The Red Pyramid Tour

Tour dates have been finalized for the Red Pyramid book release in May!

I never know exactly where the publisher will send me on tour, so getting the itinerary is like getting a surprise party. I'm excited to visit so many great places. As always, my apologies if your city is not on the list this time. Remember, I only have two weeks to travel, and it's a very, very big country.

Tuesday, May 4

Symphony Space

New York, NY

This event is sold out!

Wednesday, May 5

Children’s Book World

17 Haverford Station Rd.

Haverford, PA 19041

Phone: (610) 642-6274

Thursday, May 6

Politics and Prose

5015 Connecticut Avenue Northwest

Washington, DC 20008

(202) 364-1919

Friday, May 7

Little Shop of Stories

133 East Court Square

Decatur, GA 30030-2561

(404) 373-6300

Saturday, May 8

Borders #290

4475 Roswell Rd Ave E Cobb

Marietta, GA 30062

(770) 565-0947

Sunday, May 9

Indigo

Toronto, Canada

No details on the store location yet – stay tuned.

Monday, May 10

BookCase

607 Lake Street East

Wayzata, MN 55391-1776

(952) 473-8341

Tuesday, May 11

Anderson’s Bookshop

123 West Jefferson Avenue

Naperville, IL 60540-5310

(630) 355-2665

Thursday, May 13

Barnes & Noble # 2241

Southlake Town Square

1430 Plaza Place, Southlake, TX 76092

(817) 442-0207

Friday, May 14

BookPeople

603 North Lamar Boulevard

Austin, TX 78703

(512) 472-5050

Saturday, May 15

Barnes & Noble #2353

15900 La Cantera Parkway Bldg 27

San Antonio, TX 78256

(210) 558-2078

The tour is a nice mix of new places and return visits. I'm always happy to visit my friends in Decatur and Austin, and of course I love wrapping up the tour with a hometown event in San Antonio. It's been quite a while since I got to visit the wonderful folks at Children's Book World in Haverford. All you folks that were asking for a Philadelphia area signing, that's you! And of course, I love the fans in Chicagoland. Hope to see you guys at Anderson's.

My readers in the Dallas/Fort Worth area have been asking me to come up that way for a long time. It's been over three years since I last did a public signing there. The event at the Southlake Barnes & Noble is for you guys. I hope to see you there!

It will be my first visit to Toronto. I've been getting a ton of mail from my Canadian readers for years asking me to come up that way, and finally I get to. I don't have details on which Indigo location we'll be using, but stay tuned for that. It'll also be my first visit to Politics and Prose in Washington, D.C., a store I've heard so much about. I still feel bad about the folks who came to see me in rain at the National Book Festival last fall and didn't make it through the signing line (Honestly, guys, I would have stayed and signed for another two hours, but they wouldn't let me). Hopefully this will be a second chance for you D.C.-area readers to come by and get those books signed. I owe you! I'm also looking forward to my second visit to Minnesota. The Bookcase is near the St. Paul/Minneapolis area, so I hope you fans up there can join us!

Of course, the hardest part of any tour is all the places I can't go. You will notice the West Coast is not on this tour, but we haven't forgotten about you. Remember, I'll be touring again when the new Camp Half-Blood series starts in the fall, so there's a good chance I'll have more events in your part of the country, plus I hope some of the other great places we weren't able to fit in to the May tour. And if you aren't able to make an event, most of the host stores are very happy to take orders for signed books. Contact them before the event, I'll sign the books when I'm there, and the store will ship them to you.

I will post more details as they become available. Keep checking my web calendar for updates.

The News from Zeus House

Last month I mentioned that I would be posting less frequently because of my writing schedule. Turns out I was right! Still, this seemed like a good time for a general update on news in the Riordan household.

The first book in the Camp Half-Blood series is with my editor now. And speaking of that, this is her last day at Disney. Jennifer Besser has been with me since The Lightning Thief. As I’ve mentioned before, she was instrumental in the success of the series, so it’s hard to see her go, but she’s going on to great things. She’ll be the v.p. and publisher at Penguin Putnam now, and I wish her all the best! I know she’s only begun to make her mark on the publishing industry. Good luck, Jen. Thanks for everything, and you’ll always have a guest room at Camp Half-Blood anytime you want to visit.

