Kelly Creagh named one of her dogs Annabel, after the dead girl in Poe’s last great poem, which tells you roughly everything about where her imagination has spent the last fifteen years. The Nevermore trilogy dragged a cheerleader into Poe’s dreamworld. Phantom Heart rebuilt Leroux’s opera house as a teenage nightmare. Strange Unearthly Things sent three psychics into a Jane Eyre that bled. Across all of it, Creagh borrowed dead authors’ scaffolding to write about grief, duality, and the self we keep in shadow.
A Date with Death, out from Gallery Books on 14 July, does something she has never done. It is her first adult novel, her first comedy, and the first time she has written Death himself rather than smuggling him in through somebody else’s text. A grumpy reaper. A sunshine children’s librarian. A botched soul collection at a Halloween party. Publishers Weekly handed it a starred review and called it beguiling. I wanted to understand how the most gothic writer in young adult fiction wrote the funniest book of her career, so I started where the body usually starts. With a fall.
“A Fate Far More Dangerous Than Death”: Kelly Creagh on Falling for the Reaper
Grim is sent to reap Helena Hart, mistakes the moment, and ends up catching her off a balcony with a skeletal hand instead of collecting her soul. The whole novel grows out of a reaper too charmed to do his job. When you trace it back to the very first spark, what came first: the gag of mistaking Death for a costumed party guest, the image of those bones closing around a living wrist, or Helena’s voice rattling on at a stranger who is supposed to kill her?
When I was contemplating how to approach crafting my adult debut novel, I knew I wanted to write in the cozy horror/paranormal romcom space. When I asked my nephew, a physics major, if he had any ideas, he shrugged and said, “What about the Grim Reaper?” My eyes lit up and my gloomy soul unfurled with glee. That was so me! But as dark as my heart is, I also love the color pink—all shades—dad jokes, and bright sunny summer days. So the thought of pairing the Grim Reaper with a bubbly librarian came to mind next because I used to work for the public library in children and teen services.
The children’s department of a library is filled with brightness, glitter, smiles, song, and laughter. What would happen if I paired Grim with a Children’s Librarian? I found out when I wrote about Helena at a Halloween costume party, spying someone out on the balcony dressed as the Grim Reaper, knowing all the while he was real—even if she didn’t. So, regarding the opening scene, that image and story beat came first. From there, Helena just started babbling at him.
When the book begins, she’s lonely and longing for love, and I think maybe she got a read on the deeper essence of Grim’s aura (while somehow missing the part about his being there to collect her soul). Knowing Grim so well now, I sometimes muse on what had to have been going through his skull when Helena started chattering to him about how cool his costume is and how she’s had a hard time adjusting to the newest version of the ABCs song.
No matter what his thoughts were, I think it’s obvious when he saves her that he did so partly because this moment with Helena has been the first time that he’s felt seen—really seen—in a very, very, (very) long time.
The book runs on two interiorities pulling in opposite directions, Grim brooding through centuries of duty and Helena chattering through one bad night. Sustaining both without flattening either looks like the hardest job in the book. How did you keep Grim funny without letting him curdle into something cute, and keep Helena bright without letting her thin out into the ditz the grumpy/sunshine setup always risks?
During high school and undergrad, I wrote, produced, and directed several comedic plays. I was also secretly my high school mascot, Sam the Ram, and I grew up with three brothers. All of this contributed to my education in the realm of comedy. I learned that when you have a stoic/broody/moody character, the humor of that character truly shines through their interactions with surrounding characters.
Grim’s grumpiness is funny mostly because of how it contrasts with the personalities around him—Helena’s especially. For instance, she accidentally gets glitter on him and is none the wiser. Grim on the other hand? Not okay for the rest of the book because he cannot get the sparkles out of his dark robes of doom.
Later in the novel, Grim eases up on Helena, but he never loses his grump—or his edge. When Helena tempts Grim out of his shell and even gets him to joke, his jokes are still wry, jaded, and deadpan. So I never broke the rule of having the stoic grumpy character be anything other than stoic and grumpy. He grows and has an arc, and he does soften, but he also maintains his disposition throughout. His brand of tenderness is still grumpy. But I think it even adds to the humor to see him struggle with keeping his grumpiness in the midst of his softening and becoming more human.
