Eccentric Circles
IN THE DAYS Gone Funeral Home, in the back corner of the largest parlor, there was a loose floorboard where I once kept my dreams. I kept them locked tight in a box, storing them like treasure, until the day I could take them out and brush them off, like old friends coming to greet each other.
I didn’t store my dreams in a small box underneath the floorboards anymore. I didn’t need to.
But there was a girl who was a little bit tall and lanky for her age, dark hair and wide eyes, who wrote her dreams on spare pieces of paper and put them in a jar like fireflies, and when she found her mother’s old metal box and its smutty, smutty X-Files fanfic, she decided to store her dreams there, too.
And the wind that whistled through the old funeral parlor sang sweet and soft and sure.
Like love ought to be.
Acknowledgments
Just as it takes a village to raise a child, it took a village to raise Benji Andor from the dead. The Dead Romantics couldn’t be possible without a lot of people, most of whom I will probably forget in these acknowledgments, but you know who you are. Thank you for giving Florence and Ben a ghost of a chance.
This book wouldn’t be possible without the tender love and necromancy of my agent, Holly Root; my phenomenal editor, Amanda Bergeron, and assistant editor, Sareer Khader; my copyeditor, Angelina Krahn; my wonderful publicist, and the whole team from managing to production to marketing, Christine Legon and Alaina Christensen and Jessica Mangicaro and everyone else. And to my critique partners—Nicole Brinkley, Rachel Strolle, Ashley Schumacher, Katherine Locke, and Kaitlyn Sage Patterson—for being the Rose to my Florence and encouraging me when I was at my lowest.
Speaking of lowest, I would also like to give a very enthusiastic fuck you to my anxiety. Thanks for, as always, being the worst.
And finally, to anyone who has proclaimed drunkenly at a bar that love is dead—I’ve been there and trust me, love is not dead. It’s simply sleeping off a raging hangover. Give it two Tylenol and tell it to call you in the morning.
Thank you for reading this book. I hope you find a little bit of happiness wherever you go.
READERS GUIDE
The Dead Romantics
• • • • •
BEHIND THE BOOK
I SEE DEAD people.
Kidding. I really don’t, and if I did I would probably:
One, talk to my therapist and—
Two, schedule an exorcism.
Joking aside, I do kind of see dead people. We all do. We see them in family photos, when we remember the way your grandma used to talk to her flowers; and the way your granddad happily sat in his favorite rocking chair on the porch, watching lightning arc across summer storms; and the way your aunt used to have a laugh so infectious she would light up a whole room. We read about them, all the time. English class is full of dead people. Jane Austen? Dead. Shakespeare? Doth be dead and buried. Charles Dickens? A tale of two deads. We listen to them on the radio, we watch them in films, without really thinking that they—you know—caught the midnight train already.
But, honestly?
Death scares me.
That’s the crux of it. Death itself, in all its ferocious unknown, scares the living crap out of me. So why—why god, why—do I gravitate toward ghost stories? And if there’s a ghost romance? You bet your ass I’m going to be up all night reading it. Death and ghost stories go hand in hand, like peanut butter and getting it stuck to the roof of your mouth.
I don’t understand my fascination whatsoever, and you know? I’m not the kind of person to think too much on it, because if I do my anxiety is going to start to spiral and then all I will think about is my unknown, eternal end.
Which is probably why I write.
There’s this illusionary permanence to writing. My books will be here long after I’m gone. I mean, hopefully.
Forever. (Usually.)
People write for different reasons—to feel less alone, to understand their own feelings, to tell stories that make them happy—and people read books for different reasons, too.
For me?
I read because I want to be held. Not like, literally, by a book. (That’d be weird.) But metaphorically. I want to sink into a novel. I want to be romanced by the possibility of sunsets too pretty to describe and kisses that you feel all the way in your toes and love stories too wide and wild for you to ever feel alone.
If anything staves off the creeping unknown of death, I propose that it’s a good book.
Maybe not my book—I mean, I hope it’s my book. Or at least my book is a stepping-stone for what will be your favorite book. I hope I can write one for you. I hope I can write one for me, too.
