Ash Wednesday, the Christian holiday dating back to the 8th century, was based upon the older Roman New Year’s Feast of Atonement, where ashes cleansed us of sins–and which, itself, originated in the ancient Indian festival of the fire god, Agni. I find it appropriate that this year’s Ash Wednesday falls on February 17–date of the ancient Roman feast of Fornacalia–which celebrated Fornax, goddess of the furnace, oven or kiln, and all the things baked in them. This timeless connection with ashes, smoke and fire is the theme of my sequel to The Eight: THE FIRE. And appropriately, Talleyrand’s chef plays a key role–Carême, the first “celebrity chef” in history–whose name rings true to this season. Carême is French shorthand for quarantième: the “40 days” (of Lent) following Ash Wednesday.

Christmas: The Lumineria in Santa Fe

I rented a Jeep Cherokee and drove cross-country with Karl, violent storms whizzing past us as we went. Christmas Eve in Santa Fe, we hiked up Canyon Road, lined with its beautiful art galleries, to watch the fabled Lumineria: all along the steep canyon are displays of votive candles in paper sacks, bonfires and sparklers, revelers in Mardi Gras-like costumes, moving through the shadows in the snow and bitter cold. My friend and fellow author, David Morrell (”Father of Rambo”), a longtime Santa Fe resident himself, recently wrote a wonderful book, The Spy Who Came for Christmas, set at the Lumineria.

New Year’s Eve: Back Home in my Tree Throughout the 1980s, I lived in a tree house in Sausalito (Spanish for “a little stand of willow trees”) across the Golden Gate Bridge, just north of San Francisco. The tree house is nestled in a forest of sacred trees, eucalyptus and acacia, with a wrap-around view of San Francisco Bay. It is there where I happily wrote my first two novels: A Calculated Risk and The Eight. To celebrate the publication of THE FIRE, and to begin work on my next novel, the present owners of the property kindly rented the tree house to me for a year. To see views of my Tree House, ‘Then and Now,’ click here In Sausalito we also had a wonderful Gathering of Writers, with our spouses, (Karl calls them “The Spice”) including award-winning bestsellers: Cara Black, Rhys Bowen, Sheldon Siegel, Jacqueline Winspear. (And me!) Journalist Beth Barany, who joined us, discusses it on her blog.