Meet Reyna

Time for our second character reveal for The Son of Neptune. Meet Reyna, with her automaton hounds Aurum and Argentium. Reyna's godly parent? Hint: it's a god you haven't met yet. Is Reyna powerful? Yes. Are those hounds deadly? Yes. Will she be friend or foe to Percy Jackson? Ah, that's a good question.

The News from Brazil

As I've mentioned before, Percy Jackson is huge in Brazil, and I love my Brazilian fans! After the U.S., Brazil is one of the countries from which I get the most website visits. My Brazilian publisher Intrinseca just sent the pictures above. The purple demigod T-shirts with the Roman design were given as prizes on Percy Jackson's Birthday, Aug. 18. I'm told that Percy was trending all day on Twitter in Brazil during the celebration. Doesn't that shirt look cool?

Below that is an invitation to celebrate the release of the Lightning Thief graphic novel in Portuguese at the Rio Book Festival on September 10. Sadly, I won't be there. I can't travel internationally for signings because of my intense writing schedule, but I'll be with you in spirit. If you can make the festival, I know it will be quite a party! Stop by the Intrinseca booth and tell them Tio Rick sent you.

Meet Frank Zhang, Demigod

The first character art for The Son of Neptune was revealed today at Disney's Heroes of Olympus website! Keep checking back. A new character will be introduced each Tuesday until the book arrives on October 4.

Who is Frank's godly parent? What are Frank's powers? You may be surprised. In fact, Frank may be surprised. But he has a very important part to play in The Son of Neptune.

Olympian Week Details Revealed!

The news broke this morning in USA Today: the seven locations I'll be visiting for The Son of Neptune have been announced! I understand that Disney-Hyperion got hundreds of amazing submissions from bookstores around the country, but alas, I can only go to seven places. Those seven, however, will have quite a party. And the winners are:

Tuesday, October 4:               Books-A-Million (Columbia, SC)

Wednesday, October 5:          Penguin Bookshop/Carnegie Library (Pittsburgh, PA)

Thursday, October 6:              Indigo Books (Toronto, Canada)

Friday, October 7:                   Barnes & Noble (Burlington, MA)

Saturday, October 8:              A Whale of a Tale/Mission Viejo Library (Mission Viejo, CA)

Sunday, October 9:                Tumwater Timberland Library/ Orca Books (Olympia, WA)

Monday, October 10:              BookPeople (Austin, TX)

Now I always have to be clear so people won't get mad at me: I don't choose the locations! A committee at Disney-Hyperion does that, and I don't get the news until the tour is all decided. That's because I have so many favorite cities and bookstores, it would break my heart to say no to any of them. But on the other hand, I can't be touring for more than seven days or the next Heroes of Olympus book won't get written on time, so my publisher makes the hard choices. Runners-up in the contest will receive exclusive event party packages, however, so their work is not in vain! Thank you to everyone who submitted a proposal. You are all fantastic!

Some cool things about the tour: there are several new cities and bookstores in the mix. I've never been to Olympia, Washington before, and I just read that Orca Books plans to have me arrive by yacht. Cool! It's been a long, long time since I've done a Southern California event. Hopefully that Grecian chariot I'll be riding in Mission Viejo doesn't get tied up in Orange County traffic. I've never done an event in Columbia, South Carolina, but I'll be arriving there in Hades's chariot, drawn by three black horses. Sweet! Do I get a Stygian iron sword? Also new to me: Burlington, Mass. -- always happy to go to Massachusetts, and Penguin Books in Pittsburgh. You've got penguins? Don't tell Felix from the Kane Chronicles. He'll be there in a heartbeat. I get to go back to Toronto to visit my Canadian fans -- hooray! And of course BookPeople in Austin -- ah, it really wouldn't be a Percy Jackson tour without my old friends and stalwart supporters at BookPeople. I can't wait to see their Roman legion doing their drills. Awesome stuff.

Also announced today in Disney's press release: the first printing of The Son of Neptune will be three million copies. I am resisting the urge to put my pinky finger next to my mouth and do a Dr. Evil impersonation: "One billion copies! Bwah, ha, ha!" That's a lot of books.
Disney also estimates there are presently thirty million copies of my books in print in the U.S. alone. Let me check . . . yes, that's also a lot of books. Thank you, readers! Your support and enthusiasm for the three series made it happen.

Keep checking heroesofolympus.com, as Disney will be revealing character art and more cool goodies in the coming weeks. Hope to see some of you at an event in October, and more importantly, I hope you enjoy the new book!

The Date Approaches . . .

My editor at Disney-Hyperion just sent the image above, which will soon be printed on boxes for shipment. Can you guess what will be in those boxes?

Yep. Copies of The Son of Neptune. The publisher puts this warning on every box when they send them to booksellers to remind them that the book cannot be displayed or sold until its official release date, Oct. 4. This is so no single bookseller gets an unfair advantage by offering the book early, sort of like making sure every runner leaves the starting line at the same time in a race.

Don't get too excited -- the books aren't even printed yet. I don't even have a copy! But when they are shipped, right before the publication date, that fierce-looking warrior will be emblazoned on all the boxes. What would happen if a bookseller tried to sell the book early? Ah, Hades has a special place in the Fields of Punishment for such behavior, and Zeus has his lightning bolts ready. So nope, no chance the book will come out early -- sorry! -- but I'm anxious to share the story with you on October 4.

In the meantime, pop over to Disney-Hyperion's PJO website and download an event kit to help celebrate Percy's birthday this Thursday, Aug. 18! How old is Percy? He's still sixteen. That's the advantage of being a fictional character. You don't have to age in real time.

