Author Spotlight: Alex Harvey-Rivas and the Inspiration Behind “The Distance Between Stars and Salt”
Hello wonderful readers of queer literature! I asked Alex Harvey-Rivas if they would mind sharing a little bit about the inspiration for the setting of their upcoming sapphic fantasy novel, The Distance Between Stars and Salt. To my joy, they agreed! Today is also the official cover reveal for the book, too! Isn’t it great? If you recognize the art style, that’s because the artist is Eva I, who’s had other covers featured here, too! Anyway, I’ll let Alex take it from here!
I have been desperate to write a Maltese-inspired work for several years now. My nanna (grandma) was born in Floriana on the main island of Malta and grew up there before immigrating to Canada. From there, she had my mother, who in turn immigrated to the States and had me. Along the way, thanks to the tenuous relationship my mother has to her parents, our knowledge of Malta eroded to a terse exchange of emails and a couple of small relics. As such, research evaded me for a while; despite having been occupied by numerous nations over its history, the amount of writings on Malta is much fewer when compared to some of its surrounding neighbors. Worse still, I had to fine-tune many of my search terms, lest I end up getting information about the dog breed instead (though it is here I note that I also had those growing up). As cute as the dog breed might be, they were not where my attention was aimed.
Still, when I was delivered the first iterations of an idea for The Distance Between Stars and Salt by a doting partner of mine, I quickly found myself devolving into a three-week long research fugue, throwing spaghetti at a wall and scanning every link, Youtube video, and podcast episode I could find. Additionally, I contacted my nanna for the first time in many years. Strand by starchy strand, this novel began to emerge.
Most of the Maltese influence is front-loaded in the first handful of chapters. Due to the structure of the novel, it is in parts a travelogue, so our main characters arrive at and see glimpses into a handful of islands and their corresponding cultures. The island of il-Zedina, where the story starts and ends, is our Maltese analogue. I wanted to steep us in as much of this environment as possible, so I threw in as many miscellaneous aspects of the island that I could. All throughout the novel, you will see references to well monsters, flooding streets, luzzu, pastizzi, gostra poles, the Saints (including a fantasy version of Saint Paul—-Malta loves Saint Paul), Maltese funerary customs, il-bizzilla, and much, much more.
Which leads me to a cultural choice that I made: the inclusion of the Maltese language. I cannot speak Maltese, but part of my research led me to places I can start (as well as a ton of Maltese musicians, including a rapper who performs entirely in Maltese). That said, roughly 500,000 people are capable of speaking the language around the world. It isn't endangered at this point in time, as endangerment is considered based on the rate of speakers in a population and, as of 2012, 98% of the country of Malta could speak the language. Fun fact, that's about as much of the country is registered Roman Catholic! In any case, Maltese is the official language of Malta and used prolifically there, so it only made sense for me to include the language in my novel itself. It's peppered throughout the novel and I've included a glossary in the back with translations (and also explanations of some in-world concepts)
That's also why I decided to include Saints, by the by! Initially, I intended to craft the island of il-Zedina without the influence of Roman Catholicism, but the religion is as deeply-baked into Malta's culture as much anything else and I quickly found myself in a corner. Saint Paul needed to be referenced, due to his importance on the island, but how do you reference a saint where there are no Saints? Thus, I devised a whole magic system based around the Saints, compiling a list of Saints important to Malta and whitling them down to a list of people I could base some magic off of. It's a system oft-mentioned but rarely used—-and you'll find out why when it's eventually shown!
A couple of fun facts before I leave, because I'm constantly finding new fun things to include: did you know there is a turn-based card game based around Maltese monsters? It's called SWAR and is a siege-style game made by a company called Troll-Pressed Papers. I've included a link to their original indiegogo campaign. Another fun fact: there are structures called dolmens, which is a type of megalithic structure comprised of a large stone balanced on two other stones.Think of a giant stone table. Dolmen exist all over the world and often, their purposes appear to be funerary in base. They even exist in Malta! However, there is no archaeological evidence to tell us what the dolmen in Malta were used for! There's just giant stone structures there that... exist? And no one knows why. I think that's fascinating.
I hope by now it is clear how passionate this project has made me. There are many aspects of my heritage in this novel. There are also plenty of things that I made up for the sake of fantasy. Due to the nature of my research, there are plenty of things I struggled to verify or wasn't completely certain on, and in those cases I erred on the side of whatever would work the best within this setting. My hope is that I have done a well enough job enmeshing everything to craft something believable and to do justice to the island nation my mother's family hailed from.
Time will tell, I suppose.
Learn more about The Distance Between Stars and Salt.
Unable to wait? Alex has several other works available, including a great sapphic dark-academia A Sharper More Lasting Pain available at Itchio and other retailers!
You can Find Alex Harvey-Rivas on Itchio, KoFi, Patreon, BlueSky, Threads, Instagram, or sign up for their newsletter!