Samhain, also called Samhuinn, means “end of the warm season.”  It also represents the inspiration for my second book—or second and third books, as I’m growing increasingly convinced it will take me two novels to tell the full story of Ayimat Caddi, the timeless and omnipotent Still Watcher who is a true god amongst ignorant heathen, and Sergejs Girhipovs, the immortal human who represents the closest nature has ever come to creating a real vampire, something quite unlike Dracula or any other manifestation of the word yet equally identifiable with the premise inherent in all of them.

Samhain began on November 1.  It marked the combined celebration of the Celtic New Year’s Day and Feast of the Dead.  As holidays went, Samhain was equally respected and feared, for it was the only time of the year when the veil between corporeal reality and the Otherworld could most easily be penetrated.  Like cotton gauze stretched too thin, the barrier separating these two very different realities became permeable at the end of the warm season.

The Celts used the festival of fire to celebrate the event.  That pagan party eventually was stolen by the Christians and relabeled All Soul’s Eve.  As luck would have it, the Christians weren’t able to maintain control of yet another holiday wrongfully taken from others, so it became Hallowe’en, a secular holiday.

But I digress.

The end of the warm season, or Samhain, is what my second published work will be about.  It also will encompass a battle between two powerful and ageless beings, one a god and the other a devil, neither of whom can be blamed for what they’ve become.  But don’t for an instant think you can guess how that will work or what shape these two creatures will take.  And I’ll reiterate what I’ve said before: End of the Warm Season is about a tree.