You can always check my website's FAQ page for more info, and stayed tuned -- more Son of Neptune news will be coming soon!

The Kanes Continue to Conquer!

Thank you, readers, for being so supportive of the Kane Chronicles! Book #2, The Throne of Fire, has returned to the #1 spot on the New York Times chapter book list, making this fourteen consecutive weeks as a bestseller. Meanwhile, The Red Pyramid is about to come out in paperback next week, so it has moved off the chapter book list, but it enjoyed an incredible sixty-five week run on the bestseller list -- its entire time in hardcover!

After the five-book Percy Jackson series concluded, I was worried readers would not follow me into any other new worlds I created, but you guys have given the Kanes a warm and generous vote of approval. Don't worry -- the Kanes will be back in volume three in 2012. More information on that this fall.

Meanwhile, The Heroes of Olympus series is also roaring along. The Lost Hero remains on the chapter book bestseller list after forty-three straight weeks, and book two, The Son of Neptune, comes out in just under two months, on Oct. 4! More about that very shortly.

ALA's Lost Hero poster

Check out ALA's new poster, featuring exclusive artwork by my cover artist John Rocco. Awesome! ALA also offers bookmarks with this image.

Yesterday I woke up with the urge to clean my classroom, buy supplies, and make my lesson plans, which is how I knew it was getting close to back-to-school time. I haven't had a classroom for years, but once a teacher, always a teacher. Every year, I'd buy new posters to decorate my walls. If any of you teachers or librarians are getting the same itch, you can purchase this poster and many other cool ones at the ALA store. And now, back to making my seating charts . . . er, I mean, writing my books.

Stockholm for the win!

As our Baltic tour continued, we sailed to Helsinki, Finland for a short visit. It was a hot sunny day, but we enjoyed checking out the Finnish capital. Becky’s favorite moment was discovering the Marimekko flagship store and buying a tote bag. We also passed the beautiful art deco train station with the green clock tower, and ate lunch at a co-cop pizza restaurant. You can see a theme – the trip was a pizza tour of the Baltic as well as a mythology tour. Helsinki had a lot of shops and interesting side streets, more than we could possibly explore in an afternoon. Perhaps that’s for another trip!

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The next day we sailed into Stockholm, Sweden to disembark from our cruise. We’d arranged a hotel so we could explore the city for a couple of extra days, and I’m glad we did! Even sailing in, Becky couldn’t believe the beautiful inlets and forested islands with huge homes that reminded us of Tiburon in North California and the Hamptons in Long Island. 

During our taxi drive from the docks, the cityscape got more and more beautiful, until we arrived at the Grand Hotel in the center of Stockholm. We'd visited a lot of great cities on this trip, but the whole family agreed that Stockholm was our favorite. It’s a city of islands and bays, parks and grand old buildings. It reminded us a little of the San Francisco Bay Area with its laid back attitude and beautiful scenery, but most of all Stockholm reminded me of a smaller, tidier London, without the hectic pace, the traffic and the crowds.

Our first day we got blissfully lost. We walked through the island of Skeppsholmen, (the San Francisco Presidio of Stockholm, if you will) and took a ferry to Tivoli Grona Land. It seemed appropriate the end our trip as it began, riding the rides at this amusement park. And yikes, those rides were amazing. I don’t think you could operate rides that extreme in the US without getting shut down. My boys’ verdict: “Epic.” We also visited the Vasamuseet, which features a reconstructed five-hundred-year-old ship pulled from the bay. You really have to see it to believe just how big and impressive this old sailing ship is.

In the evening, we walked through a nearby park and mixed with the locals who were enjoying the long, warm summer night. We shopped at the NK department store and found a great pizzeria. Yes, more pizza!

Our hotel room had an incredible view of the queen’s palace across the harbor. It was hard to go to sleep because there was so much to see. We even had a little office in a round cupola, with windows looking out over the city. I so wanted to make that my permanent writing space.

The next day we wandered into the National Museum, only to discover they were hosting an exhibit on the Greek gods and goddesses. There was Hermes flying over the gift shop! Inside the exhibit, each Greek god had his or her own room with hands-on activities. You could try on winged shoes for Hermes, sit in Zeus’s throne, wander a maze in Poseidon’s sea floor palace, or take a slide straight into the Underworld. I wish we had an exhibit like this for kids in the US. It was great! I’d expected to find more about the Norse gods in Sweden, but even here, deep in Viking territory, the Greeks have invaded.

Later in the afternoon, we visited the Moderna Museet and saw its collection of Jasper Johns, Picasso, Warhol, Salvador Dali – the list goes on and on! Great museum, with a fun collection of kinetic art that moves on its own and causes all sorts of steampunk mayhem. The kids’ favorite piece was the painting machine – modern art that creates more modern art!

In the evening we visited Old Town, passing the royal palace on the way and an Egyptian obelisk – those Egyptians are everywhere, too! We found a wonderful science fiction bookstore, got some ice cream, and visited the Viking Shop, where we got some T-shirts featuring Norse runes and Odin’s two ravens, Huginn and Muninn.

The Riordan family agreed that we were sad to be leaving Stockholm and its cool summer days for the oppressive heat of Texas, but we were also glad to be heading home after such a long trip.

And now we’re back with great memories and a feeling that those mythological gods are everywhere, no matter where you go! Wherever your summer took you, I hope you had as much fun as we did. I came back feeling refreshed and inspired. And now . . . back to writing!