Character Introduction: Mr. Starkey

So my life is still being eaten alive by NaNoWriMo...so I thought I’d leave a little piece of what I’m working on, from The Neverland Wars:

Gwen After lunch, Gwen trudged to fifth period biology, and then hurried across campus for her final and favorite class. She liked Mr. Starkey’s classroom. Her speech and debate teacher had turned the boxy room into a place that he felt comfortable in, and it showed. The walls were plastered with posters and quotations of great speakers, all of whom had lived and breathed the inspirational spirit of the sixties. John Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. hung beside Bob Dylan and John Lennon. When Mr. Starkey sat at his desk, he typed by the glow of an antique stained-glass lamp, the origins of which had never been explained.

Mr. Starkey tended to dress in a manner that made him look like a much older university professor, or a much younger actor from New York. He seemed to be under the delusion that he was teaching a college course, not a high school elective, but the students never minded the slight pretensions that accompanied this. Mr. Starkey acted like a college professor and treated his students like adults, something which won him instant favor with all of his classes. Gwen certainly appreciated it, and was fond of the way he always smelled like old books.