No one can hate you with more intensity than someone who used to love you.
Some pain shouldn’t be wished away so easily. It has to be dealt with, even embraced.
Identify the moral dilemma driving the novel. the successful novel will haunt a reader because it deals with some ethical or moral dilemma that makes the reader wonder what he or she would do in the protagonist’s place.
It is true that I once refused to eat haggis in Scotland and this did not sit well with the local population.
We tend to think of divorced or complicated families as a modern invention, and that is not at all true. You only have to read the Greek myths to see broken homes, widows, divorce, stepchildren, children trying to get along with new parents.
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.
The images from the book you make in your head are always going to be the best images.
And please God, grant me the wisdom to remember that I am writing for children, not golden stickers.
I come to writing the same way I come to teaching, which is that my goal is always to create life-long readers.
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.
I like to have a simple workplace.
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.
All of my characters tend to be montages of different people I’ve met: little bits and pieces of their personalities put together.
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 can’t promise that every child with learning differences will become a novelist, but I do think all children can become lifelong readers.
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 feel incredibly fortunate to have had the level of success I’ve had. I was just writing stories for my own sons.
I have to be careful. My readers are very detail-oriented, and if I make a mistake they’ll call me on it.
I love Norse mythology – Thor and Odin and Loki – amazing characters.
I think kids will read more good books than we can possibly produce.