I didn’t start writing The Dead Romantics to explore my feelings on an author’s legacy and what the dead end up leaving behind. I just wanted to write a fun ghost story! A chaotic gremlin of a woman meets the stern ghost of a man (who, secretly, has a cinnamon roll-flavored heart of gold)! They have sexy high jinks! Everything turns out fine in the end!
Well, I was the fool, apparently, because little did I know, I had the talent to do both.
Somehow.
It might be a one-time deal, so I am relishing in this moment. I managed to do something I didn’t realize I could. (Well, two things. I didn’t think I’d be able to write anything in 2020 but I showed myself that anything is possible with a few healthy coping mechanisms and nowhere to go during a pandemic.) Most of the time, I talk around my own insecurities and make fun of them until the person I’m talking to gets fed up with my turtling and tells me to just write a happy novel.
Well, I did! So joke’s on them! It’s also sad! And a little sappy!
But you know? I like a little corny in my life and I hope that you do, too.
I think, as readers, we all have a comfort read, the one book that protects us in the exact ways it needs to—whether it is a romance or erotica or a thriller or a crime story or a fantasy. A book that we find ourselves in, like looking in a mirror. Oh, you, too? It will ask, as it fills that soft, hollow place in your heart that nothing else dared to touch. I think we all deserve a book like that, whatever yours is.
It’s not about how many books are sold or whether they are turned into films or re-released with different editions that makes a book’s legacy. I think it is the readers, whether there are only seven of them, or seventy thousand. You’re the legacy, you’re the life beyond the story I give you.
Florence’s dad said that the people we love are in the wind, and I believe it. I think that the people we love can be in the pages of books, too.
I hope you find yourself in a book someday.
And I hope that book lives forever.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Florence is a ghostwriter for Ann Nichols. Do you think books written by ghostwriters are just as important to an author’s legacy as those written by the author themselves?
Usually, keeping secrets can shake a person’s trust in someone else. But Florence’s dad kept the secret that he knew who Florence ghostwrote for and had read all of those books. Do you think some secrets can actually build trust once revealed?
Throughout the novel, Florence struggles with trying to write the perfect ending. If you could write any sort of happily ever after, how would it go?
Both Ben and Florence find comfort in romance novels. What are some of your favorite comfort reads?
There are many depictions of afterlives in the media—ghosts, reapers, spirits—from all different cultures. Why do you think the theme of death is so universally explored in stories and the concept of life (or some semblance of it) after death?
What is a book you loved that you believe more people should read? What did you love most about it?
Death, and how a person handles it, is a big part of the novel. If you could leave a list behind for your loved ones, like Xavier does in the story, what would be on it?
If Ben and Florence were put in a punderdome, who do you think would win? Kidding—but in truth, do you think humor and tragedy go hand in hand? Why or why not?
Do you feel Lee Marlow was justified in writing When the Dead Sing? Do you think original ideas exist? Or do we all pull inspiration—knowingly or not—from the experiences we’ve had and the people we’ve met throughout our lives?
If Ben and Florence had a sequel, what do you think it would be about? How do you think Ben will handle his newfound power of seeing dead people?
What do you think Florence will write next?
ASH’S COMFORT READS
Howl’s Moving Castle, Diana Wynne Jones.
Beach Read, Emily Henry.
Dragon’s Bait, Vivian Vande Velde.
The Proposal, Jasmine Guillory.
Dating You / Hating You, Christina Lauren.
Well Met, Jen DeLuca.
A Winter’s Promise, Christelle Dabos.
Boyfriend Material, Alexis Hall.
The Princess Bride, William Goldman.
[That one fanfic that will never be named], Unknown.
Photo by Ashley Poston
ASHLEY POSTON writes stories about love and friendship and ever afters. A native to South Carolina, she now lives in a small grey house with her sassy cat and too many books. You can find her on the internet, somewhere, watching cat videos and reading fan fiction.
CONNECT ONLINE
AshPoston.com
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