(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 interview.
Javier and I had known each other for a long time. As a young cub reporter he’d first interviewed me, many years before, when I was honored to be invited to speak at the prestigious Ateneo de Madrid, an institution which usually hosts great literary and scientific luminaries — never writers of popular fiction like me. (To give some idea, the speaker who’d preceded me the previous month at the Ateneo was Nobel Laureate Ilya Prigogine!) Now I was exponentially honored because I knew that Javier Sierra — who has the distinction of being the first Spanish novelist ever to hit the NY Times bestseller list — had long considered my books as an early inspiration to his own esoteric thrillers (or “literary bestsellers” as they call them in Spain.)
But I also knew that Javier, like everyone else, likely believed that I’d invented or at least exaggerated the mysterious, hidden locales which are described in my book as existing at the very heart of what seems, to everyone else, the very public city of Washington, DC.
I resolved that this would be an interview like no other.
I wanted to surprise Javier and Chema by taking them into the very heart of my book!
Photos from our D.C. Mysteriosa excursion:
(Click to enlarge)
Katherine and Javier Sierra in Katherine’s library
Katherine and Karl with Javier Sierra at Zaytinya, Washington DC
Katherine at Dumbarton Oaks
El Fuego near the hiding place of the Black Queen
“As Ye Sow, So Shall Ye Reap” (Motto at Dumbarton Oaks)
The C & O Canal
