When I was young, my favorite picture book was 'Fletcher and Zenobia,' written by Edward Gorey and illustrated by Victoria Chess. It's long out of print now, but its mix of macabre humor and 1960s psychedelia made it a perfect children's book for the times.
— Rick Riordan
I have to be careful. My readers are very detail-oriented, and if I make a mistake they'll call me on it.
I've always liked the idea that writing is a form of travel. And I started my writing career as a mystery novelist for adults.
It's not easy. I got lots of rejections when I first started out. If you want to write, you have to believe in yourself and not give up. You have to do your best to practice and get better.
It seems like just yesterday my son was hiding under the table to avoid reading. Now, he's writing books longer than mine!
I can't promise that every child with learning differences will become a novelist, but I do think all children can become lifelong readers.
Because I am kind of distracted, I don't tend to sit at my desk 9 to 5. It can be two hours a day, or, when I'm in the final editing stages, it can be 14 hours a day.
I wrote for 10 years before I even started the 'Percy Jackson' series.
I saw 'The 39 Clues' as a potential vehicle for doing some education in a fun way - to take some of these amazing stories from history, dust them off and make them alive.
It's wonderful being an author and having so many kids enjoying my books. That's always been my dream job, and I feel very lucky to be able to do it.
Turkey, Australia, and Japan are three of my top destinations.
I've never been a collector - just a consumer - and these days unless a book is signed to me by another author, I don't normally have any qualms about passing it to a friend or donating it to the library.
When I write, I'm still imagining a kid reading it on paper. I read e-books when I travel, but in general I still prefer holding an old-fashioned book in my hands. There's a special, tactile experience.
I love teaching. I love working with kids... maybe some day I'll go back to the classroom. I'm not ready to say it'll never happen.
I'm a teacher still, but with a much larger classroom.
It's always hard to wrap up a series. The longer I spend with the characters, the more they become like friends.
I loved the idea of making history interesting for kids! When Scholastic approached me about 'The 39 Clues', I immediately started going through the 'greatest hits' from my years as a social studies teacher, and picked the historical characters and eras that most appealed to my students.
I get letters from college kids who have read Percy Jackson when they were younger who tell me, 'I just passed my Classics exam.' The books are accurate enough that they can serve as a gateway to Homer and Virgil.
My problem is never ideas. I've got more than I'll ever have time to write. It's all about how many I can get to, and which ones readers want to see the most.
The Met is such a powerful place for me because it's a natural connection between the ancient world and the modern world. And when you're dealing with ancient mythology, trying to put a modern spin on it, you really can't do much better than to call on the Met.
I've been reading Greek mythology since I was a kid. I also taught it when I was a sixth grade teacher, so I knew a lot of mythological monsters already. Sometimes I still use books and Web sites to research, though. Every time I research Greek mythology, I learn something new!
Every child's taste is different. Don't worry if they're not reading 'War and Peace' at age 12. First, build a good foundation and a positive attitude about reading by letting them pick the stories they enjoy. Make friends with a bookseller or librarian. They are a wealth of information on finding books that kids enjoy.
I feel incredibly fortunate to have had the level of success I've had. I was just writing stories for my own sons.
I like to have a simple workplace.
I wanted my students to leave my classroom loving reading and wanting to read more, and if they left my classroom thinking that reading is boring, then I haven't done my job.
My goal in the classroom was always to make sure they were having so much fun that they didn't realize they were learning.
I don't think about being famous, really. Being an author, I don't generally get stopped as I walk down the street. It's not like being a movie star.
I sometimes look at my bookshelves today and wonder which volumes my sons will treasure in twenty or thirty years. Which should I be saving for them? Which will fade with time?
The older I get, the less I obsess about material stuff. In fact, stuff has become the enemy. There always seems to be more of it than I have storage in my house!
There are so many fantastic stories and I want to bring Thor and Odin and the other gods into the modern world, just like I did with the Greeks and 'Percy Jackson.' I'll give the books an urban setting and have young people interacting with the Norse gods.
Back when I taught middle school and wrote adult mysteries, my students often asked me why I wasn't writing for kids. I never had a good answer for them. It took me a long time to realize they were right.
I can't actually wrap my mind around it easily - I can't really visualize what 2 million books looks like... So I try to keep it real for myself by focusing on individual anecdotes of how my books have helped kids learn to love reading.
Writing 'Book 1: The Maze of Bones' didn't feel much different than writing one of my other novels, but I thought it was very innovative to offer the website and trading card components as well for those readers who wanted to go more in depth with the Cahill experience.
I always love it when I hear back from kids who say they discovered Percy Jackson and now wear their learning difference as a badge of honour.
I stick closely to the structure of the myths. I may have some fun with the mythology by changing the environment to modern-day, but the structure of the myths, the monsters, the relationships of the gods - none of that is made up.
It's hard enough to be a middle-school kid, because you're dealing with so many facets of your identity - you're changing socially, you're changing physically, you're changing emotionally, everything is in flux, and to put race on top of that as well and have to figure out your racial identity is extremely hard.
You have to work hard to get to the top of your game. I think every writer has doubts! I still do all the time.
I go back and research, say, every reference to the Gorgons, and I find what the classical writers said about them and it's so much richer than you might get in an average Greek mythology text. I feel like an archaeologist - I'm dusting off these things that people have not seen for thousands of years and bringing them into the modern world.
If the parents are too busy to read, it's a safe bet the children will feel the same way. Set aside time for family reading each night. It doesn't matter so much what the kids read, as long as you provide them space for reading and a sense that it is a valuable part of your daily routine.
I don't think I would ever inch my way up to Y.A. That audience is very well served. There are a lot of wonderful writers writing for Y.A. I feel like I'm in the right place.
Kids ask me questions. You'd think after doing this for four years, I would have heard every single question anyone could think of to ask, but no, every time, they surprise me, they ask me something I never thought of before.
The Web or card experience is not at all going to replicate the book experience, nor is the book experience going to replicate the Web.
I like both Greek and Egyptian. More Greek stories have survived, so we know more about them. They've always been my favorite. On the other hand, I like the Egyptian stories because they're not as commonly known and they have an exotic flavour.
It is true that I once refused to eat haggis in Scotland and this did not sit well with the local population.
When I was in college, my parents' house burned down, and took a lot of the possessions I'd grown up with. That's probably one thing that made me realize material stuff is not really that important.
The images from the book you make in your head are always going to be the best images.
I think kids want the same thing from a book that adults want - a fast-paced story, characters worth caring about, humor, surprises, and mystery. A good book always keeps you asking questions, and makes you keep turning pages so you can find out the answers.
Kids are the audience I know best.
I do like to wrap things up and leave some things to the readers' imagination.
I've always found the second book in a series is the hardest to write.
