I think anytime you’re writing to the middle grades, you’re writing to young readers who are trapped in a number of ways between two worlds: between childhood and adulthood, between their friends and their parents.
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.
To a degree, the Greek and Roman mythological heroes are just the first superheroes. They appeal to children for much the same reason. These gods and heroes may have powers, but they get angry and they do the wrong thing. They are human too.
Ever had a flying burrito hit you? Well, it’s a deadly projectile, right up there with cannonballs and grenades.
It seemed weird calling a teenager ‘sir’ but I’d learned to be careful with immortals. They tended to get offended easily. Then, they blew stuff up.
I said hello to the poodle.
Suspecting and knowing are not the same.
The entrance to the Underworld is in Los Angeles.
Deadlines just aren’t real to me until I’m staring one in the face.
Where’s the glory in repeating what others have done?
My dear young cousin, if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the eons, it’s that you can’t give up on your family, no matter how tempting they make it.
Almost everything strange washes up near Miami.
Sometimes mortals can be more horrible than monsters.
She said this in the same way you might say Fields of Punishment or Hades’s gym shorts.
He was slumped over, blood trickling from the side of his mouth. I shook his furry hip, thinking, No! Even if you are half barnyard animal, you’re my best friend and I don’t want you to die!
You drool when you sleep.
The cafe windows wrapped all the way around the observation floor, which gave us a beautiful panoramic view of the skeleton army that had come to kill us.
Number eight, the silver one, belongs to Artemis. She vowed to be a maiden forever. So of course, no kids. The cabin is, you know, honorary. If she didn’t have one, she’d be mad.
Whats up, Seaweed Brain?
Jumping out a window five hundred feet above ground is not usually my idea of fun. Especially when I’m wearing bronze wings and flapping my arms like a duck.