Hello and welcome to the blog tour for Vampire With Benefits! I can’t wait for you to meet Rusty and Cas, the second mismatched couple in my Supernatural Selection series (part of the Mythmatched universe). Thank you to all of you and to Love Bytes Reviews for helping me celebrate the book release!

A Shifter’s World

(Get the previous post about vampires at OMG Reads.)

If you’ve been following along on blog tour with me (thank you!), you’ll have seen my posts about building the vampires’ world. But when I expanded the Mythmatched story universe beyond the Celtic fae-centric Fae Out of Water trilogy, I had to consider the shifters’ world too.

I planted a few seeds in Cutie and the Beast—Alun Kendrick, the fae warrior turned psychologist, had clients among the shifter community. So whether I liked it or not, I had to arrange the Supernatural Selection stories so they wouldn’t stomp all over those beginnings!

One of the things that I was glad I did—and I’d like to say I’d planned it that way from the beginning, but it was purely serendipitous—was imbue the shifters’ human aspects with characteristics of their animal nature. So, for instance, since dragons are acquisitive and protective of their treasure, dragon shifters hoard their prized possessions, defending them while at the same time wanting to display them out of pride of ownership.

Bears, like Ted in Single White Incubus, has a bear shifter’s pre-hibernation eating patterns, but he’s an anomaly among bears—he’s an extrovert who doesn’t like living alone like all the other adult bear shifters.

Rusty Johnson, in Vampire With Benefits, is a beaver shifter. Beavers are known for industriousness—“busy as a beaver”—and for constructing dams and lodges. Rusty is an Inactive—another aspect of shifter society introduced in Cutie and the Beast. The gene that enables the shift from human to animal aspect is dormant in him, but he still has beaver instincts: he went to college for construction engineering and owns his own construction company. He also loves to swim in icy cold lakes!

In Cutie and the Beast, Jackson Hoffenberg, the Inactive werewolf, is not a particularly well-adjusted person. He resents the fact that his inability to shift means low pack status. In the Supernatural Selection series, with Rusty and with the mention of other Inactives, I’ve extended the non-shifting ability beyond a single individual. All Inactives are required to have regular blood work and psychological evaluations.

Alun says that Rusty is the most stable and well-adjusted Inactive he knows, but that doesn’t mean Rusty isn’t fed up with the bias against him in his own clan and in the wider beaver shifter society. When his boyfriend throws him over for an arranged marriage with a woman from another clan, it sparks a chain of very uncharacteristic behavior in Rusty—he acts impulsively, and, among other things registers for Supernatural Selection.

And we know that doesn’t turn out at all the way he expects! 😉

About Vampire With Benefits

A match between a vampire and shifter could be deadly—but this broken beaver doesn’t give a dam.

Silent film actor Casimir Moreau had imagined that life as a vampire would be freewheeling and glamorous. Instead, he’s plunged into a restrictive society whose rules he runs afoul of at every turn. To “rehabilitate” him, the vampire council orders him mated to an incubus with impeccable breeding who’ll mold Cas into the upstanding vampire he ought to be. Or else.

As an inactive beaver shifter, construction engineer Rusty Johnson has fought—and overcome—bias and disrespect his entire life. But when his longtime boyfriend leaves him for political reasons, Rusty is ready to call it a day. Next stop? Supernatural Selection and his guaranteed perfect mate, a bear shifter living far away from Rusty’s disapproving clan.

But then a spell snafu at Supernatural Selection robs both men of their intended husbands. Rusty can’t face returning to his clan, and Cas needs somebody on his arm to keep the council happy, so they agree to pretend to be married. Nobody needs to know their relationship is fake—especially since it’s starting to feel suspiciously like the real thing.

Now available from Riptide Publishing!

AMAZON

About Supernatural Selection

Are you a shifter who’s lost faith in fated mates? A vampire seeking a Second Life companion? Or perhaps you’re a demon yearning to claim a soul (mate)?

Congratulations! Your search is over!

Welcome to Supernatural Selection, where our foolproof spells guarantee your perfect match.

Until they don’t.

Check out Supernatural Selection today.

About E.J. Russell

E.J. Russell holds a BA and an MFA in theater, so naturally she’s spent the last three decades as a financial manager, database designer, and business-intelligence consultant. After her twin sons left for college and she no longer spent half her waking hours ferrying them to dance class, she returned to her childhood love of writing fiction. Now she wonders why she ever thought an empty nest meant leisure.

E.J. lives in rural Oregon with her curmudgeonly husband, the only man on the planet who cares less about sports than she does. She enjoys visits from her wonderful adult children, and indulges in good books, red wine, and the occasional hyperbole.

Connect with E.J.:

Website: ejrussell.com

Blog: ejrussell.com/bloggery/

Facebook: www.facebook.com/E.J.Russell.author

Twitter: twitter.com/ej_russell

Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/ejrussell/

To celebrate the release of Vampire With Benefits one lucky person will win a $25 Riptide Publishing gift card and an ecopy of The Druid Next Door, the second title in the Fae Out of Water series, also from the Mythmatched universe! Leave a comment with your contact info to enter the contest. Entries close at midnight, Eastern time, on October 27, 2018. Contest is NOT restricted to U.S. entries. Thanks for following along, and don’t forget to leave your contact info!