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Ah, the arduer. This is an Edward novellite, but that doesn’t mean the arduer is gone completely. Anita is getting some control over it, but she still needs to feed. I know that there is a group of fans that want Anita and Edward to get together in a more than just friends way. Not going to happen. It would be like dating family. Not to mention that we just don’t think of him that way, nor he us. So, what to do with that whole arduer thing? Well, Micah just had his book so he can’t come, though he’d be logical. We’ve got him tied up in St. Louis with testimony in a child custody case for a lycanthrope that’s in danger of loosing their kids. Which means we take who? I actually did the beginning of a chapter with Richard going, but no dice. He just wasn’t buying. Nathaniel was more than willing to come, but since Anita can only feed on him every other day, well, we need more food. So, right now, Jason is also along. I was getting bogged down with Jason and Nathaniel’s introduction. The novellite wasn’t about them. It was about Edward. I came down to lunch complaining about it. Jonathan said a very smart thing, “It’s an Edward novellite, so keep it focused on Edward.” I said, “But I have to introduce Nathaniel and Jason. You always have to write each book, as much as possible, as if a new reader will pick it up and won’t know anyone.” I was beginning to wonder if the novellite was really going to work, when I remembered something from an earlier Anita book. I can’t even remember the scene but I was trying to do a bridge scene, just a bit to connect two points, and I just couldn’t get it to work. So I skipped it and put in a note to myself to transition it later. I skipped ahead and wrote the next part of the book. Well, guess what, I didn’t need the bridge scene. The two scenes stood nicely on their own and next to each other. I’ve found that if a book is going well, then I hit a scene and it isn’t going well, that there’s something wrong with that scene. Sometimes, you don’t need the scene. So I stopped trying to introduce Nathaniel and Jason, and just skipped it. I put Anita and Edward at the latest crime scene talking about the case. Edward complains that she’s brought her boyfriends, and they talk about the fact that he’s heard a rumor about her needing to feed on sex because of Jean-Claude. People talk to Edward who won’t talk to the police, just like they do Anita, actually. Not only did the scene work, but I got twelve pages done before three o’clock. That was yesterday. Today, we still haven’t seen Nathaniel and Jason on stage, but we’ve had another Edward and Anita scene. We’re looking at the files on the other victims. Again, this novellite is about the mystery. It’s about Edward calling for her help with the case. We’ll be interacting with the local police next in a more major way. I think we’ll even go to see the local master of the city without the boys. There is no reason to take Nathaniel and Jason to the vamps, especially not when we’re carrying a badge. Anita can explain taking an assistant on out of town zombie raisings, but it’s a lot harder to explain on a murder investigation. Nathaniel and Jason are getting to see a lot of the hotel room. They’ll get their time on stage, and we will feed, there will be sex, but the majority of the novellite has to be about Edward and the mystery. I guess the character who the novellite is mostly about will dictate the flavor of the book. Interesting.