The wonderful Stephanie Lurie will now be editing the Kane Chronicles and the new Camp Half-Blood series at Disney, so I know the books are in good hands. I still remember when Stephanie took over as editorial director at Disney. My friend Neal Shusterman pulled me aside at the Bologna Book Fair and told me how lucky we were to be getting Stephanie. Neal was definitely right!

As for the Kane Chronicles, I’m getting really excited about the release. The first finished copies of The Red Pyramid arrived today, and they look great. The book will be in stores May 4. The launch event will be at Symphony Space in New York, and I understand tickets are almost sold out already, so if you’d like to join us, you might want to book soon. More events will be announced shortly. I’ll be on the road for two weeks, and can’t wait to get out and meet some of you guys. I also just found out that my friends at Little Shop of Stories in Decatur, GA are doing a ‘Camp Kane’ this summer based on my Egyptian series and their own wildly popular Camp Half-Blood. Guess what? Camp Kane is already sold out! Thanks to Diane and the gang at Little Shop for all their incredible support. I hope the kids have a great time going Egyptian this summer.

It looks like the new Camp Half-Blood series will launch in October, but when I have more details I’ll let you know. As you can imagine, I was nervous about how this new book would work after the success of Percy Jackson. Would people accept a return to that world in a slightly different form? To my surprise, everyone who’s read it so far, from my agent to my editors to my own kids, has said they like it even better. Wow – fingers crossed you agree.

Now, I’ve moved on to the second Kane Chronicles book. I’m just in the planning stages, but I have a good sense where the series is going and Carter and Sadie are in for quite a ride!

In other news, I just got my first peek at the fully colored pages for the Lightning Thief graphic novel. It’s looking very sharp. As soon as I have a definite release date for that, I’ll let you know. The Percy Jackson series continues to steam along on the New York Times bestseller list, and I have you guys to thank for that! I appreciate you reading and recommending the books to your friends. I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback about the Percy Jackson Ultimate Guide, too. So glad you’ve enjoyed it.

The weather in Texas is finally turning spring-like after an unusually wet and cold winter. It was sunny and warm yesterday – warm enough to heat up the pool and take a dip! Patrick had the day off for parent conferences, so we all enjoyed a midweek holiday. It’s a good day when you can go straight from your pajamas to your swimsuit then back into pajamas.

What we’re reading: Patrick recently finished reading Malice by Chris Wooding and recommends it highly. We’ve already ordered the sequel. Now he’s reading Into the Maze by James Dashner and says he likes that just as much. It must be true, as he’s staying up late each night to read, because he keeps getting to good parts. Haley has been waiting to read The Red Pyramid in final form, which he can now do as the book just arrived at our house! He’s also been doing a lot of writing, working on the third version of his manuscript. It’s been fun comparing notes with him and talking about the struggles one goes through in the writing process. I keep reminding him that even if he gets frustrated, he’s a lot farther along than I was at age fifteen. Becky has been reading the Flavia de Luce books by Alan Bradley. The second, The Weed that Strings the Hangman’s Bag, just came out. If you like mysteries, this is most definitely a series to watch. My most recent read was also an adult mystery, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. This series has been getting a lot of attention. I’ll admit I had some trouble getting into it. I found the style a little – what’s the word, expository? A lot of telling rather than showing, pages and pages of dialogue that were simply characters reporting information that the reader needed to know. I think I would’ve cut out the first fifty pages and the last fifty pages and had a great story. Still, once I got into it, I found it very compelling, not to mention graphic and gritty, not for the faint of heart. The main characters are certainly some of the most interesting, original and fully realized I’ve ever come across in a thriller.

Next up on my calendar: I’ll be attending the Texas Library Association meeting here in San Antonio on April 15 to do a book signing. It’s always good to catch up with the librarians in my home state. If you’re attending the convention, I hope to see you. And now it’s back to writing. Have a good weekend, everyone, and spend some time with a good book!

