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The Origins of the “To Color the Wind” Books.

By Barbara Glynn

            People have asked me where I came up with the ideas for the characters and stories in “To Color the Wind”.  This is a project that morphed through various stages and has taken decades to complete.  I started developing the story world for that eventually became Tirshaw and A’Tlaran when I was a teenager.  My best friend and I were infatuated with J.R.R. Tolkien’s books and wanted to create our own fantasy world with the kind of rich history and varied cultural milieu  that we so admired in “The Lord of the Rings”.  We drew maps, invented cultures and created characters with their own storylines.  I began to read books on folklore and medieval history, looking for elements to make our story world richer and give it a more authentic feel.

After a few months of this, our visions of this fantasy world and the stories we wanted to write began to diverge.  My friend suggested that would probably work better if we worked separately, so though our friendship continued, our literary collaboration ended.  However, those first few months of work laid down the foundation of the fantasy world I would later use in “To Color the Wind.”  More importantly, it introduced me to the process of world building and background research that is so important to writing fantasy and science fiction.

I worked on these and other stories on and off through High School and into the first year of college.  My original concept was a standard teenage fantasy with four handsome young heroes from modern North America being magically transported into my alternate fantasy world, where they would find adventure and romance.  My fantasy world then was envisioned as a magical medieval Europe, with fairies and dragons and a Lilliputian people I named “the Meedlings” – just for fun.  Looking back on this, I realize that if I had written the story as I had originally conceived it, it probably would have had broader commercial appeal but something happened to change my mind about the direction of the story.

I started studying acting, and some of my classmates were cast in a production of “The Lion in Winter”.  I was pushing hard to finish my degree, so I probably wouldn’t have seen James Goldman’s wonderful, dark, play if my friends hadn’t been starring in it.  (For more on Lion in Winter see: http://www.enotes.com/lion-winter .)  There I was though, sitting in a darkened theater, watching my friends play out this intimate, chilling family drama in which national politics originate in the bedroom, and which child a parent favors seals the fate of nations.  (This play was inspired by real events with King Henry II of England his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, and their three sons in 12^th century France.)  Though I had certainly seen historical dramas before, I found this tale of dysfunctional family politics interweaving with dysfunctional international politics both shocking and thought provoking. 

Soon after that, my parents treated me to tickets to see the opera Andrea Chénier.  Here again, I saw an intimate drama play out against the crush of history.  In this opera the idealistic poet Andrea Chénier, joins the French Revolution, in hopes of creating a better life for his countrymen.  The opera ends with Chénier being killed for holding true to his principles when other Revolutionary leaders found such principles inconvenient, as they made a raw grab for power.  Again, I was shocked.  This was not the ending I expected.  It certainly was not the ending I wanted.  But when I spoke with my parents about this, they patiently explained that the opera ended that way because it was based on real life.  Andrea Chénier was a real person who had really participated in the French Revolution, and had really met his death for calling the Revolutionary leaders to task for their excesses.  His actions made him a hero to the French people.  Furthermore, they said that Chénier was only one of many such young, educated, idealist people to meet such a fate in the French Revolution.

Not wanting to take my parents’ word for it, I checked the history books referencing Andrea Chénier and the French Revolution, and I also checked on the stories of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine.  I found that the basic outlines of these theatrical productions were true.  This started me thinking about this interplay between the politics and the personal lives of the people who lead the world into change.

Increased trade with China brought in stories of the triumphs and tragedies of the Cultural Revolution speared by Chairman Mao Zedong.  I was struck by the way this movement’s leaders had targeted young, educated, idealistic people from prominent families to carry out their agendas - and how many of those young people ended up like Andrea Chénier!  Many of the young people featured in the stories were close to my age at that time – so their stories hit me in a more personal way than standard stories of gray haired politicians.

