Good Spirits by B.K. Borison - 40

Thank you for reading Harriet and Nolan’s story. I know it’s a little bit different from what you’re used to from me, but it’s a story that’s been bursting in me for a while now. The idea of a wayward Ghost of Christmas Past sent to haunt the wrong woman came to me right after I wrote Lovelight Farms , but I placed it on a shelf for when it felt like the right time. And apparently the right time was eight months pregnant with an unavoidable deadline of my own barreling down on me.

I had a friend tell me once that writing a book is like slotting a bookmark into a chapter of our life. So much of what we’re going through as people is reflected in our work as authors. I like to think this book is a reflection of how hopeful I felt while carrying my son. The big, soul-filling love I already had for this tiny person I hadn’t yet met. The waiting and the watching and the knowing that everything was about to change for the better.

So, thank you for picking up this book. I hope it brought you something you needed. I hope that if you feel like a lost and forgotten thing, that you realize how beautiful and special you truly are. And I hope that if you feel like you’ve been left waiting, that there’s beauty in that, too. That maybe, the thing you’ve been searching for is right around the corner.

In the business of books, I’d like to thank my agent, Kim Lionetti, who listened to me ramble about ghosts in an empty restaurant in New York and nodded her head and told me to write it. It’s an incredible thing to have someone believe in your ideas before you can articulate them, and I feel so incredibly lucky to have Kim on my side. Thank you to the team at Avon, who welcomed this project with such incredible enthusiasm. If it’s a wonderful thing to have someone believe in your ideas before you can articulate them, then it’s downright magical to have a team react so emphatically when they’re on paper. Shannon, you shaped this so beautifully into the book of my heart. I can’t wait to see what else we do together. And DJ, who has believed in me from what feels like the very start, what an absolute joy it is to (finally) work with you.

Thank you to everyone who has ushered this book to its final form: the copy editors, the marketing team, the formatters, all foreign publication teams, and the absolutely incomparable Brittany Keller, who made the cover of my dreams. It truly does take a (very talented and specialized) village.

And to my village. Thank you to Adri, for always giving me the pep talk I need. Thank you to Annie, for knowing and loving my brain so well. Thank you to my writer friends, who make this weird, wonderful job so much less lonely. And thank you to every person who has ever read, sold, loaned out, shared, yelled about, or made something for my books. This community of love is what makes this the very best job in the world. I am so, so grateful.

My biggest and most heartfelt thank-you to my husband, for loving me even when I turn into a deadline troll, hunched over my desk and snapping at you whenever you enter the room. My compass always points right at you.

And to my children, who still think Mommy works at a bookstore. I’ve been waiting my whole life for you.

I hope you’ll come back for another visit to the Department of Hauntings and Spirits. I heard a rumor there’s a Reaper on the loose.