When it came to Helena, so much of her sunshine elements stem from her inherent playful side. As a children’s librarian, Helena works with young patrons. The whole reason she’s able to see Grim at all is because she hasn’t closed off her imagination or forgotten that whimsy, weirdness, and magic are real if you just have the right perspective. She recognizes that children have a natural connection to their imagination and aren’t closed to possibilities—no matter how fantastical. What I love about Helena is how important her work is to her, and not just her work, but her specific clientele—kids.
While working for the library, I earned my MFA in writing for children and young adults. I loved working with kids and writing for kids, and I think sometimes some adults view children as somehow separate from society, or maybe not even full members of society. Children’s literature is so layered, deep, and important. Helena understands that children are whole people all on their own with their own wisdom—wisdom that many adults forget or sadly grow out of. I think Helena remains sharp throughout the novel because she is genuinely wise. Mostly, she is wise enough to be herself—no matter what.
Throughout the novel, the reader learns how Helena’s joy, playfulness, and enthusiasm for life is something that, in certain circumstances and around certain people, has been something she’s had to hide and subdue. But she still can’t help but relish in the things she loves—even at the cost of being labeled “cringe” or even “ditzy.”
Ultimately, she’s not afraid of what people think. She’s going to do all the voices at storytime, quote her favorite books and movies, belt out with her musical soundtracks, and wear the weird earrings. She’s willing to pay the price of being unapologetically herself, no matter who it disturbs. And I think that’s what makes her shine as a heroine. Her authenticity certainly has Grim falling for her.
You have stocked Grim’s found family with names that do quiet work: a mouthy raven called Pluto, a colleague called Johann Faust, an antagonist called Cedric. Pluto is Poe’s bird and Poe’s black cat and the lord of the underworld all at once; Faust is the man who bargained for more than he could pay. How deliberately did you seed your gothic-literary DNA into the comedy, and what are those names doing underneath the jokes that a reader might miss on the first pass?
I love that you noticed this! Pluto was particularly fun to write, and adding him in was my brilliant editor’s idea.
She suggested I bring in a supernatural pet or friend of some kind for the Hallowed Halls—the place where Grim and his found family “live.” Because I got my start in publishing through writing about Poe, I always like to nod to the poet who has had such an influence on my work and life.
I chose a raven because a raven fit with the spooky mood of the novel, gave me a nod to Poe, and added depth to Johann, who it occurred to me would probably always want a second pair of eyes with him (more on that in a moment). I chose the name Pluto both because, as you mention, that’s the name of the cat in Poe’s short story “The Black Cat,” and because it’s also the name of the Roman god of the Underworld. Grim and his found family live in the Netherworld, which is more of a between space than an underworld, but all these elements seemed to beg for a mythological name for my Raven.
And adding Johann Faust to the story was a very deliberate choice made in the first draft of the novel. You mentioned in your introduction how I’ve written a YA retelling of Gaston Leroux’s The Phantom of the Opera. Growing up, Phantom was always my favorite story.
I was thirteen when I read the original novel, and I could never get enough. I sought out and devoured all versions of the story I could find, including books, movies, plays, and of course the famed musical.
In several of these iterations, the legend of Faust is recounted and parallelled with the Phantom’s story and plight, and the opera Faust often shows up. This was how I learned of the famed legend of the German scholar who sold his soul for riches, knowledge, and power. In some versions of the legend, Faust is whisked away to hell by the demon he originally bargained with—Mephistopheles. In other versions, he somehow escapes.
A Date with Death provides an answer for that “he somehow escapes” version of the story. Faust’s presence in the novel also allowed me to seed the presence of a character who will be quite important in the follow up to A Date with Death, which will be an interconnected, same-world standalone.
The pitch is light, but the engine underneath is mortality. Feelings give Grim “something far worse than death: life,” and Booklist clocked the message about what it means to be alive sitting under the whimsy. What was the actual question about living that this book set out to answer, and why did comedy turn out to be the way into it after a whole career spent approaching death through the gothic?
