While you recover, let me tell you a story. No, not that one, another. One that begins all the way back in 2006–7 (the dates grow vague with time). I had finished my second novel, Eldest, and was nearly done with the third, Brisingr, and I was straining at the bit, frustrated that what had once been a trilogy had expanded into a tetralogy and that I would have to spend several more years working on the Inheritance Cycle. Mind you, I loved the series and was happy to finish it, but at the same time I wanted—no, I needed—to try my hand at something else. Discipline is a necessary prerequisite to creative success, and yet the value of variety should not be dismissed. By trying new things we learn and grow and maintain excitement for our craft.

So, while I spent my days in the land of Alagaësia, writing about elves and dwarves and dragons, I spent my nights dreaming about other adventures in other places. And one of those dreams involved a woman who found an alien biosuit on a moon orbiting a gas giant.…

It was a rough idea, more of a sketch than anything. But even from the very beginning, I always knew how the story would start (with Kira finding the suit) and how it would end (with her drifting off into space). The difficult bit was figuring out all the parts in between.

After finishing Brisingr, I took a stab at writing the beginning of To Sleep in a Sea of Stars. If you saw that early version, you would laugh. It was half-baked, underformed, but the bones of what would become this story were still there, waiting to be unearthed.

I had to put it aside to write and promote Inheritance. That took me until mid-2012 (touring for a popular book/series is no small thing). And after that, after finishing a series I had been working on from the age of fifteen to twenty-eight, I needed a break.

For six months, I didn’t write. Then, the old itch to create took over. I knocked out a screenplay (which didn’t work). I wrote a number of short stories (one of which was later published in The Fork, the Witch, and the Worm, a sequel to the Inheritance Cycle). And I began to research the scientific underpinnings to my future history.