My Adventures

Mont St Michel & Chartres Mont St. Michel One of the questions on the Graduate Record Exam before I got into grad school was: “The author of Mont Saint Michel & Chartres was also the author of what other book?” Answer: The Education of Henry Adams! Having read Henry Adams’ autobiography (written modestly in third person) I got the answer right. And I’d read Adams’ luscious descriptions and histories of

Cathedral of Notre Dame (Photo: Katherine Neville) I went to Paris for my French book tour, and over that weekend, I tried to go to Notre Dame on my birthday! But instead, I ended up going to a wonderful restaurant on the Left Bank and some art supply stores. The next day happened to be Palm Sunday, so I went to Notre Dame, but it was closed for the Mass – or so I thought! I stood out of the way of the tourist

(Washington: Mysterious District of Columbia) For the Spanish launch of El Fuego (The Fire) the noted Spanish magazine El Mundo wanted to do a feature interview with me at home in Washington, DC, where many of the modern scenes of the book take place. For this interview, they flew over photographer Chema Conesa, with the famous author Javier Sierra (The Secret Supper, The Lady in Blue) who would write the actual inte

December 2000 marked an important historic event in Sufi annals: the first Mevlana Symposium was held in Turkey, to commemorate the 727th anniversary of the death of the great poet and mystic, Jalal al-Din Rumi (known throughout Turkey as Mevlana, not as Rumi), the founder of the Mevlevi Order (The Whirling Dervishes). The congress took place at Ankara and Konya from December 15-17, 2000. Of only seven ordained sheik