23,583 Words on Day 14

Hi everyone,
I woke up early this morning so that I could make some coffee, sit and get caught up on the blogs, and write a few hundred words before starting work. Wow, what a great collection of novels we have going... I love reading all of your excerpts so much. There is a lot going on in my novel... and later today I will post another excerpt before I leave to go to Lindsay for a hockey tournament. I will be away from Internet and so will be absent from the blogs but I will get caught up at some point when I get back.
I think my biggest struggle this year is writing AND keeping up with blogging. It seems like all I have time for is keeping up, and anything on top of that is a bit out of reach. Anyway, I'm doing my best.
This morning I thought I would post a couple of short excerpts showing the ways that I have been inspired by YOU. Indigo, this first excerpt has a bit of your novel in it, but I promise you more is coming. I love Stella as a character as you know, and have already decided who she is in my book but I am just not there, yet. I promise you all will love it when you see her come into this story.

First... Heather (and Indigo):
“Don’t go to the Karaoke Cabana,” Jackie said seriously, stressing each word to convey the seriousness of his message. “You will just end up wasting your time.” Annie raised her eyebrows. Had he overheard them talking? He had been nowhere to be seen at the time, but she supposed he must have. Otherwise, how could he possibly know their plan? She briefly considered that Jackie might be one of those karaoke primadonna types, and he was just keeping them away so that he could do the entire Glee oeuvre by himself. But of course that was preposterous. Everyone knows that you can’t do the duets alone.
“Start at the Boo(!)-Bie Mansion. You’ll find some answers there,” he finished, holding Annie’s gaze with his electric blue eyes.
Annie nodded slowly and followed Ryan to the door. It was hard to believe but only an hour had passed since she and Ryan had left the airport. Time seemed to have warped somehow, she felt as though she and Ryan had been in Jackie’s Place forever. She bade Jackie goodbye as Ryan opened the door, activating a bell that rang with strange nostalgia. Annie left, heading out into the darkening Nevada sky, and she felt certain that she would be hearing from Jackie again.

This turned out to be more immediately prophetic than she realized, as Jackie leaned out the door and screamed “CONSTANT VIGILANCE!” as they departed. Annie wasn’t sure if this was an ode to ‘Mad-Eye’ Moody from the Harry Potter series, or if it was advice intended just for them. She decided it didn’t much matter. It was sound advice either way. If there was one person who knew something about survival, it was ‘Mad-Eye’ Moody. She chose not to consider what happened to him in the final installation of the series, but don’t we all. Don’t. We. All.

Second.... Katie- who else would I copy a description of Boo(!)-Bie Mansion from? I added in the Freddy Kreuger stripper you had a photo of:

There was also a man who she supposed was supposed to be dressed as Freddy Kreuger, but he actually looked like neither Freddy Kreuger, nor a stripper. He was identifiable as Freddy Kreuger only by his (plastic) bladed finger glove and his striped shirt. He was recognizable as a stripper only by the fact that he was dancing whilst holding onto a pole. The mask he was wearing was of such poor quality that rather than resembling the iconic monster that haunted his victims’ dreams, he looked more like a failed stripper in the late stages of syphilis. She had to admit that there was a good chance that he would be haunting her dreams for the foreseeable future. Finally, there was a Frankenstein stripper, who was oddly doing a robotic shimmy accompanied by the Charleston. To say that it was uncomfortable would be insufficient. It was an extremely sexy nightmare.

Finally, in addition to Jackie and Gordon, I had a character from my novel last year make an appearance! And, it turns out, this character will have quite a large role in this year's effort.

This excerpt is about one of the three clues that Ryan found when he searched Tom's hotel room:

“Wait a minute,” she said, digging through her purse. It took her only a few moments to find what she was looking for. She laid it on the table. It was a perfect match to the business card already there, albeit in much better shape. Ryan looked down, saw what she had laid there, and then pulled out his wallet, searched through it, and pulled out a third, identical card. He laid it next to the others. Written on each of the three cards was a name:
Jake Dempsey, Esq.
Journalist, Documentarian, and All Around Good Guy