G I V E A W A Y   E N D E D

Guest Post:
Could you give further elaboration on the progression from living the lucrative lifestyle of being a model, moving over to the sympathetic disposition of being a funeral director?

By Megan Montgomery

When I was developing the Last Responders series, I knew I wanted to write a trio of books featuring a forensic pathologist, a funeral director, and a forensic anthropologist; a ghoul gang of women who’d formed their own unique “found family,” united by their careers in deathcare. But the mortician would be the heart of the series, even if her book didn’t come first.

When I was developing the Last Responders series, I knew I wanted to write a trio of books featuring a forensic pathologist, a funeral director, and a forensic anthropologist; a ghoul gang of women who’d formed their own unique “found family,” united by their careers in deathcare. But the mortician would be the heart of the series, even if her book didn’t come first.

Each character has her own style and oddball personality, (all my books are character-driven and all my heroines are EXTRA!) but Bethany, the main character of Undertaking Love pulls them all together and keeps them bonded.

Physically, she was inspired by Playboy centerfold Gia Genevieve. I stumbled across Gia’s Instagram page and it felt like I was seeing Bethany. Suddenly, her whole character locked into place and I had a write backstory in my head.

Bethany’s a single mom who got pregnant young and was able to raise her daughter (and put herself through college) by performing burlesque, and after being scouted by the big, glossy, men’s magazines, becoming semi-famous as an annual centerfold.

In my world, she made enough money through smart investments to eventually buy out the magazine and turn it into a campy, vintage, female-gaze nudie mag—which might seem ludicrous and unrealistic, but it’s actually based on the real-life, female-owned Campout magazine.

Her business acumen also enabled her to purchase a 51% share of Smythe Mortuary. Bethany’s always had a deeply rooted sense of compassion, and a love of anything morbid. Becoming a funeral director was Bethany’s way to establish a career she could continue long past the time when her body wasn’t so lush and curvy. Buying into Smythe, specifically, would provide a stable home for her daughter as well as move them back to Franklin, TN where her two besties live.

Originally, I tried to keep the nude modeling aspect out of my books because I didn’t want to add too much quirkiness to one character, but ultimately, it made so much sense with her backstory, I could no longer divorce the modeling from the mortician.

Plus, I love subverting stereotypes. There’s been this trend of average-looking heroines, which is great! Romance is for everyone and all us average-looking people deserve to see ourselves in the characters we read. But in this book, I wanted to explore the opposite. What is it like to walk through life with everyone staring at you because they’d never seen anyone as beautiful in person? How would she have to dull herself down to perform her work as a funeral director so her beauty (not to mention her love and tenderness and compassion) wouldn’t overshadow the grief. What would it be like for George, her business partner to have to work with a Marilyn Monroe-on-steroids sex symbol everyday? Well, he’d have to convince himself from the start that he’d turned off the tap for feelings off long ago.

It also allowed me to highlight a sex worker who took a male-dominated career and owned it, was smart enough to invest early on (in order to protect her daughter) and made a killing on the market, and someone deeply sexy and confident, but also humble enough to know it won’t last forever and this was her way to give back to the world.