The Projected Girl is an 11,000 word novelette, first published in Ellen Datlow’s Naked City anthology.
It is now available as an e-book on the Kindle (US; UK). The original cover art is by Adi Elkin.
This is by far one of my favourite stories, and it came about in somewhat strange circumstances. I wrote it during my last month in Vanuatu. The thing just came to me, like a bolt – and a day later I got an e-mail from Ellen mentioning her new anthology. It seemed like providence. I wrote it over a 2-3 week period, a little each day. It had the same feeling of rightness that I only got later on from Osama. In a way it’s a very personal piece – set all around the second-hand bookshops of Haifa, where I spent my childhood – and combining my interest in David Tidhar, “The First Hebrew Detective”, pulp in general, and the Holocaust. But it is also a comedy, I think, a sort of coming-of-age story, and a fantasy-of-perception more than an outright fantasy. Anyway.
The anthology was published in 2011. I kind of promised Ellen it would win the World Fantasy Award, but instead I got one for Osama. I suppose I can’t complain!
One of the best things about doing your own e-books, apart from the general arts & crafts nature of it (which I quite enjoy!) is that I got Adi to do this amazing cover. The bookshop in the image is the one in the story, and a shop I’d been going to since I was a kid (and is still there). Adi and I have been working on a picture book in the past year, and it was great to convince her to take some time off to do this – I love this cover.
I wish more stories felt as good to write – and as true – as The Projected Girl. If you’d like to check it out, it’s on Amazon and Amazon UK for a minimal price.
Lavie Tidhar 