Behind the Book
The inspiration for The Way We Fall, as with all of my books, came from a variety of sources. If you're curious about other books that helped inspire the story, and how they did, check out this series of blog posts:
The Stand
The Forest of Hands and Teeth
Doomsday Book
Life As We Knew It
The Plague
To see how I imagined The Way We Fall's main characters look, I posted some photos here:
Picturing The Way We Fall's Characters
If you'd like to know more about my research on viruses, and why I designed the virus in the novel the way I did, I discuss that here:
Creating a Killer Virus
The Setting:
When The Way We Fall sold, I took a trip to Nova Scotia (where the book is set) to make sure I was capturing the environment and atmosphere accurately. The island where the story takes place is made-up--I didn't want to inflict even a fictitious deadly epidemic on an actual community, and it allowed me more flexibility in how I set up the town--but I hoped to make it feel like a real Maritime community. Here are some of the sights I drew on when I was revising the book after the trip:
A beach like the one Kaelyn, Mackenzie, and Rachel walk on at the beginning of the novel.
Cliffs overlooking the ocean, like the one Kaelyn likes to climb to.
I figured Kaelyn's house might look something like this.
A harbor in a small Nova Scotia town.
A ferry that travels from the Nova Scotia mainland to an island (the one for Kaelyn's island would be a little smaller).
Storage buildings by a harbor, like the one Gav initially uses to store the extra food.
Hospital on the outskirts of another small Nova Scotia town.
Read more about the book.
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