Background
The series was born when an editor from Scholastic emailed Nix saying he liked Nix's previous book Sabriel, and that he'd be glad to work with him on something in the future. A few months later, Nix received another email from the editor saying Scholastic and LucasFilm were working to create a new fantasy series. He asked if Nix would be interested, to which Nix replied that he might be. They discussed it back and forth through email.
Several months later, Scholastic and Lucasfilm gave Nix a general list of "influences and ideas" to base the series on. However, Nix was still given much freedom to expand from it to create a story of his own. "In a way, each of the ideas and influences on the original list was like a seed," says Garth Nix. "The seeds were planted in my imagination and things have grown from them, and I have helped them grow and shaped them to fit into the story." Among the points included on the list was a world "where it is always night for some reason" and characters with magical companions of some sort.
The series was written at a rather quick pace, as fast as three to four months per book. By June 2000, the first book entitled The Fall came out. The Seventh Tower has since gone on to sell more than one million copies in the US.
Read more about this topic: The Seventh Tower
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