Chapter 1

Currently listening to: Balamb Garden theme (Orchestral)from Final Fantasy VIII composed by Nobuo Uematsu.

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I am excited to officially announce my first novel, Ark: A sci-fi/fantasy tale. I conceived of the idea 7 years ago, during my senior year in high school. The tale was initially to be a Star Wars fan-fiction, but after watching the entire series of Avatar: The Last Airbender this summer, I realized that for my story to be taken seriously, I needed to spend the time and effort to construct my own world and mythology, rather than stealing George Lucas.' (Another plus: I don't have to pay royalties to his real-life Empire.)

I thus began in July to work on background-related issues, which I did until October. In late October, I began working on the first draft of the first chapter, which was submitted to Scribophile.com on November 5th. I received numerous encouraging reviews on the chapter (and, most recently, 2nd place in a NaNoWriMo contest) and have been writing like a madman ever since; my current word-count is around 23,000.

I was likewise blessed to have several close friends and family members who were more than willing to read my work and provide continuous critique and support, which has been encouraging and also challenging.

I am thus very excited to say that there has been a stellar amount of support for the book thus far, both from close friends as well as from reviewers on the internet.

I would like to start blogging about my progress on the book, so that interested parties can keep up. At this point in time, I plan to do so via Facebook, as I do not have the money or resources to do anything "official."

This, therefore, is my first step in that effort!


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I would like to include in this note, for those of you unfamiliar with the project, the Scribophile.com synopsis of the story, which will follow:

Nearly a millennium ago, an unexplained geo-thermal catastrophe called the Tumult brought humanity to the brink of extinction. The few who managed to escape the disaster orbited the World in man-made Arks: drifting, self-sustained space cities.

After eight centuries of extensive terra-forming, the World was once again inhabitable. The descendants of the original survivors began re-populating the World under the banner of a New Humanity: a homogenized society committed to its own survival. This New Humanity was governed by the Magisterial Authority: a council of "gifted" humans with extraordinary physical and mental abilities.

150 years later, the World is safe, but the expanded population and political interests of an evolving culture have once again yielded a society of vying powers.

In the midst of this, Magister Tru Arneau, one of the Authority's most gifted Telepaths, struggles to track down the World's most dangerous fugitive. But years of failure are beginning to erode her tenacious demeanor, and there is the ever-present fear that a second Tumult will once again plunge humanity into darkness.

-D