Every book leaves a wake of debts, both inspirational and emotional, but Projections more than most. The genesis of this book was so extremely weird—in my experience, so unheard-of—that I need to address its history here.
It began in 2018. I had a new baby, and the lingering second half of a two-book contract with Tor Teen. With Vesper asleep on my lap, I began to write what I thought would be a snappy, not terribly ambitious YA novel based on an idea that had been banging around in my head for a while: an embodied curse in the form of a boy, destined to kill any girl he loves with a kiss. Angus came slouching and rationalizing onto the page, and he was everything I hated most about toxic masculinity: that willfully deluded belief in his own innocence and romanticism, that evil hidden in simpering cuteness—ugh. I couldn’t wait to kill him.
There were a few scenes with the vicious old sorcerer who’d made Angus in the first place. And one or two—really, no more than a glimpse—with that old sorcerer’s murdered beloved, Catherine.
I handed the ninety-thousand-word manuscript in to my editor, Susan Chang, on Vesper’s first birthday. Then I waited for Susan’s notes. And waited.
A year later, I received an editorial letter, then a follow-up call, that knocked the breath out of me. The gist of them was this: Catherine.
Please give me more Catherine, Susan said. Like, a lot more. I want a second narrator, a second timeline; think Byatt’s Possession, but with magic. You can totally do that, right?
Oh, and make it adult.
I’d never heard of a book getting shifted from YA to adult before. And it was clear that we weren’t talking not terribly ambitious any longer. I knew I was looking at a year or more of extra work. (A lot more, as it turned out.)
Once I recovered from the shock, I also knew Susan was onto something. It was a brilliant idea, and it wasn’t mine. Susan, you’re amazing, thank you for lobbing this inspirational grenade at me.
I said yes. And once I’d finished that behemoth of a draft, she asked me to radically expand the historical sections while still cutting fifty thousand words. And then she left Tor. First Molly McGhee, then Claire Eddy, had to cope with the odd results of our commingled imaginations. You’re both awesome. Thank you for carrying this book onward!
A couple more things. In the course of research for this book, I discovered that the historical Spiritualists get a bad rap, so to speak. I realized that my impression of them as a pack of cheap frauds was mediated by the works of male writers and artists, and that they began as a truly magnificent movement for human liberation. A religion that doesn’t demand faith, that posits its tenets as subject to scientific verification, is putting itself at risk, certainly. Their beliefs couldn’t withstand the investigation they themselves invited, but that invitation is a measure of their sincerity. And the erasure and degradation of this passionately intersectional, female-led movement in the collective imagination is nothing short of tragic. At their best, the Spiritualists were the best of us. Read Ann Braude’s Radical Spirits, in particular, for more.
And to Todd and Vesper: there is no world for me that isn’t the two of you. I love you always.