Day 19, 31,697 Words...

Hi everyone! So sorry for my long absence, but I have been away from WiFi all week!! I am back to work tomorrow, so I will have more regular Internet access, and more things to procrastinate so I will get more fully caught up tomorrow.
Wow, I am so impressed with the quality of what people have put up on the blogs. indigo and Katie, you are both really bringing the noise and I'm sorry I haven't been able to support you more fully. That will all change as we find ourselves on the home stretch. 11 days... I hope to finish in 10.

My novel has not had much happening in it, as you would expect, but I did write in a couple of things I hope you enjoy. Katie, we both oddly enough included many of the same details from Degrassi! And I had Alice make a brief stop in a small town outside of the small town of Black Wood, where she visited Buns of Steel for the Guac-Off.
Here is an excerpt of the conversation between Alice and the young ingenue from the bakery, please enjoy!!

For the first time, Alice noticed a table that had been set up, with three panelists seated in front of microphones. She quickly recognized 2 out of the 3 celebrities, as would any person with eyes. The actor who had played Joey Jeremiah in the hit television series Degrassi Junior High and Degrassi High was easily recognizable in his patterned vest and jauntily tipped fedora. The actor who portrayed ‘Snake’ was also recognizable, once the context of ‘Degrassi Junior High’ had been established. He was wearing printed parachute pants that had been so popular in the 1980s, along with a tie-dyed shirt. The third member was not at all recognizable, but bore a startling resemblance to Sybil Trelawney from Harry Potter fame. But instead of the round glasses favoured by the psychic witch, she wore the square framed lenses made popular by Derek ‘Wheels’ Wheeler, the third member of the band “The Zit Remedy”, which later was name simply “The Zits”. Instead of the flowing floral dresses that Sybil always wore, this woman wore a denim jacket paired with Mom jeans, the look made famous by ‘Wheels’. And instead of wild hair contained by a long scarf, this woman wore what was rather obviously a wig, fashioned in a classic 80s mullet.
Alice knew that the actor who had portrayed the much loved character ‘Wheels’ had recently died. To(Ron)To(!) had run a full page obituary in tribute to the actor, although they had only focused on the ‘Wheels’ years, commenting only on the various story lines that had involved Wheels throughout the 9 year run of the Degrassi series, from the ill-fated attempts to ‘go all the way’ with class president Stephanie Kaye, to the shooting of the music video for the Zits smash hit ‘Everybody Wants Something’, to the darker turns his character took involving the death of his parents and his own struggles with alcoholism. The obituary had been a hit, with the newspaper selling more copies of that edition than any before or since. Alice felt that it was in very poor taste to try to replace what was surely an irreplaceable member of the much loved Degrassi triad and told the young man holding the tray as much.
He nodded with understanding, he too had a reverence for the character Wheels, as did anyone who had ever watched the show. “Of course we would never try to replace Wheels,” he said. “The third celebrity judge is actually a psychic named Si(mone) Greengage. She is channeling the spirit of Neil Hope, the actor who played Wheels. We had a bit of a rocky start when she was trying to call up the spirit of Wheels but couldn’t remember the actor’s name who portrayed him. None of us could, and apparently the spirit did not wish to answer to the name Wheels. Crazy I know. Anyhoo… a quick google search turned up the name Neil Hope, and things were smooth sailing from that point forward.” He said, audibly breathing a sigh of relief.
“You’re lucky that no one had disabled the search function that would allow you to perform such a search,” she said wisely.
“I know right?” he responded. Clearly he had dodged a bullet, and he knew it. “I’ll catch up with you later…” another glance at her chest, “Alice.” Alice hated to see the young man go, but she loved to see him walk away.