Even in death, there is so much paperwork.
In author B.K. Borison’s whimsical world of The Department of Hauntings & Spirits, the mundane experiences of the mortal world don’t cease to exist in the afterlife, as a myriad of supernatural beings are tasked with keeping track of those in the land of the living.
“There has to be some organization,” Borison said with a laugh during a recent phone interview from her home in Baltimore, referring to the infinite number of file cabinets described in the fantasy department in her latest novel, “Grim Tidings,” due out on Sept. 15.
Sign up for our free newsletter about books, authors, reading and more
“I like the idea that in every culture in every piece of media there’s some interpretation of death and it being this almost uniting factor,” she continued. “There’s a department that runs all of that and keeps it organized. It’s silly but also feels comforting to me. Not the bureaucracy of it, that’s not comforting. But the idea that there’s someone keeping tabs and there are people you are meant for and you must wait here because your soul is made for another.
“I think there’s romance in the bureaucracy of it all, though,” she says.
The Department of Hauntings & Spirits has given Borison a large supernatural world to draw from for her Ghosted series. The first book, 2025’s “Good Spirits,” centers around a Ghost of Christmas Past.
“Grim Tidings” follows the story of Darcy Moore, a frustrated grim reaper who is tired of death and yearns to switch things up. Instead of taking a soul, she’ll try to save one.
However, her plans are foiled when she runs into a guardian angel named Gabriel Aetos at a bar. As they say, opposites attract, but how can this paranormal romance possibly play out when one has sworn to protect mortals and the other is forced to take them?
Darcy being tired of death was an idea floating in Borison’s brain from her own life. Her husband, Ian, works in palliative care, which is specialized medical care focused on relieving pain for patients with serious illnesses.
“Whenever I sit down to write a book, it’s like ‘Oh, this is something I’m dealing with and should talk to my therapist about,’” she said. “It became apparent pretty early on in the drafting process that Darcy struggling with this aspect of her job – it was like, ‘This is my husband.’”
The Borisons have been together for 15 years and have two children together. The couple began dating before he was in medical school, so she’s seen him through every aspect of his professional life. Much like Darcy, he’d grown tired of feeling like a grim reaper and never being able to deliver good news to loved ones, as his news is usually, “Your loved one is dying,” she said.
“When I was writing it, I thought about how he had lost sight of how meaningful that work is,” she continued, noting that Ian got the first read of “Grim Tidings,” and it made him emotional.
“I think the part that hit him the most was to see a perspective of his work from someone sitting outside of it. My hope was for him to see different shades of himself presented through the lens of not just me, because you can assure your loved ones all day long, but when it’s Darcy, I think he could take a step back and see some of the things he was going through in reflections of Darcy and Gabriel.”
Amid the career burnout felt by both of the main characters, there’s a budding romance. But the sparks don’t automatically fly.
“When you meet Gabriel, he doesn’t like Darcy,” she said. “He feels tricked by her, duped and he resents everything she stands for, and because of that he’s mean to her. But there’s this instant connection between them, but he’s like, ‘She’s tricking me to get what she wants.’ And he dismisses all of his own feelings for her and accuses her of using magic on him, and she’s like, ‘Dude, I’m not that powerful.’ It was fun to play with and a dynamic I hadn’t really worked with before and adding in the layer of magic on top of it where you can play with elements like life or death or the fact that they were truly meant for each other and he’s thousands of years old. All of those bits and pieces just make it a bigger sandbox for me to play in as an author.”
45 new books publishing in September 2026 to read and add to your TBR list
Growing up a voracious fantasy reader, Borison said she stumbled upon romance at an early age and got heavily into fan fiction, which exposed her to a big world of romance tropes and archetypes. During the pandemic shutdown in 2021, she published her first novel, “Lovelight Farms.”
She said she was incluenced by the golden age of rom-coms of the late ‘80s through the ‘00s. She fell in love with Nora Ephron’s writing with “When Harry Met Sally” and vividly recalls checking out the “Sleepless in Seattle” DVD from her local library and hearing Tom Hanks’ character’s “magic” monologue for the first time.
“I credit (Nora) as my greatest inspiration for wanting to write romance,” she said. Borison read an interview with Ephron, who was told by a director to cut Rita Wilson’s memorable monologue from “Sleepless in Seattle” talking about the romantic coupling in “An Affair to Remember” because it didn’t move the story forward.
“Nora was basically like, ‘Yeah, but it makes me feel good, and that’s why we are keeping it,’” Borison paraphrased. “That’s such a testament to romance writing because it’s stories that make us feel good.”
Borison said she’s thrilled to be a part of the literary romance community and that it’s filled with die-hard readers that are unapologetically supportive of the genre. Some of her favorite go-to authors are queer romance writer Cat Sebastian and contemporary romance writer Nikki Payne. And as one the perks of her job is getting to read other authors’ releases early, Borison read and recommends Chloe Liese’s “Love Interest,” which is coming out in January, and Jessica Joyce’s “Every Ordinary Thing,” due out in March 2027.
She also notes how romance literature has seeped into the mainstream, pointing to the forthcoming Olivia Coleman and Alexander Skarsgård film, “Wicker,” which is an adaptation of a 2008 short story, “The Wicker Husband,” by Ursula Wills-Jones.
“I don’t know if it would have this reaction if it wasn’t Alexander Skarsgård,” Borison said with a laugh about the revealing movie trailer showing Skarsgård in all his wicker glory.
“These are things we’ve become very accustomed to as romance readers hitting the mainstream media and people saying, ‘Oh my God, he’s made out of a basket!’ Well, yeah, and there’s also a book about a doorknob and a book about a cucumber. It’s fun watching the things we’ve seen for years in the community going mainstream. Even ‘Heated Rivalry,’ we watched people lose their minds over it. For us, it’s like ‘Yes, welcome. There’s so much more, please come see it.’”
Though this current surge of interest bodes well for Borison in her particular line of work, she said she’s unsure why anyone would ever dismiss the romance genre as “lame and fluffy.”
“Falling in love is the most important thing we do as humans,” she said.
Map: 100 Southern California independent bookstores to visit in 2026