That, plus my love of the process of fluidization (where a granulated material, like sand, behaves somewhat like a liquid when air is forced through it.) I rammed these things together. It mixed with me wanting to find places to work in the Aethers (which are very relevant to the later cosmere) into a book somewhere.

The prompt for me, then, came when she asked, “Why did Buttercup just sit around after she heard her love had been taken by pirates? Wasn't there anything she could have done? She can't even effectively hit a giant rat with a stick. (To put it mildly.) The story is named after her, but she doesn't actually DO anything. But after the movie, we were chatting, and she made the observation that the princess from the film isn't terribly. I love that movie, and still do - as does my wife. This book came about because I showed the Princess Bride to my kids for the first time. As one gets further into it, the fairy tale vibe fades a little (but not completely) into an epic fantasy - though one filtered through the prose and voice of a storyteller sitting down to tell about one of his adventures. It's meant to be something more like the Princess Bride.

This slightly fairy tale vibe is intentional, but the author doesn't personally consider it to be a children's book. Though the story isn't about him, he has a role to play in it, and readers will find out why he's there through the course of the book. He takes a few liberties in the narrative, but mostly, this is canon. Meaning, Tress is a real person from the cosmere, and her world is an actual place: neither are Hoid inventions. In this case (unlike some of his stories), he's chronicling actual events in the cosmere. That said, this isn't written to the reader, but is instead meant to be him telling the story to someone in the cosmere listening. Readers might be able to pick up some of the context of who he's talking to, but it's not meant to be explicitly obvious. Hoid is telling the story in- world to someone. Tress of the Emerald Sea is a novel-length story written in Hoid/Wit's voice - not unlike The Dog And The Dragon or Derethil and the Wandersail - except 100,000 words long. The Way of Kings, Words of Radiance, Edgedancer, Oathbringer, Dawnshard, Rhythm of War

Tress of the emerald sea cover