It’s often impossible to pinpoint where inspiration starts, but in the case of Never-Contented Things I know precisely the night that set the book in motion. My beloved husband, Todd Polenberg, and our brilliant friend Ben Bartelle were sitting up late by a fireplace in Maine, talking crazy talk with me, when Todd volunteered that he would take a cocktail from a bartender with snake-head hands. “You will do no such thing!” I cried, distraught. “You do not accept food or drink from nonhuman visitants. That’s rule number one!” The conversation unraveled through wild digressions, and by morning I knew what I would write next. (Thanks to this book, Todd is now convinced. No serpentine cocktails!)
The epigraphs that begin each section of this book point to its older roots in faerie literature, but they also trace personal influences to which I owe a lasting debt. My mother, Betsy Hart Porter, read me Goblin Market when I was a small child; it scared the bejesus out of me in that indelible way that can return, decades later, in the form of a new book. My wonderful editor, Susan Chang, casually introduced me to the medieval poem Sir Orfeo, which had a deeper impact on me than she could have anticipated. (An Orpheus and Eurydice retelling where Eurydice is stolen by faeries!? How cool is that?) The wise and charming Morgan Fahey suggested the Poe poem that gave this book its title and pointed out the eerie beauty of the titular line. Another friend, Laura Henze, sent me a volume of Yeats’s faerie lore after that same Maine trip, which not only led me to “The Stolen Child” but informed subtler atmospherics as well.
I also want to thank my incredible agent, Kent D. Wolf, who believed in me when no one else did and hasn’t stopped yet; everyone at Tor Teen, but especially Susan Chang and Kathleen Doherty, for believing in me now, and Zohra Ashpari, for being so consistently awesome. Todd always, Kevin Messman for his insightful readings of basically everything I write, and Tera Freedman, also always.
And to a particular dream I had about a bowler hat: thanks for being there when I needed you. You were creepy as hell.