I feel this book asks the reader to remember that life is finite and not guaranteed—to anyone. And the joke about life being worse than death is commentary on what Poe, in his poem “For Annie” referred to as “The fever called ‘Living.’” Life is not always kind. Too often, it can be cruel. The emotions of sorrow, loss, grief, despondency, and ennui can certainly feel like fevers.
But life is also wondrous, invigorating, exciting, and poignant. It’s easy to forget that—but also seemingly part of the human condition to do so. With all the pressures of daily life, it’s easy, too, to forget to actually live. So I don’t think the novel seeks to answer any questions about life and death so much as it asks the reader to answer this one for themselves: Who and what is important to you, and how do you build a life that helps you prioritize those things?
Regarding the comedy, I think it’s a bit like a candy shell coating. You don’t know I’ve tampered with your paradigm and worldview until you’ve closed the book and have time to assess any new insight gained because, hopefully, you were too busy laughing. Mwa ha ha.
And my YA books have all had gothic hearts, yes, but I’ve always incorporated humor in everything I do. After all, if you can’t laugh at the darkness, well, then, it will have you.
Grim cannot remember who he was before he became Death, so your romantic lead is, in a real sense, a blank where a person used to be. That is a strange foundation to build longing on. How do you generate interiority and stakes for a hero with no past, and what did his forgetting let you say about identity and the self that a fully remembered backstory never could?
Grim may not remember who he was in life, but he does have an identity and a backstory as his current self—Grim. He has a family, too. Perhaps he keeps that family at a bony arm’s length, but he has one. He has a history with the Hallowed Halls and a “life” of sorts. He has a home. He even as a car. He’s been Grim for a very long time, and it’s not so much that he’s a blank as he is simply…someone else.
What he doesn’t have at the start of the novel is the courage to face his history and the man he once was. He might not remember what happened, but he does remember the pain. And that’s enough to keep him in tunnel vision mode with his job. If he doesn’t look at the pain, he can pretend it doesn’t exist. But running from pain never erases it.
When Grim meets Helena, he saves her instead of reaping her because, somehow, she touched that human part of him he’s buried under his new persona. The stakes rise because he wasn’t supposed to do that, and if he’s found out, he’ll be getting fired in a very supernatural way that does not bode well for him. But then the stakes rise again when Grim starts to fall for Helena. The threat of getting fired starts to pale in comparison to losing Helena.
Grim’s interiority is largely framed through the lens of his “monster” self—the identity that’s been superimposed over the old one almost like a Band-Aid. The wound is still there, just covered. It haunts him. Grim tries to outrun his problems and he does a fairly good job of it until Helena’s plight demands the attention of his human side.
What I think Grim’s two personas say about identity ties into choice. Grim chooses to remain oblivious to his past. He chooses to ignore the wound. He chooses to let his humanity vanish. He chooses to let his work devour him. But then Helena’s presence in Grim’s life asks him if he’s ready to choose something better.
The first time Grim touches Helena, it is bone on skin, and the reviews keep circling the tenderness the book wrings out of a being who is mostly skeleton. Writing desire across that body seems like a genuine craft trap: flinch from the horror of it and you lose the reaper, indulge it and you lose the romance. How did you write a skeleton as a credible object of want without either the horror or the swoon swallowing the other?
At the end of the day, Grim is still human. Even in his skeletal monstrous form, he’s a human. Maybe he’d deny that. Actually, he does assert to his friends at one point that he happens to be a “dead ass skeleton.” But he’s still a man. And I think the romance, at its heart, has everything to do with Grim’s very human desire for Helena’s affection.
Because he’s a monster—and a skeleton—when he first meets Helena, he’s not thinking about her in a romantic sense at all. Even when he starts to like her, he’s not letting himself go there. How can he? But then he does let himself go there. He develops feelings for Helena—and that’s when he forbids himself from taking his human form around her. He must stay the monster because his monster side protects him from all vulnerability. (At least that’s what he tells himself.) He’s also not supposed to interfere with the lives of the living. So the forbidden element to the romance also enhances the romantic tension.
