A Somerville writer, who just published her first romance novel about love and ghost at Back Bay’s famed Charlesgate apartment building, spoke at the Jan. 28 contributors meeting of The Somerville News.

“When I first saw the Charlesgate, it was all windows broken and No Trespassing signs, so I completely fell in love,” said Dina Keratsis, who has lived in the city with her husband and two dogs, and wrote titled the book after the building.
After hearing ghost stories from a man who had lived there as an Emerson student, Keratsis found herself drawn into the world of Web sites and chat rooms devoted to the spooks and phantoms at the Charlesgate, she said.
The man told her that he would wake up in the middle of the night with nightmares and his room would get very cold, she said.
Many former residents claim to see a little blond girl bouncing a ball in the lobby, she said. But, the girl, who resembled the likeness of Putnam’s daughter on one of the ceilings died a peaceful death after a long and happy life, she said.
Although Keratsis said her novel is not autobiographical, the male love interest, Jabe, is named for and based on a Somerville musician friend of her and her husband, Jason ”Jabe” Beyer.
Jabe falls in love with a girl named Zylla, and the two fall apart and reconcile with the help and hindrance of two ghosts.
One ghost, based on the female pirate Charlotte de Berry, was supposed to be the subject of her book, but Keratsis said she could not keep the her away from her crush on Jabe.
The other ghost, Lydia, is a Victorian matron who is and ancestor of Zylla, she said.
Within her circle of friends, Keratsis said she got positive reaction from her female friends, but her male friends told her that the sex scenes were not graphic enough, she said.
She said she had to tone it down for a practical reason. “All I could think about was my mother reading the book.”
The building was built was built by John Pickering Putnam in 1891, she said. Putnam’s goal was to create ideal urban dwellings for the lower classes by providing the apartments with ample space and sunlight, she said.
The result was too successful, so instead of being a proper home for the city’s poor, Charlesgate become Boston’s premier address until 1920, when it was converted to a female dormitory, she said.
It was later a dorm for Boston University, then Emerson College, she said.
When she moved into the building herself in the early 1990’s, but she was forced out when then owner died and the rent tripled, she said. “The rent went from $300 in 1994 to $900 in 1995.”
Before moving to Somerville, she spent a miserable year and half in Allston, she said.
The book is written in the formula of the genre, so there is a happy ending, she said.
“It is not chick-lit, but it does have some chick-lity elements,” she said.
Kearatsis said she started reading romance novels when she was 13 and would steal them from her grandmother. Later, in graduate school working on her master’s in education, she wrote her thesis based on a qualitative and quantitative analysis of who reads romance novels.
“Seventy percent are woman with at least at four-year college degree,” she said.
The majority of the readers are between the ages of 30 and 60, which is a recent change as the twenty-somethings have migrated to chick-lit, she said.
The book is available in print, but also as an e-book at www.ebooks.com, where it can be downloaded onto computers or electronic pocket planners, she said.
She said she prefers an old-fashion book, many young people who have grown up surrounded by computers and video games are more comfortable reading books on a computer screen or printing them off on their own printers.
“Charlesgate” is her first book, but she has finished her second called “Kicking Sideways,” and is working on her third book with the working title “Cake.”