If you’ve noticed my absence (and I sort of hope you have), it’s because of the looming deadline and the basic need to learn to sail in order to reach it.

My characters have sailed before, as I’ve said, thanks largely to Peggy Nicholson who has taken them (and me) by the hand and sailed us through all sorts of seas and manuevers.

But Peggy isn’t around to help this time. Her friend (and mine, but more hers) Antoinette Stockenberg has done a brilliant job of providing me with a boat and advice, but I haven’t felt as if I should be asking Antoinette to answer every question.

So I’ve been trying to figure it out myself. I have a CD now that is teaching me how to sail. I have a couple of terrific books on sailing that I’ve mined for detail. And the internet, bless it, has introduced me to a variety of sites and message boards that are answering almost every question I’ve thought to ask.

The issue isn’t really sailing. The issue is Demetrios and Anny’s relationship. But it’s played out against a sailing backdrop at this point in the book. And the relationship has to be integral to the environment. They have to support each other.

So I’m working on that. I’m also working on recipes using sea bass and saints who have feast days in late May and I’m so looking forward to Santorini where I’ve got a house I know and family I’m familiar with and every other minute won’t be spent trying to figure out the appropriate telling detail — I’ll just know it instinctively.

Still, the challenge keeps the story fresh. And I’m learning tons.

I just wish I could learn how not to get seasick!

… but were afraid to ask.

Or in my case, had no idea who to ask. But I needed to know so I didn’t end up with a plot in which Demetrios or Anny got arrested for entering a country illegally.

Ordinarily this would not be a problem because ordinarily when you send your characters on commercial flights or regularly scheduled public transportation between two countries, it’s understood that they do what they’re supposed to do (unless you’re writing a thriller in which case they might very well not).

But when they’re hopping on and off a private sailboat, you want to know — or at least I do — that they are not breaking laws that are going to complicate the plot somewhere down the road when the customs and immigration people turn up.

So . . . I went searching.

And I found the Schengen Agreement.

The Schengen Agreement is going to solve all my plot problems. Or at least all the ones that would have occurred if customs and immigration had shown up.

They won’t because of the Schengen Agreement which was first enacted in 1985 among five countries in Europe who created a common border of immigration and within it travel was conducted as if it were a single country. More countries joined this pact, which is not, interestingly enough, coterminous with the EU (some EU countries, like the UK and Ireland are not in it and other non-EU countries, like Norway and Iceland, are in it). There are 25 countries currently participating in this agreement.

The dark blue countries on the map above are Schengen participating countries. The purple countries who have either opted-out, like UK and Ireland, or they are, like Bulgaria, Cyprus and Romania, working on their own external border controls. When they are on a par with the others in the pact, apparently they, too, will be admitted to the Schengen Agreement.

Demetrios and Anny are thrilled to learn about the Schengen Agreement. They had no idea starring in a book would be so educational.

While they are not deeply into political science, Anny at least has certain governmental responsibilities that would make her aware of this (pity she didn’t tell me). In any case, they are glad it exists because it’s going to make grocery shopping much easier.

I’m delighted because they are complicating their own lives quite enough in this book. They don’t need the help of a passel of government bureacracies!

In fact, chances are you will never find mention of customs and immigration issues in this book. As long as they don’t have to comply with any border control, there’s no need to.

But just between us — those of you who read this blog will have the straight “behind the book” stuff.

You will now know about the Schengen Agreement.

And every time Anny and Demetrios stop to buy groceries or have a meal or walk around a village, you can nod sagely and say to yourselves, “And they can do that because of the Schengen Agreement.”

See? You learn something new every day.