by J. Leigh
For those of you who've not yet read Tangled Paths, the Tazu
are a race of tall, humanoid people who have scales in a multitude of colors
and patterns instead of traditional skin. Oh, and they can shape-shift into dragons.
Interestingly enough, in creating their corner of the Way
Walkers world, I did not start with the Tazu themselves, I stared with a moot--
a genetic throw back who couldn't shape shift into a dragon as the Tazu can.
I'd already written three books for another Walkers series before this set in
the Clan Lands, home to the vampric Clan, (who also make an appearance in Tangled Paths, but not as prominent) and
in that setting introduced my first moot-- a human looking person, born from
two Tazu but the only physical indicator of that was his draconic eyes. When I
decided I wanted to move away from my Clan Lands in favor of a shorter series,
I choose the idea of a moot for a main character.
What would it be like, as a moot amid Tazu? For that matter,
what was it like as a human, living
side-by-side with these shape-shifting creatures? What were the main
differences, just in day-to-day living? Structure became an immediate issue to
flesh-out, and coupled with an Architecture
for Dummies book and a trip to of all places Las Vegas, NV, my obsession with draconic buildings and the crux of
Jathen's personality began.
Now I had previously lived in Las Vegas for three years prior
to that 2010 visit, and had already developed a love for a particular artist's
glass work sculptures, one Dale Chihuly.
(http://www.chihuly.com/) Now this is the
man who crafted the Bellagio's ceiling and even more for the Wynn hotel, but it
was the trip in 2010 to the newly opened City Center on the strip that found me
inside an art gallery dedicated solely to Dale Chihuly's glory. I stood beneath those tall, spiky glass forms
and the little sea form bowls under glass and thought, "My god, what if
the Tazu could make buildings that
looked like this--or at least were supplemented with it?"
And off I went.
It just worked so well. A dragon's natural tendency to be
ostentatious and their love for shiny things, all crafted not with just
gemstones as might be expected, but with glass. Beautiful, colorful, flowing glass. Granted, there were a lot of
practical issues I had to address, like stairways and size accommodations for
humans that didn't quite gel with my more wild glass-built ideas, but I was
still able to bring a lot of the beauty I'd found in Las Vegas to life inside
the Tazu Nation. And what's more, my
main character Jathen, the moot who couldn't fly through all the beautiful
colors, he fell in love with all this wild architecture, too. I'd never had a
character with the mind of an engineer and an artist, and it was refreshing and
new, and wholly Jathen.
The path of Tazu Nation architecture also lead me down the road
of architecture throughout the continent, starting with the places Jathen
visited on his journey. Now I won't go into deep details, but all this plotting
and planning and considering the possibilities of using magic to make buildings
helped to also shape certain plot-points of Tangled
Paths as well.
Links:
Book Page on RAP: http://redadeptpublishing.com/
Author page on RAP: http://redadeptpublishing.
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