This is actually an infrequently asked question. What I’m usually asked is what my favorite is. That always feels like choosing among beloved children—all of them are favorites when seen through one lens or another—but I definitely have an unfavorite, Time and Time Again. It’s a reincarnation story, three interwoven narratives in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. The male protagonist remembers his lives—the only way reincarnation interests me—and he changes over time. I wasn’t interested in doing a history-repeats-itself story. While I still like the 18th and 19th-century stories, the 20th-century one needs revision.
I changed editors in the middle of TATA. Ann Patty, my editor for Wilderness departed S & S. Perhaps I should have gone with her. Lisa Weinstein who did Ghost optioned the book for a film, and I noodled with a screenplay that would give me a chance to revise the narrative, but like most film projects, it was not to be, and I moved on to other things. The original title was Remember Me, but Mary Higgins Clark, also with S & S was publishing a novel by that title the same season. I’ve never liked Time and Time Again since it’s much too close to Jack Finney’s classic Time and Again.