Finished - a reflection

SO!
On the fifteenth of this month (halfway through NaNoWriMo) I completed NaNoWriMo!
Awesome right?
Well, yes, it is, so congratulations to me. I havent finished a nanowrimo this early before. I havent yet decided whether I'm going to go for broke and try and finish the book in one month, however even if I do I feel like I can come back to blogging, at least part time. Great, right?
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What do you mean you dont care about what I have to say?
Well I'm gonna make you care, or at least read it. I havent decided how yet, but I will.

One thing that I noticed while writing my first fifty-thousand words is that I didn't have any control. Ok, that's not exactly true. I knew what was going to happen in each chapter (at least a general outline) and I knew who'd be where, but how it happened, how they got there, not a clue.
A good example of this was the last chapter I wrote before finishing. It started out as a simple two new friends getting to know each other thing so that the protagonist (Samantha, female secret agent on the tail of an agent's murderer) but by the end the girl she was getting information from was gay and Sam was kissing her.
Seriously no idea how that happened. I've read it back since and it flows just how it should. The kiss doesn't come from nowhere, its led up to, but I had no idea i was writing it.

I don't know if this shows a preternatural ability to write or an inability to control my own thoughts, but either way it appears to work (at least for me and my ever decreasing readership.
Regardless the first draft of this whole book (Ghost of Galledar, the future of the Galledar series) seems to be going well.

Here's the prologue for you to 'enjoy' hopefully I'll be throwing some of 52s at you next week.

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Ghost of Galledar

Prologue

“Alright class, settle down.” Professor Ialla Tundel said, walking into the lecture cube to the sound of her nattering undergrad modern history class. The class quieted down quickly as she crossed from the lower door to the podium in front of the holographic-display.

She clipped her data-drive into the podium’s outlet and waited for a moment as the holo brought up a blank time line for the past two-hundred years. She nodded at it, satisfied and then pulled a small box from her bag. Inside were two lenses in a saline solution, she pulled them out and put them into her eyes.

For a moment she saw nothing, just the room and her class, but then she turned to the holo-display and stared intently at a coded symbol in the bottom right corner. A loading bar zipped across one eye and everything on the holo appeared semi-transparent in the left of her vision.

Her right eye remained clear until she returned to facing her students at which point names and University I.D. Numbers appeared beside each of them. Using info-lenses could get pretty confusing, especially when each lens was doing something different but Ialla had used the lenses for lectures for over fifteen years, she was used to it.

She looked up at the class, they all looked down at her from their gradiently raised seating. The first time she’d walked into a lecture cube she’d been so intimidated that she’d mumbled her way through the lecture and had to re-explain everything a week later.

Now, however, she was used to it. She’d also learnt in that first lecture not to wear a low cut top, because it’s all that anyone would be able to look at, regardless of their inclinations. Now she wore jeans, flat trainers a sweater that she could easily do up or take off depending on how the air conditioning was broken on any particular day and an ironic t-shirt that said ‘being a good historian is 3% talent and 97% not being distracted by the holonet’.

She picked up the micro-mic from the podium and used the magnet bar grafted into her cheek bone to lock it into place as she stepped around the podium and started speaking.

“Good day, class.” She called, the micro-mic projecting her words through the room’s speakers. The class mumbled a short response, to which Ialla smiled. “We’ll work on that.” She decided. “My name is Professor Ialla Tundel,” the name appeared on the holo-display behind her as she started pacing, eyes looking up at the class as her arms moved around to express her words. “I teach Undergrad modern history. Who can tell me what that means?” She moved in front of the podium and crossed her arms, leaning back against it.

There was silence and no movement. Ialla waited a moment longer and raised her eyebrows. A mousy haired girl in the front row looked around to discover that nobody else had raised their hand. She sighed and raised tentatively to answer.

“Yes Josie?” Her right lens had supplied the name, Josephine Brendshall, Student I.D. 90223-Z.

“It-” she frowned for a moment, as if trying to find the trap that had been laid in front of her. “It’s the study of the past one-hundred to two-hundred years.” She said.

“And?” Ialla prompted.

“And…” Josie lengthened the a as she spoke, trying to think of the correct answer, but she didn’t come to it.

“Modern history is the study of the past two-hundred years, how we got to it and how it effects us today.” Ialla explained. The three points, ‘past two-hundred years’, ‘how we got there’, and ‘how it effects us today’ appeared on the holo and in Ialla’s left lens. “We will spend the next three terms learning about everything from King Alduain Chustice in fifteen-hundred B.A.”

