| An Interview with Rick Riordan | ||||||
| conducted by Steven H Silver | ||||||
|
When I heard Rick Riordan would be speaking just outside Chicago, I bought a couple of tickets for my daughter and a friend of
hers to attend. I also reached out to Riordan's publicist on the off chance that he might be able to squeeze an interview into
his schedule. I was granted a few minutes with the author before his talk. When we arrived at the theatre where it would be taking
place, the line stretched down the block, around the corner, and to the end of the next block. I dropped off my daughter, who was
joined by a friend, and as they were given copies of Riordan's latest novel, The Blood of Olympus, I was escorted into the
depths of the theatre to interview Riordan. When I walked through the theatre after the interview, I stared at the tops on hundreds
of heads and his expectant audience was bent over their newly acquired books, reading.
Before you were an author, you taught. How does your former career influence your writing? 
I would be hard-pressed to think of a way that being a teacher didn't impact the way I present material. It was perfect on the job
training for writing for children, although I didn't realize it at the time. It gave me a very good sense of what kids find
interesting, what they find boring, what they laugh at, what engaging them. I learned everything I know about my audience from my
years of teaching. I taught mostly middle school, sixth, seventh, and eighth grades, so that is kind of the audience I had
in mind when I began writing Percy Jackson, although I've found out the reading age is actually much broader than that, it is
basically from eight up. I taught English, no surprise, and history, no surprise. The mythologies are all right there.
I don't think about it, that's a Campbellian thing to say, I'm not conscious of Campbell's writings and theories when I'm
writing. Of course I'm aware of Campbell and sort of the archetypes of mythology. It's not something I really think of day to
day. It's fascinating stuff. I don't try to write to that, if that makes any sense. Certainly I'm aware of the hero's journey,
and as a teacher I've talked about that a lot with my kids.
It's one of those things that, sure, I've thought of [writing in a non-mythological vein for YA], what would I do if…And I'm
a fairly broad reader. I read a lot of different genres and types of books. But I don't know that I would branch into those,
simply because I think I've found my strength and I'm working to my strength right now, so we'll see. I don't have any adult
books planned. It would have to be something that really just jumped out at me that I would really have to write. Fantasy and
science fiction, romance, well, a little romance is always good no matter what you're writing, you know I started with fantasy
with The Lord of the Rings and got into science fiction from there, Stranger in a Strange Land was one of the
books that really influenced me when I was in high school. Citizen of the Galaxy, great stuff. But I don't know if that
is something that I would want to write, although I still read it. I'm behind, quite a lot in what is out there. I'm just starting
to read some of the great new stuff, like John Scalzi's books are fantastic and Patrick Rothfuss' fantasy is just amazing
stuff. There's some really wonderful stuff being written.
It wasn't too difficult [to merge Greek and Egyptian mythology] because historically the Greeks and the Egyptians were merging
their mythologies for centuries, that's the Ptolomaic dynasty, that's what it was all about. So that really was my stepping
point: Ptolomy and when the Greeks took over Egypt, how they, in fact, tried to merge the mythologies, so that was kind of
my stepping off point.
I have thought about the non-Western mythologies. When I was a teacher I would cover all kinds of mythologies. There are
so many African mythologies I would love to cover. The Aztec and Mayan obviously great stuff. Chinese and Japanese mythologies
are absolutely fascinating. I mean it's really just a matter of what to get to next and how much time I have.
I know that a lot of people are aware of the Thor comic book mythos because of the movies, obviously, and sure,
that's always to the good. Of course, what Thor the comic series does is not really that authentic in terms of the
mythology, but that's fine.
Steven H Silver is a seven-time Hugo Nominee for Best Fan Writer and the editor of the anthologies Wondrous Beginnings, Magical Beginnings, and Horrible Beginnings. He is the publisher of ISFiC Press. In addition to maintaining several bibliographies and the Harry Turtledove website, Steven is heavily involved in convention running and publishes the fanzine Argentus. | |||||
 
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