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Why I Love Writing about a Ghost

When I was working on Waking Up Dead, someone asked me why I would want to limit my protagonist by making her a ghost, unable to easily interact with the world around her.

I didn’t have a good answer then, but I’ve thought about it a lot since.

And here’s the deal: I love writing about Callie and her limitations. Because ultimately, that’s what many books are about, right? The limitations we face when interacting with the world around us. Callie’s limitations are just more immediate and obvious. She has to really work to have an impact on the world, and that’s something we can all sympathize with. Who hasn’t had days when getting anything done felt like swimming through peanut butter? When, try as we might, we can’t seem to communicate with the people surrounding us. When our attempts to move people or things fall flat and we have to start working on new ways to try to be seen and heard.

For Callie, these obstacles are instantly recognizable, but her attempts to make connections echo the attempts in our own lives. So why would I want to limit my protagonist by making her a ghost? Because sometimes, we’re all ghosts. But if we keep at it, we can overcome that little problem.

Keep reading for the scene from Waking Up Dead when Callie finally finds someone who does see her.

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When Dallas resident Callie Taylor died young, she expected to go to Heaven, or maybe Hell. Instead, when she met her fate early thanks to a creep with a knife and a mommy complex, she went to Alabama. Now she’s witnessed another murder, and she’s not about to let this one go. She’s determined to help solve it before an innocent man goes to prison. And to answer the biggest question of all: why the hell did she wake up dead in Alabama?

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Excerpt

“Hey,” I said, hurrying after the woman. “Wait up.”

“I know you’re not talking to me,” she said. She stared straight ahead and pushed her cart down the middle of the aisle toward housewares.
“I am talking to you. Look. I know this is really weird, but I need your help.”

“Well, I’m not talking to you. I don’t know what your problem is, but you can take it somewhere else.”

I wanted to reach out and grab her cart, to make her stop and talk to me, but of course I couldn’t. Which gave me an idea.

I scurried out in front of her, planting myself in her path.

“Move,” she said.

“Not until you hear me out. Please?”

She moved her cart to the left. I stepped out to intercept her. She moved to the right. So did I.

“You got some kind of death wish or something?” she asked.

I laughed and shook my head. “If only you knew.”

“I’ve got no time for this,” she said. And she slammed into me with her shopping cart.

At least, that’s what she planned to do.

The shopping cart, however, slid right through me. When it stopped, the basket had sliced cleanly through my midsection. The bottom rack merged with my ankles. From my perspective, it looked like two perfectly solid objects–me and the shopping cart–had melted together. I don’t know what she saw.

Whatever it was, it wasn’t good.

The woman’s eyes widened, then rolled up into her head as she slumped to the ground in a dead faint.

I bent down to try to wake her up, but no matter how hard I concentrated on making contact, I couldn’t even touch her.

I hate being a ghost.

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