Author’s note

People, it’s been insane. It was a wild ride, this Nanowrimo challenge. It had me writing at the most ungodly hours and it had me listening to the same music over and over again, driving my roomies probably up against the wall. This wonderful, awful project has eaten insane chunks of my time, and it was so utterly worth it.

I have some people I have to thank for their support.

Olli, for bakpau and iced tea when I needed it the most, and a good test subject for the crazy ideas I came up with while writing my story.

Cassandra, for cheering at me and telling me about the whole Nanowrimo project in the first place, and then urging me to sign up and actually do this crazy thing.

Wendy and Tijs (and Trisha), for writing a Nano story with me, exchanging word counts, showing the prose they had written. I thank them for their helpful remarks and their encouragement, and the awesome inspirational chats we had about our pet projects.

My father for his quiet pride when I told him about what I was doing this November.

Bas and Vivian, for listening as I was telling about the joys and the hardships I encountered while writing.

But I think most of all, I should thank System of a Down, for the tremendous inspiration they provided me with throughout this whole ordeal. I don’t think I could have done this without their music. It offered me all the adrenaline, rage, anger, and hurt I needed to get into the moods I needed so much.

Readers will probably notice I inserted a lot of song texts into this story. Among them are lyrics from the aforementioned System of a Down, Nine Inch Nails, DJ Tiësto and some others. Those three are the most quoted throughout the whole story, because their music fit so beautifully with what I was writing at those very moments. Especially the ‘Don’t you get ever get stuck in the sky’ quote was simply brilliant while I was writing Willen’s trial. That’s a moment I will never forget. There are a lot of moments I will never forget about participating in the National Novel Writing Month. I’ve cursed and despaired and hated myself for ever signing up, but I’ve loved the conversations with my fellow Nano novelists, the fun on the forums, and the thrill of actually writing more than the 1667 words a day that were needed to reach the 50,000 words target.

I’ve cried, too, while writing this. I’ve been tearing up at three parts, and I broke my own heart several times. There are more than a few autobiographical moments in this story, and I was very much involved in all the happenings and the hardships my characters went through.

So thank you everyone, it was wonderful.

I hope you enjoy my story… after extensive editing, that is.

Love, Lanfir Leah.