My husband and I have been dying to see Rick Riordan for
YEARS (5 years to be exact since he was last in Arizona). He normally doesn’t go west of
Texas on his tours, which is just too far to drive to attend an event. We’ve been super bummed because he’s one of
our favorite authors (and I heard he’s hilarious). So when my husband saw the blog post with
tour dates and locations for his Magnus Chase Tour and Phoenix was on the list,
we signed up as soon as we were able to buy tickets!!
KEEP READING AS THERE IS BIG NEWS REGARDING A NEW SERIES!!!
The event was held by Changing Hands Bookstore at an offsite location in a high school auditorium. In order to get a ticket to the event, you
had to buy a copy of the hardcover book at list price ($19.99 + tax) and this
would get you up to 2 tickets to the event.
Since Riordan does not do autograph signings during his events, the book
was also pre-signed by him. The event
was scheduled to start at 7pm, with the doors opening at 6:30pm.
My husband and I drove straight there after work and we didn’t
arrive until 5pm. I had attended an event at the same location held by Changing
Hands for Cassandra Clare’s “Clockwork Princess” release party and the line was
super long already by then. So needless
to say, I felt like I was in the twilight zone when we were about the 10th
or 12th family back in line.
There were maybe 30 people in front of us in line! Woohoo, I knew we were going to get pretty
good seats.
While waiting in line, we were able to pick up our signed
copy of the book and they passed out these really cool foam shields. I believe it was part of Riordan's marketing; they had a lot of them.
They opened the doors a few minutes late, but we were able to get a good seat in
the 5th row in the middle. Hooray!
The event started late though, around 7:10pm.
Riordan finally walked out and basically gave a long
history. He started from when he was a
baby! He went on to explain about his
dislike of reading as a child, the teachers that helped him find books he
actually enjoyed, and the teacher that pushed him to submit his first story to
a publishing company. While a lot of this history you can get from his website
and such, it was still fun to hear it firsthand. He is a great entertainer and
storyteller.
We got to see some very strange covers from the published
versions of his stories in other countries.
Some of them are utterly ridiculous…like this cover in Germany! They've changed the cover since then, but I didn't get a picture with the new cover.
He talked about Magnus Chase and the Sword of Summer a little bit, but since the
book just came out, we did not get much information so as not to have any
spoilers. THANK GOODNESS! We did get to see some character art of the
new characters from Magnus Chase though.
If you’ve read the book, what do you think about these? We heard a really neat story that there was a
girl who did a really awesome fan art cover for Blood of Olympus. Disney thought it was good that they included
it as bonus content in some version of the book. And they now have hired her to do the
character art going forward. What a cool
story – to go from fan to being paid by Disney!! Here are some examples of the character art for the Magnus Chase characters, and the 9 Worlds (my picture of Sam was too blurry so I didn't include it).
He told us that the Magnus Chase series is going to be a
three book series as of now. He said it’s
possible it could change as he continues writing, but it is currently planned
to just be a three book series. He also
went back to one POV in this series.
FINALLY… HERE IS THE BIG NEWS! Rick Riordan announced he is working on
ANOTHER series as well, that is in the world of Percy Jackson. He stated that there were quite a few loose
ends at the end of Blood of Olympus so he thought he needed to go in and round
out Percy’s world. This new series is
titled, “The Trials of Apollo” and will be told from Apollo’s POV. It is going to be a FIVE, did you catch that,
FIVE, book series. He also stated that
since this is being written to really close out Percy’s world, we will be
seeing ALL of the characters from all of the series throughout The Trials of
Apollo’s series. Are you as excited as
me?!
Here is the summary from Goodreads (it was word for word the description that Riordan read to us last night):
"How do you punish an immortal?
By making him human.
After angering his father Zeus, the god Apollo is cast down from Olympus. Weak and disorientated, he lands in New York City as a regular teenage boy. Now, without his godly powers, the four-thousand-year-old deity must learn to survive in the modern world until he can somehow find a way to regain Zeus's favour.
But Apollo has many enemies - gods, monsters and mortals who would love to see the former Olympian permanently destroyed. Apollo needs help, and he can think of only one place to go . . . an enclave of modern demigods known as Camp Half-Blood."
Disney is also finally putting together a physical version
of the the short stories “Demigods and Magicians”, the Greek and Egyptian crossover stories. My
husband and I have been waiting for this to happen for a long time now and it’s
finally here! BONUS: if you purchase the
hard copy of this compilation, there will be a sneak peak at a chapter from The
Trials of Apollo!!
Release dates for the projects Riordan is currently working
on are as follows:
- Demigods and Magicians – April 5;
- The Trials of Apollo: The Hidden Oracle – May 3;
- Magnus Chase & the Gods of Asgard: The Hammer of Thor – October 4.
I hope this information was helpful to anyone who was not
able to attend an event on Riordan’s #norseamericantour. If you ever get a chance to see Rick Riordan in
person, I highly recommend you take it.
He’s was great to listen to and has a great story of perseverance for
budding authors!
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