I remember being at Greenblatt's on Sunset and some guy just walked straight up to me and he had some bling on and whatever and said something about a party down in Malibu and asked if I would jump in his car and go to the party. All I could think was 'Who are you? I don't know you and I don't care about how good your car is.'
In the first book of my Discworld series published more than 26 years ago I introduced Death as a character there was nothing particularly new about this - death has featured in art and literature since medieval times and for centuries we have had a fascination with the Grim Reaper.