Heading Home from New York

Thanks to everyone who came out for the event at the Metropolitan Museum of Art this weekend! We had a standing room only crowd of over 700, and there was a lot of great energy in the room. Super questions from the kids as usual. The Met staff was so well organized and helpful that it made even the long signing line go quickly. I got to do a podcast with the Greek & Roman curator Sean Hemmingway, which should be on the Met's website soon. I stopped by to say hi to the participants in the teachers' workshop -- great bunch of educators. I even got lunch in the cafe, with a beautiful view of Cleopatra's Needle in Central Park (and yes, that's a scene from Red Pyramid). Then it was time for the main event. I talked about the Percy Jackson series, of course, and gave the kids some ideas for pieces to look for in the museum that inspired chapter 1 of the Lightning Thief. I also gave them a sneak peek reading from the Red Pyramid, and the reception was great. The second picture is from the book signing, though it doesn't show the line of hundreds of people that were waiting! Still, everyone was so patient and gracious. Thanks to the Met for hosting us. The Wall Street Journal speakeasy blog has a short write-up of the event if you want to hear more.

The rest of the weekend was also a lot of fun. My mom was my travel companion, and we got to see some great museums -- the MoMA, the Cloisters, the Guggenheim and the Brooklyn Museum. I normally don't get time to do stuff like that when I travel, so it was a real treat. We also stopped by Books of Wonder so I could see the prints from John Rocco's recent art show there. Of course, I ordered some for myself, too! The prints are even more amazing in person, and there are still signed ones left, so contact the store if you're interested in picking up some Percy Jackson history.

In other exciting news, Symphony Space just posted about my launch event for The Red Pyramid on May 4. That will be my next public event, and the first event for the May tour. If you're in the NYC area, make plans to join the party. You might want to reserve tickets soon, though, because if the Met event is any indication, they will sell out quickly.

Now, back to Texas and back to writing! For those of you on spring break, safe travels and have fun!

A Return to Camp Half-Blood

We had a nice week in the Riordan house as I finished up the manuscript for the first book in the new Camp Half-Blood series. It's always quite a relief to wrap up a manuscript, even though I know there are months of revisions ahead of me before it's ready for publication in the fall. Still, the majority of the work is done. The story is in place. And best of all, I got to read it to my kids! Haley and Patrick are always my first editors. Reading it aloud to them, I can quickly tell whether it's going to work for kids, which parts need tightening, which parts might be confusing. Becky was reading the manuscript at the same time, and we all finished it yesterday.

Their verdict? Becky gave it thumbs up. Her first comment, "Wow, the fans are going to be so pleased." I can't tell you why, of course, but she had good reasons for saying that. When I put Patrick to bed last night, he said, "Thanks for writing a masterpiece, Dad." LOL. You've got to cherish feedback like that. Haley told me jokingly that I had gone from being his third favorite author to his second favorite. Woohoo! I'm not sure if I displaced Derek Landy or Suzanne Collins, but either way it's quite a compliment. Both boys wanted to know when the next volume of the series will be ready. They've decided this book is one of my best, and I hope they're right -- and of course, I hope you agree when it's published in the fall. Now it goes off to my editor.

No hints on the plot -- sorry! Title? Nope, can't tell you that yet either. But I can promise you many surprises, and you will get to catch up with old friends as well as meet a cool new cast of demigods. As soon as I can say more -- probably late in the spring -- I will post on my website.

In the meantime, I'm gearing up for The Red Pyramid, which comes out in May. I can't wait to share that story with you, too! I'll be in New York for an event at the Met next weekend -- which I understand is sold out. If you can't attend, I'll blog about it afterwards and let you know how it went.

Have a good week, everyone!

The Emperor's Code

Exciting news in the world of 39 Clues! Cover art for Book 8: The Emperor's Code, was released today, and it's a sneaky cover. Four messages are hidden in the artwork. Some of them are really tough. If you can find at least three, you can enter them on the 39 Clues website and unlock a passage from the book, which gives hints about the next clue's location. The book is written by Gordon Korman, who brought you the excellent second volume, One False Note. The Emperor's Code will be released April 6. Happy clue hunting, Cahills!