35,222 Words and Stella has Arrived!!

Hi everyone. I have been so busy keeping up with just my writing it has been hard to keep up with the blogs. I just took a quick peek and saw that you are all amazing and writing incredibly funny and creative novels. I will try my very best to get caught up and stay more on top of things... we all need support as we approach the finish line!!

Today I wrote some sad back story of Annie and her pathetic love life, and had more fun writing Stella in. I have known for some time that I was going to use her and am really happy she is on the scene. My characters FINALLY left the Boo(!)-Bie Mansion, but I think it's so funny to have them leave one bar only to head to another that I have sent them to 'The Flying Monkey' where they will meet up with... you guessed it... Stella Marleybone!!

Here she is...

Stella was a short woman, her salt and pepper hair clipped close in a pixie cut that emphasized her sparkling blue eyes. What she lacked in stature, she certainly made up for in presence. She was often described as formidable, and it was a moniker that fit her like a glove. She spoke in the clipped tones of the British upper class, which was where she hailed from. Many people wondered when they first met her how she had come to be a men’s hockey coach in a small town in the United States, in a league that was a mere step or two above beer and pizza rec hockey leagues. Great Britain was not well known as a place from which the great hockey players or hockey minds sprang. Additionally, there are very few women coaching men’s teams (or women’s teams) period. She also did not have the resume of the traditional hockey coach either.
Her background was in accounting, and it was rumoured (though not confirmed) that she had been the special accountant assigned to Her Majesty, the Queen of England. It was also rumoured that for her exceptional service to the Crown she had been granted the title of Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. This also was unconfirmed, though widely believed, and explained why many who spoke of her referred to her as Dame Stella Marleybone, though never to her face. It was unclear how it was that she came to become a hockey coach, and she rarely answered the question, if anyone had the gall to ask. It was rumoured that she was under the impression that the continent of North America remained a colony of Great Britain, and that she firmly believed that service to the Crown including time spent developing the moral character of colonial citizens.

While she might have been an unlikely hockey coach, Stella certainly seemed to be possessed of the soul of an accountant, and used her accounting book as a way of taking stock of her own and others achievements in life as well as those of the hockey players in her charge. Her process was simple. A good act earned one credits, the number of credits dependent upon the value of the good act. Winning a face off, for example, might earn one 2 credits, clearing a puck out of the defensive zone might earn one 5 credits, earning a goal might be worth 10 points, a game winner worth 15. In similar fashion, one could accumulate debits with acts that demonstrated bad form, selfishness, or laziness. Sloppy play in the neutral zone could lead to a deduction of 5 credits, failure to attend a practice would lead to a deduction of 10 credits, and missing a game could lead to a deduction of 50 credits. In this way, she kept an ongoing account of the contributions of each player to the success of the team. A player who was ‘in the red’ more often than not would find he no longer had a spot on Stella’s team.
Stella on the whole was intolerant of unpredictability, her method had always proved to help her take the measure of a person, of a player, in a truly objective fashion, and she was never wrong. For this reason, Tom Donovan had proved to be quite a conundrum to the no nonsense coach. Tom defied the concept of predictability, with wild swings on both the credit and debit sides of the column. Just when it seemed he had achieved a debt he could never dig himself out of, he would go on a spree of such good behaviour and positive contributions to the team that he would quickly be well out of debt, and indeed in possession of such a quantity of credit that a future ‘in the red’ seemed unlikely. But he always got back there.
Now, as she stared down at her accounting book, she saw that Tom was firmly ‘in the red’, had been for some time, and she was contemplating the difficult decision of cutting him from the team. Any other person would have long since been cut, but there was something different about Tom. She knew she should remove him from the team, he was simply too unpredictable, but she just couldn’t do it. And this was why she both loved and hated Tom. Watching him play had awoken something in her she hadn’t even been aware was there. She had hope, she had belief, and more than anything, she wanted to be there to watch when Tom turned it around again. She wanted to see the fire in his eyes and the grace in his every movement that came when Tom was on."