The Crossroads Blog Tour (Day 5)

Welcome to day 5 of The Crossroads Blog Tour and today I'm featuring the amazingly talented and very lovely Shannon Delany, author of 13 to Life (June, 2010) and upcoming sequel Secrets and Shadows (february, 2011) and Bargains and Betrayals (2011). I have to say that I *loved* 13 to Life and if you're interested, you can check out my review here.


How did you come up with the idea for 13 To Life? What was your inspiration?

It was so random I’m still amazed it came together. It started with the following things: the phrase, “13 to life,” the fact I was interested in using werewolves as paranormal and symbolic creatures, and the concept that life’s short. Then Jess showed up on the scene with her emotional baggage and Pietr introduced himself.


How many books will there be in the series?

*cough* Three books have already been named and turned in: 13 to Life, Secrets and Shadows and Bargains and Betrayals. Other things are *cough* in the works.


There’s a lot of YA books been released in recent months about wolves, what makes your book standout? (besides the fact that it’s awesome, obviously)

Thanks! I’ll take the obvious approach and bring up the Russian heritage shared by my werewolves and their connection to Cold War paranormal research. Some fun for readers will be (throughout the series) to guess what characters and references I make that can be traced to “legitimate” Cold War research and where I start blowing smoke. The not-so obvious thing separating my werewolves from others relates to the title and canine physiology. Readers know what I mean.


Are you writing anything else at the moment or have any ideas in the pipeline? Will they be paranormal in nature?

I have notes started on about a half-dozen different projects, mostly YA and mostly paranormal. My most immediate pursuit will be the polishing of my NaNoWriMo 2009. It’s paranormal but much more—erm—devilish in nature.


About your writing style, are you a pantser or an outliner? What would your one bit of writing advice be?

I’m character-driven so there’s a lot of “writing by the seat of my pants” that happens. I follow the characters until I have to nudge them back on course (they like to run off with the story sometimes, not to name names *MAX*).

My advice? Read a lot and write even more. (And it should go without saying that the reading you do should be diverse. I realized recently that I read remarkably little within my genre—when considering overall books consumed.)

What’s your favourite thing about Halloween?

Watching people and seeing them dress in their fantasies or fears. It’s a great exercise for a writer to try and guess who is under the outfit and why they chose that particular “mask..”


Favourite scary movie?

Here are a few favorites: The Others (creepy with a twist), Memento (psychological thriller with a twist), The Ghost Writer (creepy and mysterious with a perfect ending), Signs (scary and twisty), Ginger Snaps (had to get a werewolf one in here).

If you could be any supernatural creature, what would you be and why?

Werewolf. I get to be plain ol’ me, running around in daylight or adventuring under the moon in a fashionable fur. And I’d have a delightful excuse for liking my steaks rare.


Thank you to Shannon for answering all of my questions! To find out more about Shannon and her books, you can visit her website here and also the 13 to Life website here. Shannon is also active on Twitter and facebook. And just in case you're wondering what the cover for the 2nd book Secrets and Shadows looks like, here it is in all its glory...



Each day of The Crossroads Tour, a new question will be revealed on The Crossroad Blog Tour main page and each day the answer to that question will be found within one of the 16 different blog posts by Crossroads Tour authors. Your job is to get the question, read the blog posts, and collect all 16 answers by the end of the tour, on Halloween. Click here to get today's question and links.