I listened to the stories of my classmates whose families had escaped from Vietnam after the American withdrawal.  Some of them told of bombs and bullets and bribes and harrowing midnight rides in leaky boats over rough seas with only a hope and a prayer of reaching safety.  Dead friends and relatives stalked their dreams.  The abundant choices in the school cafeterias felt to them like heavenly visions that might disappear in a blink of an eye.  For others, the worst trauma was leaving behind a beautiful china tea set or a favored doll.  They packed their bags, boarded a comfortable jetliner and a few days later someone drove them to their new American home.  They wistfully reminisced about the wonderful fresh vegetables in Saigon’s markets, and the amazing skills of the portrait artists and acrobats who plied their trade on the street corners – “All cheap –CHEAP!”  They looked forward to the day when they could go back to Vietnam. 

It struck me how differently these people experienced the same events – even though some of them had lived only a few blocks apart in Saigon..  In questioning them, it appeared that the difference between these two groups was a combination of family status, who they knew, and sometimes just plain luck! 

During this period, I also started reading Mary Stewart’s Arthurian Trilogy (The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills, and The Last Enchantment.)  I loved the way she used the pacing and sensual detail of a main stream novel to tell a fantasy story.  It made the story come alive in a way that the swift plot-driven pace of most fantasy novels never achieved.  I knew that I wanted to do something similar with my fantasy novels.

As my mind percolated on these matters, I began to wonder what it would be like to be a young, educated person of good family during a time of upheaval.  What would it be like to be courted, and groomed, and given at least nominal power – supposedly with the goal of helping to make the world a better place – only to be betrayed in service of the personal ambitions of a few ruthless characters?  What would bring such a young person to the attention of a movement’s leaders.  What would sort of temperament and background would incline such a young person to join a revolutionary movement?  And for that matter, what sort of temperament and background would incline a person to be so ruthless as to sacrifice innocent people for their own aggrandizement?

The light adventure-romance plot I had been constructing for my fantasy world began to lose my interest.  I wanted to explore larger, deeper, darker issues in my writing.  There was a minor character in this fantasy story who I had conceived originally as a love interest for one of my heroes.  I hadn’t explored her character very much, but she seemed wounded – as if some tragedy in her past had left her wiser, but definitely sadder.  In my new, more somber mind frame, this drew my attention. 

In the story as I had written it up to that point, this character was quite young –probably mid-twenties – in an inherited position of power, with no family around her, and both lonely enough and broad minded enough, to bring a stranger from a strange land into the most intimate areas of her life, even though she tended to keep most people at a distance. 

I began to wonder what had happened to her.  Why was her family gone?  Why was she the one left in charge?  Why was she so guarded, so sad, and yet so open to new experiences?  As I worked to answer these questions, as storyline of “To Color the Wind” began to emerge.  This nameless aristocrat (up to this point, she had only been called by her title) became Jesipam – a girl with a past and a family, and a tragic destiny.  So what would they be like?

From the earliest days of my fantasy world building efforts (when I still was thinking I would be writing a light teenage romance-adventure) I had thought of Jesipam’s people as being very large.  When I entered the work force, some of my coworkers were from Samoa and the Pacific Islands.  Many of them were very large, and strikingly handsome.  I was surprised to discover that some of these people, instead of proudly claiming their Pacific Island heritage, played it down in favor of forwarding their European roots.  When I tried to tell them that I thought it was wonderful that they had Polynesian blood, they would get embarrassed and insist that they were really more Spanish or French or whatever European stock they could claim.  I found this lingering effect of colonial days very sad.  I decided to turn this situation upside down in my story.  I decided that Jesipam’s people would look like Samoans, and that they would tend to look down on any Caucasian heritage.  Jesipam would be of mixed race, and ashamed of her Caucasian heritage.  This would be part of her burden as she grows up – to come to terms with a deep abiding prejudice against part of her own ancestry.

If Jesipam’s people looked like Samoans, it no longer made sense to keep the setting European.  I didn’t want to set the story in the Pacific Islands, but I did want a setting where a Somoan-looking people might logically live.  My exposure to people from different areas of the world drew my attention toward Asia, so I as wrote this new version of the story, more and more Asian elements began to creep into the plot line.  This worked to a certain extent, but my fantasy land began to have a disjointed feel to it. In an effort to create a more authentic feeling fantasy world, I began to cast around for a new cultural model for my fantasy land

One day I turned on the television and, just by happenstance, I saw a documentary on the shifting cultures of Central Asia.  I had already been toying with Central Asia as a setting for the story - since I had heard that the steppe lands of Central Asia were excellent for horses, and horses had always played a big role in my conception of this story.  When I saw the footage of the area, I found myself saying: “This is it.  This is what my fantasy land looks like.”  Furthermore, the documentary described the various waves of immigration into the area – starting with a red-haired Caucasian people, then people from South Asia, then another wave of fair skinned Caucasians, then Asians from what is now China, then Persians and Arabs – all very similar to the background I had already written for my story world. 

