South Carolina singer-songwriter Jennifer Goree played an important part in the development of the Tufa stories. Bledsoe was impressed by Goree's music and said "[i]f the Tufa have a voice, it belongs to Jennifer Goree." He used the title of her third album and its lead song for The Hum and the Shiver's book title, and named all the subsequent Tufa novels after Goree's songs.
