Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Kelly Creagh to HJ!
Hi Kelly and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, A DATE WITH DEATH!
Please summarize the book for the readers here:
Children’s Librarian Helena Hart is longing for love but having a hard time connecting with the men she dates. On Halloween night, after being ignored by her latest date at a costume party, she escapes onto the balcony to discover another partygoer—a man dressed in an epic Grim Reaper costume.
Charmed, Helena peppers him with questions, regales him with tales about her job, and laments how her own costume hasn’t gone over so well.
The stoic partygoer never says a word. When part of the balcony crumbles and she falls, however, he does save her—with a skeletal hand—before vanishing.
But Grim wasn’t supposed to save the librarian. He was supposed to allow fate to take its course so that he could reap her soul. Now he’s in hot water with his superiors, and to avoid getting fired and enduring the unpleasant fate that would follow, he now must keep saving Helena. At least until he can figure out how to smuggle her soul to its proper destination without being detected.
A prospect that becomes increasingly impossible for the grumpy Grim the more he gets to know—and fall in love with—the sunshine librarian with the bright smile and musical laugh.
Please share your favorite line(s) or quote from this book:
I have a few!
Here’s an internal from Helena. This comes when they’re having a tense conversation amid an even more harrowing situation. Still, Helena has a moment of consideration regarding Grim.
Oh, wow. He said my name. With that voice.
And he had a potty mouth.
The way I felt about that was…interesting.Here’s an internal from Grim’s perspective when one of his cohorts suggests he take Helena on a proper date.
Was he hearing himself? That was a disastrous idea. Spending time with Helena had so far only turned me into an obsessive, reckless-driving, kidnapping murderer with an insatiable and newly acquired appetite for her immortal soul.
Fuck me. Maybe vampires were misunderstood.
I think my favorite quote comes when Helena and Grim are discussing his driver’s license. I don’t want to give it away, but readers will know the line when they get there.
Please share a few Fun facts about this book…
- I was inspired to write Helena as a children’s librarian because I used to work in children’s and teen services with the public library system. I sort of accidentally landed a job that put me behind the wheel of the gargantuan children’s bookmobile.
- While I loved doing storytime with the kids, I was absolutely petrified driving that huge bus, and doing so stressed me out so much. I even bartered with my co-worker’s to do their storytimes if they agreed to do the driving. So it was super cathartic to bring the children’s bookmobile into this story and have it loom as a terrifying presence—one that scares even Grim.
What first attracts your Hero to the Heroine and vice versa?
When Helena first spots Grim, she mistakes him for a costumed Halloween partygoer. She’s enchanted and charmed by the movie-level quality of his epic Grim Reaper costume. I think it’s her love of stories, magic, and, ironically, make-believe that draw her to Grim, who she has no idea is the real Grim Reaper. Or that he’s come to collect her.
Grim’s first impression of Helena is less obvious. Clearly, though, the reader can tell that Helena had some kind of impact on Grim, even if he can’t name what that impact is himself when we enter his point of view.
What first attracted Grim to Helena, though, was her authenticity. That and her willingness to see the true him, even in a moment when she had no idea who he truly was.
Did any scene have you blushing, crying or laughing while writing it? And Why?
Blushing? YES. Crying and laughing? Also, yes.
I had spicy scenes in the first draft of the book, but my editor’s notes pointed out a few aspects of Grim and Helena’s interactions that I wasn’t fully capitalizing on in spicier moments.
For instance, early in the novel, Helena is attracted to Grim’s dark doom voice and his looming presence. She takes special note of the shadows that whisk around him, and she even likes his skeleton hands.
Grim has a hot human form, too, and Helena also digs his multitude of tattoos.
My editor suggested I allow Grim to be both his sides during the spicy scenes, and I blushed when certain words got tossed around—but in a good way! The revision resulted in much steamier scenes with moments of monster spice that I love.
Here is a small moment from one of those scenes from Helena’s perspective.
“Perfection,” he murmured against my lips, eyes shutting as if it was the softness of my skin he was savoring. Then he opened his eyes again, pupils expanded as they drove that stare into me. “Pretty thing. I will have you.”
That last set of words. His lips didn’t move with those.
Instead, his dark voice came through him. Like an escaped thought.
I flushed, taken aback even as my arousal reached new head-spinning levels.
It was as if the man in him and the monster had, in that moment, reached some dark agreement about me, their commentary seemingly more for one another.
There’s also a side character I love—a teen who works at the library with Helena named Hunter. He pops in a few times in the book, and his dialogue was extra fun to write. Here’s a moment from early in the novel when Helena startles him in the stacks.
“Holy shit fritters,” said Hunter, and I glanced up to find him pressing a palm to his chest. “’Scuse my language, Miss Hart,” he said as he pulled out the AirPods, “but you scared the sloth snot outta me.”
I twitched a smile, the first I’d managed since the party. Since the…incident.
“Sorry,” I said. “I’m…looking for a book. System says it’s in, but it wasn’t on the shelf. Thought it might be on your cart.”
“What book?” he scoffed. “How to Scare Friends and Terrify People? Cheese and crackers, I’ll never have the hiccups again, so I can thank your jack-in-the-box ass for that.”
Regarding the part that made me cry, I won’t quote it here because it’s a spoiler. But it’s near the end, right before the villain has his big moment.
Readers should read this book….
Because Death is hot, grumpy, and obsessed—with Helena.
Also because of all the lore. Johann Faust, the famed scholar and astronomer from German lore, finds new life in this novel, and is still, after all these centuries, hiding from his old frenemy, Mephistopheles.
There’s also a renegade wizard, a wise-cracking Scottish fairy, a sassy raven, and spicy antics in a graveyard.
What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have in the works?
Currently, I’m working on revisions for my second paranormal romcom with Gallery, which is an interconnected same-universe standalone featuring a diabolical male main character who is alluded to in A Date with Death. He’s an absolute riot to write, and I can’t wait to share his story.
I’m also working on edits for my next YA retelling, A Promise to Hades, which reimagines the tale of Hades and Persephone while mixing in the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice in a romantasy setting.
Thanks for blogging at HJ!
Giveaway: A copy of A DATE WITH DEATH by Kelly Creagh
To enter Giveaway, please share this post on your Socials and Leave a comment below to this Q: If you could take the Grim Reaper on a date anywhere, where would you take him and what would you do?
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Book Info:
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.
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Meet the Author:
Kelly Creagh is a 2008 graduate of Spalding University’s MFA in Creative Writing program. When not writing, haunting bookstore coffee shops, or obsessively studying Poe, Kelly’s passions include the ancient art of belly dance. She lives with her squirrely, attitude-infused dogs—Annabel, Jack, and Holly—in the heart of Old Louisville, Kentucky’s largest and spookiest Victorian neighborhood. Kelly is the author of the Nevermore trilogy. Visit her at KellyCreagh.com.
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