I say, ‘You’re going to be disappointed!’ ” “I like to have a simple workplace.” A couple of John Rocco covers hang on the wall and, he says, “That’s about it. When he isn’t on the road, Riordan continues to write in the quiet, pecan tree-shaded guest room of his one-story San Antonio home. “When we went into the Stockholmmuseum,” Riodan says, “I expected to see lots of things on Norse mythology, and we went into an exhibit of Greek mythology! In Sweden!”
Though wherever he travels, Percy Jackson seems to follow. “It was fascinating to see the armor and the weapons from the Viking times and the cauldrons made out of gold,” he says. Talking to the Greek tour guide and climbing the steps of the Acropolis, I was hearing stories I’d never heard before.” An Alaska voyage inspired The Son of Neptune, the second Heroes of Olympus book, and a cruise to the Baltic and Scandinavian countries last summer provided fodder for Riordan’s upcoming Norse series. The excursion, Riordan says, “reinforced to me that as much as I know about Greek mythology, there’s always more. In 2009, the Riordans traveled to the Mediterranean as part of a sweepstakes prize the winner’s family got to meet the author in Athens. They accompany the author on research trips, too. Becky, a visual artist, continues to be his first editor. He wound up earning $400 for one and $300 for the other – a nice addition to his college savings fund. Patrick is a careful, avid reader who asked his Dad to pay him $10 for every mistake he caught before his last two books went to press. Haley, who inspired Riordan to write the original Percy Jackson series, recently finished writing a 30-page entry for his father’s Demigod Diaries anthology. The author’s family – his wife, Becky, and sons Haley, 17, and Patrick, 14 – also contribute to Riordan’s literary efforts. “We do a lot of talking and a lot of thinking about what the cover images should be.” As the Athena jacket reveals, readers can expect a battle between the Greek gods’ offspring in Camp Half-Blood and the Roman gods’ offspring in Camp Jupiter. “It has become a very collaborative effort,” says Riordan. To come up with The Mark of Athena cover image, he collaborated with John Rocco, who won a 2012 Caldecott Honor for Blackout and who has designed all of his covers, beginning with The Lightning Thief in 2005. After October’s Athena comes the fourth entry in the Heroes of Olympus series, due out in fall 2013.ĭespite his hectic schedule, Riordan remains very hands-on with every aspect of his books. But the author is hardly sitting still: for his tour earlier this month for The Serpent’s Shadow, the conclusion of the Egyptian mythology-based Kane Chronicles, he pre-signed as many as 1,000 books at each stop.
THE MARK OF ATHENA COVER MOVIE
( Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, based on the first book in the series, was released in February 2010.) Though such films inevitably disappoint some fans, they also draw new readers to the novels, says Nancy Gallt, Riordan’s agent since The Lightning Thief: “They’re like 90-minute advertisements for the books.” Murphy confirms this influence, adding, “There were tremendous backlist sales when the first movie came out.”ĭisney has not yet finalized details for Riordan’s fall book tour for Athena. Then on June 5, timed with the opening of BookExpo America, the publisher will launch a new Web site,, with the tagline: “Whose camp are you in?” “We anticipate a lot of kids wearing purple or orange T-shirts to signify ,” says Suzanne Murphy, v-p and publisher of books at Disney Publishing Worldwide, and the mother of a 12-year-old boy who was a reluctant reader until he discovered The Lightning Thief.Įnthusiasts can also look forward to Fox 2000’s release next March 15 of the movie Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Sea of Monsters, with Logan Lerman returning in the lead role and Thor Freudenthal replacing Christopher Columbus as director. Disney-Hyperion is revealing the book’s first chapter today, May 31, at the Heroes of Olympus Web site. Here we offer readers an exclusive peek at the cover of the third Heroes book, The Mark of Athena, due out on October 2.
THE MARK OF ATHENA COVER SERIES
The god of mythology-minded tween literature has his hands full, finishing the third installment in his five-book Heroes of Olympus series, touring for the concluding book in the Kane Chronicles, traveling to Europe to do research for an all-new series based on Norse lore – and he shows no signs of letting up. These days, it requires a Herculean effort to keep up with Rick Riordan.
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