Why do ghosts make appealing characters in romance? You know, I've written three Jove Haunting Hearts books with ghostly supporting characters, but I had to sit back and think for awhile in order to answer this question. Finally I figured it out. In a lot of ways, ghostly facilitators are like angels without their halos.Despite their otherworldly status, ghosts have human qualities. After all, they once were people with very human needs and wants, and they are their own emissaries—rather than angels whose traits have been dictated by religious literature. What they do not have as ghosts is a personal agenda, other than to enable the living characters with whom they interact to achieve something that the ghosts have lost forever. Their stories are closed—they have no loose ends for the author to tie up or address in a follow-up book with these ghostly facilitators as secondary characters.
Ghosts can possess powers and limitations they could not have if they were alive. To the author of ghost romance, these supernatural powers and constraints open doors to all kinds of plot development. Ghosts can know all, or know selectively; move through walls, yet be confined within finite space; communicate with some, all, or none of the living characters at the author's whim. Needless to say, if the author gave living beings these traits, she could forget about suspending her readers' disbelief!
In my books, love has been the primary motivation of the ghostly facilitators. Love—along with guilt—drove Glenna's ghost in HEAVEN ABOVE to engineer a new love between the beloved husband she left behind and the surrogate mother of his unborn child.
Fear of eternity burning in the fires of Hell competes with love for each other as the major force driving the Victorian ghosts of Bliss House. These delightful people from a century past shove HEAVENLY BLISS's living protagonists toward a level of commitment the ghosts were never able to make to each other while they lived—all in the name of love.
ARRANGED IN HEAVEN features a pair of matchmaking, meddling mama ghosts whose love for their children compels them to exaggerate their children's virtues, neglect to mention their faults, and generally wreak havoc as they engineer Dan and Gayla's romance from above. Their antics highlight a happy, lighthearted love story, which I hope will give readers as much pleasure as I got from writing it.
Self-preservation can motivate ghosts, too, as Casey Claybourne showed so vividly in GHOST OF A CHANCE. The spirit of a Regency period mother-in-law, who sabotaged her daughter's brand new marriage before she died, must make things right between the earthly couple—and she must do this through contact with the hero alone, whom she hated in life. Needless to say, this situation sets up some hilarious encounters between spirit and mortals.
While some authors have crafted ghostly heroes, I feel that these very human yet ethereal beings work best at facilitating romance between living protagonists. Their appeal as supporting characters is immense, I believe because the spirits have the same capacity as their living counterparts to laugh, cry, love, and hate—without having to let the very human traits of self-interest and greed color their actions and reactions.
Ghosts are angels without halos. Unlike their ethereal counterparts, they are capable of mischief without remorse. When the need arises, they don't hesitate to employ subterfuge and underhanded manipulation to achieve their goals. The spirits of loved ones departed, whether last week or a century ago, add spice, a different dimension, and a gentle sense of fantasy to romance—both contemporary and historical.
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