Shifting Into High Fear

Ghost/god Wes Cooper and his not-life partner, vampire Hudson Rojas, have settled into cohabitation in an upscale part of Toronto. So what if their hoity-toity new neighbors haven’t exactly rolled out the welcome mat for the paranormal pair? Their PI business is booming, and when a suspect they’ve been tailing winds up in the morgue, it’s alongside a rash of other shifters in apparent drug-related fatalities.

Now Wes and Hudson must connect the dots between the shifter deaths and an uptick in brutal vampire attacks across the city. Throw in a surprise visit from Hudson’s niece—who may or may not be on the run from European paranormal police (who may or may not exist)—and guardianship of a teen shifter who might be the key to solving the whole mystery (if only she could recover her memory), and Wes and Hudson have never been busier…or happier.

But when a nightmare from Hudson’s past comes back to haunt him, their weird, little found family is pushed to the brink. Mucking this up would mean Hudson and Wes missing their second chance at happily-forever-afterlife…

Release Date: November 4, 2019
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Virtual House Hunting

by Jenn Burke

At the end of Give Up the Ghost, Wes finally gives in to Hudson’s request to move in together. He always wanted to; he was just scared because of all of his secrets. But with those out of the way, it’s time to find a house!

Hunting down a house for these two was a lot of fun. It was like house hunting for myself, but with a budget I could only dream about…which was a good thing, since I was looking in the Toronto area. House prices in TO are super expensive.

My first step was to determine what Wes could have sold his apartment building for, and what Hudson might have gotten for the land his house used to be on. Then I padded those numbers with savings I imagined they both had, because why not. This is a fantasy, after all.

With that budget, I went shopping. Virtually, of course. I had some specs in mind:

• It had to be large. Family is a big theme of the Not Dead Yet series, as both Hudson and Wes adapt to—and end up appreciating—their found family as it continues to grow. Hudson especially loves being surrounded by his band, so having space to entertain and house his people was very important. It had to have about five to six bedrooms, and the same amount of bathrooms, plus office space, a big kitchen and dining room, and space for people to gather.
• It had to be in Toronto proper. I didn’t want to deviate from the previous books too much by setting them in one of the outlying sections of the Greater Toronto Area.
• It had to have land. Not a lot, but enough that the neighbours weren’t right on top of them so they could keep their paranormal secrets.

I went to a couple of websites to have a look at the houses that were for sale in Toronto. If you want to waste a few hours, check out Realtor.ca and Sotheby’s Canada and let your imagination run wild.

I looked at some of the high-end neighbourhoods in Toronto, such as Forest Hills, York Mills, and Bridle Path. That last neighbourhood seemed to have the type of lot and size of house I was looking for, so I started searching real estate listings in that neighbourhood specifically. After a little bit of browsing, I found a house that I thought Wes and Hudson would love. For (gulp) about $5 million.

Unfortunately, the listing is no longer available because the property was sold…which I discovered when I went back to my Pinterest board to have a look at it during edits. Ack!

Another site to the rescue! Dream Home Source is a great resource for house floor plans. I found a plan very close to the house I’d originally flagged on the real estate site. And bonus, the floor plans helped me keep the interior of the house straight when I was describing it.

If you want to see what Wes and Hudson’s house looks like, check out my Pinterest board for Graveyard Shift!

Jenn Burke has loved out-of-this-world romance since she first read about heroes and heroines kicking butt and falling in love as a preteen. Now that she’s an author, she couldn’t be happier to bring adventure, romance, and sexy times to her readers.

Jenn is the author of a number of paranormal and science fiction romance titles, including the critically acclaimed Chaos Station science fiction romance series (authored with Kelly Jensen) and her newest series, Not Dead Yet, both from Carina Press.

She’s been called a pocket-sized and puntastic Canadian on social media, and she’ll happily own that label. Jenn lives just outside of Ottawa, Ontario, with her husband and two kids, plus two dogs named after video game characters…because her geekiness knows no bounds.

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Genre: Paranormal Genre: Romance Orientation: Asexual (+ace-spec) Orientation: Gay Pairing: M/M Publisher: Carina Press Tag: Age-Gap Tag: Guest Post Tag: Magic Tag: Part of a series Tag: PoC Tag: Second Chances Tag: Shifter Graveyard Shift Jenn Burke Not Dead Yet