Ultimately, though, Grim can’t resist Helena’s charm, wit, humor, and tenderness. The glow of her radiant smile breaks through the gloom. He’s able to keep his distance—until she touches him, reminding him how he hasn’t always been a monster. And the war between his two sides intensifies.
The romance also blooms out of Grim’s struggle with himself to resist. To stay in his “comfort zone” of being a “dead ass skeleton.” But, of course, Death is defeated—and he ultimately can’t stay away.
Death and the shadow self have been your constants since Nevermore, but you have always routed them through a borrowed canonical text, Poe, then Leroux, then Brontë. A Date with Death drops the dead author entirely and writes Death straight. What shifted in how you relate to your lifelong subject that you no longer needed someone standing between you and it?
Nevermore was born out of my discovery of Poe’s mysterious death, and I included many of his stories and elements of his life in the trilogy. I never saw Poe or his work as standing between me and my own story. Instead, I viewed his work and life as a lush stage on which to create my own play about a cheerleader and a goth boy who fall in love. Phantom Heart and Strange Unearthly Things unfolded in a similar manner creatively since these titles are far from beat-for-beat retellings.
But you’re right. A Date with Death is the first time I’ve ventured into a project that does not find its roots in gothic literature.
As was the case with Nevermore, I started writing A Date with Death on a pure whim. Just for fun. I had a children’s librarian and the Grim Reaper one-on-one. What could go wrong? Only everything. Which made the setup ideal.
I also went into this story with my love of gothic literature, children’s literature, mythology, Shakespeare, and theatre all tumbling around in the back of my head.
I’d worked in the library. I’ve delivered some mean storytimes to laughing ovations. I’ve even white-knuckle driven a behemoth bookmobile that I might have had a love/hate relationship with. Why not use all of that?
Being in the space of writing an adult book also took some guardrails off. Grim for instance is, as Helena observes, quite the potty mouth.
So I just went into this book being totally, completely, and utterly my unhinged self. Some of that self has been influenced by all the dead authors, but they weren’t sitting shotgun this time so much as they were enjoying the show from the sidelines with popcorn while shouting a few suggestions my way—like “make Pluto a raven!”
So what shifted? Perhaps not having any lines to color within other than the genre expectations of romance.
I’ll say, it sure was fun.
Strange Unearthly Things was described as straddling moody gothic romance and bleak horror, an Elias Thornfield who reads like Mr. Darcy with a splash of Dr Frankenstein. The same border between love and dread runs straight through Grim, except the tone has flipped. What did writing Elias and Fairfax Hall teach you about that line that you carried into this book and then deliberately inverted?
When Strange Unearthly Things begins, Elias is despondent. He’s got a big problem and faces a hopeless situation. He teeters toward despair, and the plot kicks off with a Hail Mary of his devising. (At least he thinks it’s of his devising.)
Grim’s dynamic is different. Instead of being despondent, he’s cranky as hell. Not directly because of anything that’s happened to him—he doesn’t remember his human past. Antisocial grumpiness has just become his baseline, and unlike Elias, the idea of change isn’t even on his radar. It hasn’t been for centuries. In that way, Grim is almost a literal representation of the last stage of grief—acceptance. And while Grim might not be thrilled with what his existence has become, he’s not complaining, either. Well, not unless you get in his way…
Both male leads begin their stories resolved to their fates. Until the female leads enter to shake up their worlds and, in very different ways, embody the hope both they have written off.
But while Elias welcomes change—even pines for it, Grim resists.
I think that’s where the comedy comes in for Grim. If he had a nose (which he doesn’t in his skeletal monster form), he would absolutely cut it off to spite his face. That becomes less true as he gets to know Helena. But his impulse to defend against anyone finding out he has something to lose—someone—makes him endearing.
While Elias starts the novel admitting, however begrudgingly, to being defenseless, Grim fiercely denies his growing vulnerability.
