Spotlight & Giveaway: Bears Behaving Badly by MaryJanice Davidson

Posted March 19th, 2020 by in Blog, Spotlight / 37 comments

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author MaryJanice Davidson to HJ!
Spotlight&Giveaway

 

Hi MaryJanice and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, Bears Behaving Badly!

 

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

Bears Behaving Badly is about a foster care system for shapeshifting minors, the people who work there, and the vulnerable shifters in their charge. We know there’s a dark web, a deep web, a super-duper secret web, a fifth column, a shadow government, black market cheese, and underground wrestling, so why not a foster care system set up for vulnerable and/or dangerous minors? And not just any minors: shapeshifters. And not just shapeshifters: traumatized shifters who would be incredibly dangerous to others even without the PTSD.

Like any underground organization, it runs parallel (but unnoticed) beside the foster care system for Stables (Shifter slang for ordinary bipeds like me and thee). And while weres only make up a small percentage of the population, that’s still a lot of orphans to keep track of. And because life isn’t complicated enough, while my characters are going about the business of saving vulnerable shifters, hanging over their heads at all times is the constant fear of discovery by the wider world of homo sapiens, the most rapacious predators in the history of the planet.
 

Please share your favorite quote from the book:

“How dare you hatch plots against me in my favorite bakery without inviting me!”

 

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

  • The snores of a werebear cub sound like a gravel truck in low gear.
  • It is entirely possible to put too much maple syrup in your coffee.
  • Raptors adore chicken McNuggets.

 

If you could have given your characters one piece of advice before the opening pages of the book, what – would it be and why?

For the love of God, you idiots, talk to each other. (The why seems obvious.  )
 

What do you want people to take away from reading this book?

That home is where you hang your hat. It’s not the building—the house or the apartment or the trailer or whatever—it’s the people.
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

 

Giveaway: A paperback copy of Bears Behaving Badly by MaryJanice Davidson

 

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: What’s more important: saving a dozen children, or keeping the Shifter world a secret, which shields millions of werebears and werewolves from discovery by a species with a record of hostility and genocide?

 
a Rafflecopter giveaway

 

Excerpt from Bears Behaving Badly:

“So you watch movies,” Annette observed, “but you don’t know who Lecter is? Because that’s—” She cut herself off as a long, black car suddenly swung out of a spot at the end of the row and arrowed toward them, wheels squealing as the driver wrenched the wheel to make the turn. “Oh, wonderful. These are the idiots who cause pileups the first time it snows. And the second time.”
“Aren’t you gonna smile at them?” David asked with a smile of his own. “I thought that was your thing. You grin and it freaks people out.”
“I don’t grin. You’ve got me confused with a Jack O’Lantern. No, I’m polite, and if that happens to freak people out, I have no control…over…”—Was the thing speeding up?—“that…uh…”
Over the course of the next three seconds, many things happened. Well, four things happened. (1) Annette clamped down on Dev’s collarbone and yanked, ignoring the kit’s yelp as she sent him sailing over her shoulder. (2) The car did an excellent job of trying to cream all three of them. (3) David slammed into her with the finesse of a garbage truck. (4) The car roared past and down the first ramp behind them.
“Oh my God, Net, are you okay?”
“Argh,” Annette groaned. “My skeletal structure…” Then: “Net?”
“Did it hit you?” Dev cried.
“No, that was me,” David said, which was especially startling since his face was less than two inches from hers. In a feat of disastrous timing, she abruptly found she loved his aftershave, which was warm and spicy, like expensive pepper. And his denim-blue eyes, inches from hers, were the sky. Which was a good trick since they were in a parking garage. “Are you okay, hon?”
Hon? Maybe he meant Hun, as in “Attila the.” Have people always had nicknames for me, or is this something new everyone’s trying? I want to put my arms around him. I’d better put my arms around him. I will put my arms around him.
No. From her perspective, that is to say, from beneath him (groan), he was solid, steady warmth. Solid and sky-colored eyes and she wasn’t going to hug her crush while on the floor of a filthy parking garage in the wake of their attempted murder.
Right?
Right.
“Your breath smells like Skittles. That’s not a criticism. And I’m reasonably certain the car did hit me. Feels like it, anyway,” she groaned, elbowing David off her bones. She looked up and saw Dev had landed with the inherent quickness and grace of his kind
(generalizing’s bad, but truth be told, I’ve never met a clumsy werefox)
and was peering down at them while clinging to the top of a cement pillar. His eyes were so huge they dominated his small, pointed face.
“I’m fine,” she said, gingerly feeling her ribs.
“Jeez, I didn’t mean to hurt you.” David’s expression was still calm, but she could hear his distress.
“Comparably speaking, you didn’t. Sorry, nearly getting run over wreaks havoc on my manners. Thank you very much, don’t mind my grumbling, I welcome the bruises because the dead don’t bruise, and I am astonished and impressed by your speed.” Then, louder: “Come down, Dev.”
He let go and dropped to the top of a small SUV, so lightly he left no dent and made hardly any sound, then bounded back to her side. She took him by the shoulders, peered into his face, and felt his skull, which he tolerated with a minimum of squirming. “You’re all right?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Nothing scraped? Broken? Spindled? Folded?”
“I’m good. You had me flying before I had time to be scared,” he replied. “I bet you flipped me ten feet!”
“No betting. And…Net? What was that about?”
He blushed, which was amazing, since Dev Devoss was the poster boy for shameless. “S’just somethin’ we call you,” he said in a voice so low she had to bend closer to hear. Under different circumstances she would have followed up, but the child was clearly distressed. Oh, and someone had just tried to kill them.
Or maybe just kill Dev.
Which was worse.
She turned to David. “Thank you again.” Now! Hug him now! You’re not on your back anymore. Totally appropriate time and setting! “I should have said that first before talking about your breath.”
“I understand,” he replied, straight-faced.
“I like your aftershave,” she said, because she was a touch-starved moron, apparently.
He smiled a little. “Thanks.”
Dev was staring at them. “You guys wanna get a room?”
“Hush up, Dev.” To David, in growing confusion and despair: “What is going on?”
“Nothing good.”

