December 1st (which is rolling around here in a couple of hours) and which is already well underway Down Under is the last day you can provide the answers to my scavenger hunt and get yourself entered in the Here Comes Winter contest.

You can enter by posting the answers to the following questions to me from the “Contact Anne” tab on my website.

Get yourself a bunch of books and other goodies to see you through the snow and cold by sending in your entry today.

Gunnar has got a packet of treats that he is eager to have at, so do him a favor and enter. He gets a treat on every entry. The first one he picks is the Grand Prize Winner.

Here are the questions:

1. Which book by Harlequin romance author Liz Fielding won the RITA in 2006?
2. What day is Hugh Jackman’s birthday?
3. What country is Presents author Miranda Lee’s home?
4. British author Christina Jones wrote a book about a woman who owned a greyhound. What is the book called?
5. Who plays Mark Antony on the television series “Rome?”
6. Harlequin romance author Sophie Weston’s latest book is called The Cinderella Factor. What’s the hero’s name?
7. Presents author Kate Walker has four cats. They are called Dylan, Spiffer, Bob and ?????
8. Who is the sculptress heroine of my book McGillivray’s Mistress?
9. Theo Savas and Martha Antonides are the main characters in which one of my books?
10. What character does Hugh Jackman play in the X-Men movies.

I’ve had some suggestions about where in Ireland I should plonk Flynn’s castle down. I’m still looking. If you have any ideas — or castles — please send them along. Thanks!

Okay, it’s like this — I’ve been to Ireland once. For less than 8 hours. In fact I wasn’t supposed to be there that long, but the plane was delayed. So what I know about Ireland in person is confined to the airport. So I need help.

Flynn, my hero, is Irish. He’s spent a lot of his adult life elsewhere. But home is Ireland, specifically a drafty old castle of sorts in Ireland. Flynn is, to his dismay, an earl. He has traditions and responsibilities and hundreds of years of history at his back. And it’s gaining on him.

He also has a woman he loves, but that I can deal with. Or at least that I’m familiar with. What I need is advice on Ireland. I need somewhere to put his drafty old castle.

So, if you are Irish, or have been to Ireland, or have stumbled across a nifty website that you think would make a great setting for Flynn to have spent his childhood in — please tell me. I am perfectly open to suggestions. I would love to get a virtual look at some great places. So if you know any, tell me about them.

You can leave a comment here, or you can go to my website and click on the Contact Anne tab to send me an email. I will be very grateful, believe me. So grateful that if I pick your spot, I’ll be sure to send you a copy of the book when it’s a ‘real book.’

And if you know a great place and don’t tell me, then don’t grumble when you see what I pick. The time is NOW. Let me hear from you! Thanks.

The synopsis is finished. All the pieces came together at last. Somehow they always seem to do that about 2 a.m. I’m not sure why that is — desperation, perhaps?

Or maybe it’s just that the few brain cells I still have functioning at that point get right down to things and see with considerably clarity because none of the other fuzzy brain cells which would ordinarily be going, “What about this?” or “Have you thought of that?” are still awake.

Dunno. It’s done, though. Great relief. And I think it works.

I re-read Noah Lukeman’s chapter on The Journey in his book The Plot Thickens. It’s another way of thinking about the emotional arc that a character takes from the beginning of the book to the end. He makes good distinctions between “surface journeys” and “profound journeys.”

Surface journeys are what happens in the life of a person when they experience things like physical change, material gain or loss, friendship, enmity, or even romance. Those can change circumstances, but they may not have a real effect on who the person is. He or she may or may not change because of them.

It’s the profound journeys that reflect change. They are the ones that may result from a surface journey, but they are much deeper. They change who a person is. And that’s what I was dealing with last night.

I knew that what happened between Flynn and Sara six years ago had an effect on both their lives. It changed who they were. It actually changed Sara’s life much more than it changed Flynn’s. Her journey might even have been called profound. But it wasn’t finished. It’s still not finished.

But what happens to them both when they come together again has significant impact on both of them. It starts a surface journey — a romance, a physical journey — to Ireland, a change in life circumstances for both of them. But it’s the inner journey that they both make that underpinned the whole synopsis, that is the story I’m telling in their book.

It was the last bit — the change of mind and heart — that I was struggling with at 2 a.m. I knew what had to happen. I just didn’t know how. And I needed the story elements to tell me. Stripped to their basics, bless them, they did.

Remember when I talked about yesterday’s distraction being today’s inspiration. That’s exactly, in the end, what happened. So all I can do is say, Thank you, James.