And if Elias is like Mr. Darcy and Dr. Frankenstein, then Grim is like Batman and the Grinch with a spicy vocabulary. Which is how I was able to make his vulnerability funny rather than scary. Elias, like Grim, is in desperate need of help, but he’s willing to ask for it and participate. Grim might be in trouble, but he’ll be damned if anyone A, finds out about it, B, tries to help, C, attempts to touch is effing scythe in the meantime.
So that’s where the flip comes in. Elias is ready for change. Grim changes and for the better, but he sure is uncomfortable, supremely vexed, and foul-mouthed through the process.
I think it’s this difference in the narratives that makes Elias tragic and Grim hilarious.
Moving from YA gothic at Atheneum and Viking to an adult romcom at Gallery Books is a real pivot after a readership built over fifteen years. Pivots like that tend to cost something and free something at the same time. What made you step out of the audience and register you were known for, and what did the move let you do on the page that you could not do before?
Writing A Date with Death has only enhanced my life and career. I’ve been writing YA for years, but my audience has grown up with my books. Many of my longtime readers are ready for adult titles, and A Date with Death still harkens to my paranormal romance brand. Especially since, as mentioned, there are ties to literature, lore, and mythology in A Date with Death, too. Additionally, I feel my background in YA and gothic literature allowed me to do something unique in the adult paranormal romcom space, letting me kick around literary elements while rolling them in the glitter of pop culture.
As you mentioned, all my YA books deal in some way with the subject of death. Teen readers are in a space of discovering their own mortality. The concept of death becomes deeper, more real, and serious as readers move into adolescence. By the time we meet Helena and Grim, however, both characters have been through quite a bit. So it was fun exploring characters with a bit more history and life experience. Their daily problems are different in essence to those of teens, and there weren’t any guardrails in the form of parents or guardians to address or loop in.
I’m still writing in the YA space, too, though, and I have another retelling forthcoming with Viking next year, a Hades and Persephone/Orpheus and Eurydice mashup reimagining titled A Promise to Hades. I’m doing something new there, too, though, by venturing out of a purely gothic setting and into a fantasy/romantasy world.
So I’m finding much joy in writing for both audiences, and I’m deeply grateful to be gaining new readers in both spaces.
Paranormal and monster romance are surging right now, and the market is busy turning demons, vampires, and Death itself into men readers are meant to root for. The worry from the horror side is simple: romance a monster long enough and you defang it. When you make the reaper a romantic lead, does the horror survive the love story, or does some of it have to die for the romance to land? And where do you think this monster-romance wave is actually taking the genre?
I think monster romance is so popular because it dances with the idea not that a monster can be tamed, but that when paired with the right partner, he can be reformed. But monster romance goes a step further. Because monster romance readers don’t necessarily want a monster that’s reformed in general. They’re more intrigued, I think, with the idea that the monster is reformed only for one person. It’s the classic beauty and the beast trope amplified and ramped up, pairing a creature with the one person who can entice the monster to humanity.
Women in particular I think long to be seen, cherished, and, yes, picked. Understandably, they want to be the only one in their partner’s eyes.
Monsters notoriously have traits like possessiveness, anger, rage, and viciousness.
I think the fantasy for readers is that the right romantic partner can and does entice a softer side from the “beast.” I think the allure is tied into how the monster romance’s heroine/hero almost talks the monster out of their monstrousness—but just for them.
To anyone and everyone else, the monster remains a monster.
So I think monster romance is a space where monsters can keep their monstrousness and remain scary. The allure is that they only “transform” into their more human selves for their beloved.
Regarding A Date with Death, I think the horror in the story ties into the idea that Grim must perform his reaping duty on someone he’s come to care for. He’s spent so long being impartial and mechanical, but now he’s doomed because his heart’s involved. The novel is a comedy, but I do think there’s genuine terror tied in with the idea that he is bound by duty to be his beloved’s undertaker.
I don’t think Grim ever truly loses his monstrousness in the novel. Helena falls in love with all sides of him, including that one. And I love that he retains his darker self throughout.
Regarding where monster romance is headed, I think it will continue to grow in popularity and expand. Looking back at my previous works, I actually think I’ve been writing monster romance this entire time—it was just never called that until now.