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 

Book Info:

These social worker bear shifters give the term “mama bear” a whole new meaning! Bestselling author MaryJanice Davidson is back with this brand-new paranormal romance series featuring a foster care system for at-risk shifter babies and teens.

Werebear shifter Annette Garsea is a caseworker for the Interspecies Placement Agency. When a selectively mute and freakishly strong teen werewolf is put in her custody, Annette has to uncover the young girl’s secrets if she’s to have any hopes of helping her. And not even the growling of a scruffy private investigator can distract her from her mission…

Bear shifter David Auberon appreciates Annette’s work with at-risk teen shifters, but he’s not sure if her latest charge is so much a vulnerable teen as a predator who should be locked up. All that changes when he, Annette, and her motley band of juveniles find themselves dodging multiple murder attempts and uncovering a trafficking cartel that doesn’t just threaten the kids, but risks discovery of the shifters by the wider world of homo sapiens.

Book Links: Amazon | B&N | iTunes | Kobo | Google |
 

Meet the Author:

MaryJanice Davidson is the NYT and USA Today best-selling author of the UNDEAD and UNWED paranormal romcom series. Her books have been published in over a dozen languages and have been bestsellers worldwide. A former model and medical test subject (two jobs that are closer than you’d think), she lives with her family in St. Paul, MN.

Author Website: https://www.maryjanicedavidson.org/
 
 
 

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37 Responses to “Spotlight & Giveaway: Bears Behaving Badly by MaryJanice Davidson”

  1. erahime

    Both because children are precious and the normal world is not ready for shifters.

  2. Diana Hardt

    Both because the children should be protected and the human world is not ready for their kind.

  4. Debra Guyette

    That is quite a conundrum. Saving the children seems logical but if that means losing all of them, then logic goes out the window. Then their own would die. I would have to see the situation more clearly to make a decision.

  8. Kim

    That is such a HARD question. I say both are equally as important. You have to figure out a way to protect both.

  10. Joy Tetterton Avery

    If the secret isn’t kept then there will be a lot more dead children.

  11. Lilah Chavez

    Please tell me they figure out a way to save both?! they’re children, they didn’t ask to be born. But there also other children not within that group that need to be saved aswell. Everyone deserves to have a chance.

  12. Angel Hollmeyer Crum

    That is a tough choice!! I vote for keeping a group of people safe….but

  16. Anna Nguyen

    savete kids because you have more control over that. if the secret gets out it may not turn out to be so bad if the society works together to protect it

  22. Patricia B.

    That is a difficult choice to make. It is most important to keep an entire population safe from discovery and destruction. It is very difficult on a personal level to be willing to sacrifice a few young children to accomplish that. In this case especially, it would be best to destroy those who threaten the population and discovery.

  29. hendeis

    Would want to have the children saved, then maybe there could be a way to keep the shifter secret.