Jennifer Dugan asked Rebecca Kim Wells:

What inspired you to write Shatter the Sky?

Rebecca Kim Wells The specific weird and true answer: reading Mark Kurlansky's SALT: A WORLD HISTORY. (Kurlansky writes these really interesting micro-histories--histories of the world through a particular lense. His books are a really accessible way to pick up weird facts!) In the book he talked about entire towns that basically existed around the production and trade of salt. (Similar to some mining or gold towns.) I read that and started thinking about what would happen to those towns if one day the salt disappeared--how would the town decline? This was the direct inspiration for Ilvera, Maren's hometown, and I started building the story from there.

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