So while the trope of “beauty and the beast” has always been in play, I think monster romance takes it to the next level by letting the monsters be monsters—and stay that way.
The structural problem at the heart of this book fascinates me: Grim’s own colleagues are trying to collect Helena’s soul while he keeps delaying her fate, yet the romance genre contract promises the reader she lives. Manufacturing real fear for a character the form has already guaranteed survives is a tall order. What was the specific technical fix that let you keep mortal dread alive inside a story everyone knows ends happily?
Most romance writers employ some element of “Will they/won’t they?” into their stories to help establish and maintain tension. Death stakes are present in nearly all stories, even if the death is metaphorical, like the loss of a job or a relationship. My stakes do involve literal death stakes—will Helena die, or won’t she? But since A Date with Death is a romance, the death stakes are still also, “Will they/won’t they be together?”
And romance is a genre that demands a “yes” to that question in some form, be it granting the characters a happily ever after or a happy-for-now conclusion. I think reading a romance is much like going to a restaurant and ordering a favorite meal. You know what you’re going to get, and you know the dessert is going to be sweet. But knowing you’re getting dessert doesn’t diminish the main course.
So I think readers love jumping into romances that provide the safety net of a happily ever after. They can sit back and enjoy the central conflict of the novel even more knowing that no matter how bad it gets the conclusion will unfold in the couple’s favor. Considering genre, I think the romance readership views that surety and promise as more of a feature than a bug.
It’s also a bit like getting on a roller coaster. You go in knowing there will be some thrills, turns, and chills, but you also know you’ll be getting off at the end and all will be well. The promise of disembarking in one piece becomes the selling point.
You built a career on dread at the level of the line, and this time the line has to carry a joke. Those are different muscles. How did your sentence-level machinery change when the job became calibrating comedy so it lands without puncturing the threat, and after all of it, did you find writing funny harder than writing frightening?
Regarding the comedy at a line level, I just had fun with setups and knock-downs/punchlines. Having done so much work in the theatre and some with improv, dialogue became my favorite tool when incorporating humor into this book. Pairing opposites and juxtaposing those personalities also helped to foster the humor.
For me, writing funny was somewhat easier than writing scary—though I enjoy them both. My first stories were comedic, and I wrote a lot of comedy as a kid and young adult. As I mentioned, I grew up with three brothers and in the theatre, so I’ve always been up to comedic antics of some sort.
After I started publishing books, one of my high school creative writing teachers who created a space for her students to write, produce, and direct their own plays pleaded for me to “write something funny.” I just never tried my hand at it until recently, and when I started putting words on the paper for A Date with Death, I just went all-in on the humor, reveling in the banter, the shenanigans, the absurdity. It’s been such fun.
My dry and acerbic humor for sure comes from my dad, while my sillier madcap comedy comes from my mom. The tomfoolery and cutthroat one-liners? My brothers.
You have to be quick when you grow up as the only girl.
You named a dog after Poe’s dead beloved, and you have spent fifteen years imagining death from every angle a story allows, the grieving, the haunted, the trapped. This is the first book where you let Death choose life instead. After all that, I am curious whether writing a reaper who refuses to reap changed anything about how you actually feel about your own mortality, or whether it only changed how you write it.
I don’t actually write about death so much as I write about love. Death is a theme in my writing, but mostly because of how its darkness contrasts so starkly with the elements of light that I weave into my novels. All my books are romances except for one. That one is a love story. So love is the strongest theme in my books.
I named my dog Annabel because “Annabel Lee” is my favorite poem by Poe. It was the last completed poem Poe ever wrote, and it is widely believed the poem is a tribute to his wife, Virgina, whose death he struggled with immensely. The poem is melancholy, but also stunningly beautiful in how it paints a portrait of a love that transcends even death.
The narrator is mourning, but there is hope. There’s that light in the poem, which is made so bright because the shadows are so dark. That’s why I’ve written so much in the realm of the gothic and circled the theme of death so often. Because if love can conquer death, then it truly is, as Poe wrote, “alove that is more than love.”