The three points vanished from the display the image of an old portrait. The portrait showed the former Black Prince and widely regarded architect of the ‘Elemental Revolution’.

A young man - Matten O’brel, student I.D. 33212-U - in the middle of the audience raised his hand. This was something that happened every year, so Ialla was used to it. She paused and nodded to him. “Prince Chustice was ancient history, from the Chustician Era. How does he relate to what we’re supposed to be learning in Modern History?”

Ialla raised her eyebrows and nodded to the side as if conceding a point. “Anyone want to answer that?” She asked. Nobody raised their hands. Ialla stopped away from the podium to pace idly. “We are floating through space on a massive space station looking for a planet that we can inhabit because our world was made uninhabitable. The world was made uninhabitable because of a war between the allied nations and the Carzen who were rampaging across the globe. What were the Carzen’s motives?” She paused her pacing, opening the floor.

The young girl, Josie, raised a hand and Ialla nodded to her. “They were lead by an element, believed that elemental powers should be reserved for the gods and their prophets, like their leader. Our kingdom, the people of Vagarell and the people of Selonia all had elemental powers, they declared a holy war against us.”

“Good.” Ialla agreed. “They declared war with us because of our powers. Who is considered the primary architect of our universal magical abilities?”

“Alduain Chustice.” Kalar Okan student I.D. 77787-B, a Felie girl with a long red mane and lynx-like features, said purring gently. The Felie were a race of cat-like bipedal people originally from the country of Vagarell. Their appearances ranged though all sorts of old feline species.

Ialla pointed at the girl in a congratulating way. “It was widely believed that if not for Alduain Chustice elemental magic would still be reserved for a privileged few, not the entirety of our people. Alduain Chustice is relevant to these discussions, Matten, because if not for The King it could be argued that our world would still be our world.”

There was a small murmur of assent and the image of King Alduain on the holo disappeared. Ialla moved to the podium again and leaned against it. “Who can name any other supposedly historical figures who could be a part of this discussion? Imogen.” She pointed up at a dark haired girl - Student I.D. 55432-Z - in the back row who had been half way through raising her hand.

“Kamick Dorgon?” She asked.

It was a common answer and while not entirely wrong it wasn’t one of the people that she was going to talk about. Ialla raised a hand and wobbled it from side to side making a non-committal noise. “Yes and no.” She said. “He was very much involved in the founding of the Carzen faith, however he wasn’t directly influential in its turn to radicalism. But that’s a discussion for a third year class. Anyone else?”

A Felie boy with a lion-like yellow mane and dark lion-like features in the third row raised his hand. Avan Merr, Student I.D. 54639-J. “Yes, Avan.” She motioned towards the Felie.

“The Hunter.” He said in a gruff south Vagarell level accent.

“You are correct, sir!” she said, pointing at him and flicking her thumb down like an old fashioned hammer and powder operated pistol. “James Justice Hunter. The creator of the Hunters. Some of you will know him as ‘The Hunter’, some will know him as ‘the Peace-maker’ some of you might not even have heard of him at all.”

The photograph of a man in his late thirties with his pretty young daughter appeared on the holo-display and on Ialla’s left lens. “James Hunter was pivotal in year nine-hundred B.A. in creating the peace agreement and alliance between Galledar and Vagarell. Why is that important?”

The Felie, Avan Merr, raised his clawed hand again. Ialla waited a moment to see if anyone else was going to raise there hand, when nobody did she pointed to Avan and started pacing. “Avan?”

“If There was no alliance between the Galledar people and the Vagarell people then the Selonians would not have caved to their pressure and joined their alliance. If the Elemental Nations Alliance hadn’t existed then the leader of the Carzen wouldn’t have been able to rally the magically impotent people of the Six Nations against us.”

“Right!” she said spinning on her heal at the end of a stride. She paused and turned to the class. “Or is it? In this class we will look at-” there was a flash on her left lens, something she hadn’t intended to happen. She frowned and the display disappeared and was replaced by the emergency broadcast logo.

Ialla turned to the Holo and sighed, it’d been happening far too often lately. “OK, our lesson resumes when this is over.” She said, moving over to the audience seating and leaned against the long desk in front all the students.

She closed her eyes and waited for the news to finish.