter Raleigh dispatched Phillip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe to explore the Eastern coast ofNorth America. It proved fruitful and a second expedition with a number of men was sent out, headed by Sir Richard Grenville. The men built a fort and a number of small houses but having arrived too late to plant a crop abandoned their adventure soon after…but not before committing a most heinous crime. During his exploration, Grenville invited a group of Native Americans on board one of the ships. During the visit, a silver cup came up missing and the Indians were blamed. Grenville then sent his men to destroy the entirevillageofAquascogocin retaliation. Everything…burned to the ground.

Despite the mystery of the Lost Colony, without this crucial, and most hateful, piece of history, my story of Ghost Dog of Roanoke Island would never have been born. I was so appalled at the intolerance and hatred my muse grabbed hold of the details and formulated her story. The injustice and prejudice drove me to research these early events in depth, searching even deeper to find the original manifest of the colonists, digging up pictures and facts of early colonial and Native American life, and details as to why Governor White, after going back to England for supplies, returned to Roanoke Island three years later, only to find a deserted fort and no clues to the whereabouts of

Click image above to see a bigger version. I’ve also posted about my time management experiment where I tried going two hours at a time without e-mail or blog access. The results were enlightening and a little embarrassing!

What about the rest of you, especially those who write at home? How do you control your e-mail and blog reading time?

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Above: a wonderful notebook I recently bought from CalligraphyByErin’s Etsy shop. Yes, those are actually small scrabble tiles on the front cover. Only $10!

A survey: how many of you still use paper (yes, that non-digital writing material!) (more…)

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