Writing a reaper who refuses to reap, for me, was less about exploring mortality than exploring the idea that everyone can find their person, and that true love does exist—something that even my super optimistic librarian, Helena, is starting to doubt when the novel begins.
Grim initially spares Helena on a whim, but what I want readers to ask themselves (and to find out through reading) is why Helena? After centuries of reaping, what about Helena Hart rattles Grim? She changes him the moment she meets him—all just by being herself. She brings life to his dead world, reminding him of everything he’s sworn off because he’s written life off as being too painful.
And what’s more romantic than that?
Death is present, but love is the bigger presence.
And A Date with Death did not change my view on mortality so much as it grew out of a changed view of it.
Life truly is precious, and I’m so glad I got to spend part of mine conveying that message through this story.
Every book you have made has been, in its way, an argument with death: Poe’s, Erik’s, the things loose in Fairfax Hall, and now Grim’s. A Date with Death is the first time you have let death lose the argument. So here is the thing none of your books quite settle. When you imagine the very last reaping, your own, do you write yourself a Grim who refuses, or do you finally let him do his job?
Having lost important people, I have been in the presence of death more than once. My Annabel, too, is now across the rainbow bridge—and yes, I loved her with a love that was more than love.
Once, when I was a kid, I was riding down the road with my grandfather. He drove a big white van and he talked a lot. I was a quiet kid. I listened a lot.
We passed a cemetery. He pointed, indicating the gravestones, and he said, “You see all those people over there? Those people thought they were important once.”
He didn’t say much after that, and I’m not sure what exactly he was getting at—even today. At the time, I was probably around eleven or twelve.
Years later, when I was in high school, he passed away suddenly. There wasn’t any way to tell him he was still important to me, but that didn’t change the fact that he was—and is.
I have been blessed to live, laugh, love, and to create and share my art. I feel I have lived well. Would I maybe haunt some folks if given the opportunity? That honestly sounds like fun.
At the end of the day, though, I’ll take my leave like everyone else.
I won’t leave all the way, though. The world has my books. I’m sure some of those kids from the library remember my hair-brained storytimes. I’ve taught dance for years, and my essence will live on in those who perform the moves I taught them.
Maybe I won’t be important. But that’s okay. I’ll have still made an impact—andthat’s what is important.
A Date With Death by Kelly Creagh
When the Grim Reaper develops feelings for the children’s librarian whose soul he is supposed to collect, he finds that with feelings comes something far worse than death—life.
Helena Hart isn’t having the best night. Her date just ditched her, her Halloween costume bombed, and her only sympathetic ear is a dead silent partygoer in a Grim Reaper get-up. But when she falls off a balcony and he catches her with a very real skeletal hand, she realizes he may not be a party guest at all. Before she can process the near-death experience, he vanishes, leaving her to wonder if she hallucinated the whole thing.
Grim isn’t supposed to save souls. He’s supposed to reap them. And while he’s not sure why he spared Helena, he does know that if his superiors find out, he’s as good as dust—which is saying something for a guy who’s mostly bones. But keeping away from Helena is proving harder than expected—especially when she isn’t the least bit afraid of his monstrous form.
Worse, to his horror, Helena makes him feel. And for a reaper, feeling is a fate far more dangerous than death.
Kelly Creagh
Kelly is the author of the Nevermore Trilogy, Phantom Heart, Strange Unearthly Things, and other works filled with darkness, light, and the kisses that happen in between. Her major literary influences include Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens, Gaston Leroux, Susan Kay, Robin McKinley, Stephen King, C.S. Lewis, Robert Louis Stevenson, Lewis Carroll, Libba Bray, Holly Black, and too many more to name.
Kelly holds a Bachelor of Science in Theatre Arts and a Master of Fine Arts in Writing for Children and Young Adults. In addition to writing, Kelly enjoys teaching and lecturing about subjects she loves, including creative writing and Edgar Allan Poe. She is also a silk artist, creating beautiful and colorful hand-dyed silk scarves for wear and veils for bellydancing.
When not writing, Kelly can usually be found curled up with a good book, entertaining her three small dogs, performing the ancient art of bellydance, or teaching one of her weekly dance classes.
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