Welcome to Shannon Delany’s Start Your Day with Serial Tour! Shannon’s debut novel (and first in her YA paranormal series) 13 to Life started as a winning cell phone novel written in serial segments. During the tour you can read bits of the book in order. Miss a day? Hop to Shannon’s blog and check the link to the blog tour calendar in her sidebar.

There will also be a contest that will close at the end of the tour. Winners get a bunch of stuff.

Fathers. We all tend to have one. Some have more. For me, one has always been the perfect number (I cannot imagine more than one if that more is anything like my father!). 😉 My father is one of those larger-than-life characters. He’s a tale-teller (so blame him for my love of stories).

In my debut novel (and the first in a series) 13 to Life, narrator Jessie Gillmansen has recently lost her mother. Her life’s shaken up in a way only those of us who have lost a parent can understand. But Jessie’s lucky. Although her mother is dead, her father is there for her. Maybe not as much as she likes, but everyone has limitations. He’s not perfect–he’s not smooth. Like Jessie, he doesn’t always know the right thing to do or say. He doesn’t know exactly how to raise two daughters who are suddenly motherless. But he’s the type of guy who does his best to try.

Although he wasn’t a difficult character to write, Jessie’s dad (who only really got named at the end of book two) was slow to step into the spotlight I use to mentally view my characters. He’s a “good ole guy”–a bit salt-of-the-earth. And when it comes to his kids, he’s as present as he can be while holding down a job at one of the few remaining factories in Junction and maintaining the farm his wife’s horses still roam. To me, as much as he struggles with his role as a single parent, he’s still the best type of parent a kid can have–an involved one who tries to protect what he loves.

Unfortunately the serial snippet I’m sharing here as part of the tour doesn’t include him. But I hope when you meet him in 13 to Life, you’ll develop an appreciation for him. And like so many dads and their daughters–you’ll understand Jessie a little more by understanding him.

Thanks so much for hosting me–Happy Nearly Father’s Day!
~Shannon

13 to Life: Chapter 3, part P (used with the author’s permission)

I turned in my seat to see what kept taking his attention from our brutal conversation. Was it someone? No. He kept looking above… The clock? Ugh. Did he think he was wasting time here? I faced him once more. “So what’s your motivation, Pietr? You don’t even know me!”

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