Even more striking – one area, called the Fergana Valley had long been known for its large beautiful horses.  Tenth Century Chinese visitors to the area called them “Heavenly Horses” and greatly coveted them.  However, their owners wouldn’t sell them because the horses held some kind of ceremonial (possibly even religious?) significance for the people of the Fergana Valley.  Again, this closely echoed my story line, as I had envisioned my protagonist’s people keeping a special line of large horses which were deeply intertwined with the culture’s mythology and set aside for the exclusive use of the aristocracy.  It felt like fate.  I started researching the history and cultures of Central Asia, and consciously incorporating elements from Central Asia into my fantasy world. (Some of these elements are described in the article: “Where Reality Ends and Fantasy Begins” on the “To Color the Wind Trivia” page.)

Looking at the technology, politics and conditions in Central Asia throughout various stages of history, I focused in on the Tenth Century AD as the era in which to set my story.  This decision, further shaped the political back drop of the stories.

As the stories took shape and I started showing them to editors and agents, two comments kept coming up over and over.  The first comment was that the book was too long, and the second comment, that it was too slow paced and psychological/social to attract a male readership.  Both of these aspects would tend to decrease how fast the book could sell. 

These publishing professionals carefully explained that standard publishing companies needed to print up books in batches of 5000 books – this is simply the most economical “run” (batch) size given the pricing structures of paper producers, inking and machine time.  Furthermore, because companies are taxed quarterly on their inventory, booksellers need to either “turn-over” (sell) books within 3 months or return them to the publisher to keep their costs down.  Any returned books become part of the publisher’s inventory for tax purposes.  This process means that standard publishing executives want to be fairly certain that a book can sell 5000 or more books in three months – anything less quickly cuts into their profits, and they can easily lose money on a book – which threatens the viability of a company. 

Looking closely at my book, as it existed at the time, I saw that I could divide it into three books and even have the luxury of exploring plot elements that I had excised from my original in an attempt to trim the size of the book to fit publishers’ submission guidelines.  This could take care of the size problem and enrich the story at the same time.  However, I decided that changing the story to make it more action-oriented and putting more emphasis on male characters in order to capture a male readership would make a rip the heart out of the story as it had evolved.  I decided to keep the character-driven, female-centered, aspects of the book intact and find a publisher who could sell the book to its targeted audience: teenage girls and women.

With research, I discovered that on-demand, electronic publishers can afford to publish books that sell more slowly than the 5000 books per quarter.  These publishers store book manuscripts in electronic format in their computers and simply print up books as the orders come in - whether the order is for 10 books or 10, 000 books.  Since current laws don’t require them to pay taxes on the unprinted books in their computers, and they only print to order –so there are few returns, they can afford to publish books with a more “niche” readership. 

As a bonus, most on-demand publishers, allow authors to keep the publishing rights to their work.  This is an important bonus, because one of the complaints I heard most often from published authors is that their publisher had stopped printing their books, but wouldn’t release the publication rights to another publisher – or even to the author - without the payment of a huge acquisition fee, amounting to tens of thousands of dollars or more! 

In addition, I would have more control over the formatting and cover design with an on-demand publisher than with a standard publisher.  I had long dreamed of designing my own book covers, but had become resigned to the fact that I would have to accept whatever cover the publisher chose.  With an on-demand publisher, that dream revived.  I designed the covers as you see them today.  I don’t know that I will keep these covers on future editions, but I am proud of them. 

It’s been a long road to publication, but holding my books in my hands – with the covers I designed is a dream come true.  I hope that these books find their readership – however large or small it may be – and that people enjoy these books, and find the world a little broader and less lonely because of them.