Years ago, when driving down the east coast from New York, I passed through Richmond, Virginia. I didn't stop, being in a bit of a hurry to get to Florida; but for many years to come I would remember a sight that struck me then: the way the clock tower of the Old Main Street Station poked up beside I-95, its broken face plaintive and its hands fallen to 6:30, as if in prayer. It seemed to appeal to those passing by at seventy miles per hour. It seemed to want to tell the city's story.

Years later, when finishing my first novel—The Book of Shadows—I found my heroine, Herculine, heading to America from France. And I remember the day I, or rather my pen, decided her destination: Richmond. I'd written the word without forethought. It seemed some part of me wanted to return to that city, to hear it tell its story.

When finally I returned to Richmond to do research—though research is too precise a term, as I had no agenda at all — the city spoke, in its way. Serendipitously, moments conspired, and soon the outline of a story took shape. …At Poe's birthplace, I heard reference made to his "daft" sister Rosalie. While poking around Shockoe Bottom—the city's historic, or rather most historic quarter, where the young and unhappy Poe had apprenticed in his father's dry goods store—I peered down a bricked alley to see (I swear it!) a caped figure appear, only to disappear as quickly. And finally, in the offices of the Historic Richmond Foundation, the kindly staff asked would I like to see Monumental Church, then in the early stages of renovation. Soon I was touring the closed church, built on the site of Richmond's great antebellum tragedy: the theatre fire of 1811. And when we went below the church, down into its dirt-floor cellar, there sat the makeshift crypt holding the remains of all those who perished in the fire, their fates quite literally capped by the church itself. ...Indeed, the city of Richmond had stories to tell.

But Herculine is a seeker, and I knew she would not stay in Richmond. Where would she go? That answer also came serendipitously.

One night at a dinner party, an acquaintance—an archeologist—told me he'd once worked a dig in my neighborhood in Tampa. In fact, he'd been asked by the city to excavate the site on which the Tampa Convention Center was to be built; and there he had found burial mounds, and the remains of Seminole Indians, dating to the early 19th century. Questions followed, many questions, and soon I learned that the Convention Center sits atop the site of old Fort Brooke, built by the US as tensions between the nations—US and Indian—escalated. I continued digging around on my own—metaphorically, alas — and discovered that from Fort Brooke one hundred-odd soldiers had once marched into the Seminole Nation, never to return. Maps showed that they—the soldiers of Dade's Command—had passed within sight of the window beneath which I write. It was all too easy to see them, in fact: ghosts, silhouetted by history. ...And soon I knew where Herculine would go: the Florida territory.

There, fate—in the form of fiction—would intervene, and drive Herculine from Florida to a sojourn in New York City. Arriving stateside, Herculine had shied from the large cities of the north; but at the same time she was drawn to them, Gotham in particular. She knew she'd go, one day. And I knew it, too. Herculine and I were drawn to the city similarly: I served a sort of artistic apprenticeship there, working three jobs, writing on subways, and living in a converted A&P in the East Village. Herculine would do the same, albeit by 19th century standards. This was not by design—I was as wary of researching city life in the 1830's and '40's as she was of living it! But it had to happen. We each would face our fears. She'd go to Gotham to serve her own apprenticeship; and in writing about it, I'd relive my own. And in so doing, I'd learn what it means to be one with your characters.

Still, I continued to see Herculine amongst those soldiers of Dade's Command. And so, eagerly, I finished drafting The Book of Spirits to learn how Herculine would return to Florida. Unlike me, she'd not have I-95 to follow; but she, or rather we would have history and its many ghosts to guide us.