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I’ve handed the baby off. Jon, Darla, and my editor, Susan, have the manuscript of THE HARLEQUIN. I have a list of things that I know need fixing. Darla and Jon will help tell me if what was in my head actually made it onto paper. Sometimes a scene is so vivid in the imagination that you read things into it as a writer that never made it into the paper version of the scene. You need fresh eyes that haven’t been dreaming, planning, writing, reading and rereading a scene for months. After I’ve talked to Susan and tell her what changes I’m going to make, unless she can talk me out of them, then the real rewrite begins. But because I’m having to wait on other people to tell me, does it work, I’ve moved onto the next step in my writing process. I’ve started the first chapter of the next book. It’s a fragile start, and probably won’t be the finished way you see it, at all, but the opening feels right. Of the three openings, three book ideas I was looking at, it is the one I know least about. I don’t know what the mystery plot will be with it, or if there is one. One of the ideas I guess I’m not doing yet has a hundred pages of rough draft already. It has a very strong mystery and some kick ass police scenes already written. So why not do that one next? Because it’s not ready, or I’m not ready. Some of the things that made me stop on it the first time are still there, like things need to happen in other books before we finish that hundred page start. Several things that happen in HARLEQUIN made the hundred page opening closer to a reality, but not quite all. I mourn that hundred pages. I’d love to sit down months from now and have that much of the next Anita book done, but the other opening, the one that is barely begun is the next one. I’m almost a hundred percent certain. Almost. I’m to bed. I wish I could share the idea for the opening, but I know better. It may fizzle out. It may do a hundred pages then go, nope, not yet. So no serious details until I’m sure. By the end of the rewrite of HARLEQUIN, I’ll know. Of course, I probably can’t tell you the opening of the next book until the HARLEQUIN is out because of spoiler problems. Oh, hell. I don’t know. I’m tired. I’m going to bed. I don’t have to write it tonight.