By Susan Change, Senior Editor

As an editor, one of the things I love to do is come up with ideas for books I’d like to read and find the perfect person to write the story. These ideas come from anywhere and everywhere: TV, magazines, web surfing, video games, comic books. One day, I was sitting at home watching an episode of National Geographic Explorer. Called “China’s Secret Mummies,” it was about ancient mummies unearthed in the Tarim Basin in Western China in 1978.

Surprisingly, these mummies had Caucasian facial features and light hair. Who were these people? What were they doing there? Being a science fiction fan, my initial thought was of a “first contact” novel about Western traders journeying to China thousands of year before Marco Polo. But DNA tests proved that the area where the mummies were found was one where cultures and peoples had mixed over a long period of time—so the story is not one of first contact, but of an ancient multicultural society. Fascinating! I thought someone had to write a novel about this. I couldn’t think of anyone who could do justice to the idea right away, so I filed it away in my brain.

A few weeks later, I was doing booth duty at the American Library Association conference in Chicago when who should walk into our booth but two-time Newbery Honor Award-winning author Laurence Yep—and everything fell into place. Larry had to write the novel! When I emailed him a couple of weeks later to propose this, I learned that Larry had seen the TV show as well. As he says:

I’ve always been fascinated with the Silk Road. More than tea, silk, and jewels traveled along the routes of the Silk Road; it carried ideas and legends as well.

I was especially intrigued by the Tarim Basin mummies, who were apparently Caucasians with light hair and who wove cloth in the same manner as the Celts in Europe, yet lived on the edge of Central Asia. They were an enigma who both presented a challenge and hinted at a rich story line.

I leapt at the chance to write about them. For me, half the fun of storytelling is not only trying to bring interesting characters to life—in this case, a dragon assassin, a young amazon, and the youthful reincarnation of a tragic Chinese hero—but also in creating the vibrant world that produced those characters.

Setting the novel in an alternate historical timeline also allowed me to blend my twin loves of history and fantasy together. I hope City of Fire is not only funny and fast-paced but also has a depth and a resonance—as if readers can feel the vibrations from a golden bell still tolling in an ancient city buried deep beneath their feet.

(from the Tor/Forge September 2009 newsletter)