Background

Rick Riordan was born on June 5, 1964, in San Antonio, Texas.

Education

Rick Riordan attended Alamo Heights High School, San Antonio. During those years he worked as an editor for the school newspaper and won third place in the state for UIL feature writing. He at first began college at North Texas State but later transferred to the University of Texas at Austin. Got a double major in English and history. Got certified to teach English and taught students in the San Antonio Independent School District.

Career

After his graduation from the University of Texas at Austin, Rick Riordan got certified to teach English and taught students in the San Antonio Independent School District. At college worked for three years as the music director at a summer camp (Camp Capers). There he got the idea for Camp Half-Blood. The first full-time job was teaching middle school in New Braunfels, Texas. After that, he taught at Presidio Hill School. Later moved back home to San Antonio and began to teach at Saint Mary’s Hall (English and social studies for grades 6-8) for six years, then stopped teaching to become a full-time writer.

Riordan began his professional writing career with a mystery series centering on private investigator Jackson (“Tres”) Navarre. The first book, Big Red Tequila, was published in 1997, and the seventh and final installment, Rebel Island, appeared in 2007.

He began writing for young adults after his son asked him to tell bedtime stories involving Greek gods. Once he related all the myths he knew, Riordan began making up stories, and the idea for Percy Jackson was created. Percy is a 12-year-old boy with both attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and dyslexia, and he embarks on various adventures after learning that he is a demigod. The five-book series included The Lightning Thief (2005; film 2010), The Sea of Monsters (2006; film 2013), The Titan’s Curse (2007), The Battle of the Labyrinth (2008), and The Last Olympian (2009).

Continuing to explore mythology, Riordan wrote the Heroes of Olympus series. Although it features a new set of main characters, individuals from the Percy Jackson series occasionally make appearances. The five books in the series were The Lost Hero (2010), The Son of Neptune (2011), The Mark of Athena (2012), The House of Hades (2013), and The Blood of Olympus (2014). A sequel series, The Trials of Apollo, began with The Hidden Oracle (2016) and continued with The Dark Prophecy (2017) and The Burning Maze (2018).

During this time, Riordan also wrote the Kane Chronicles, a trilogy involving Egyptian mythology: The Red Pyramid (2010), The Throne of Fire (2011), and The Serpent’s Shadow (2012). He then turned to Norse mythology with the Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard trilogy: The Sword of Summer (2015), The Hammer of Thor (2016), and The Ship of the Dead (2017).

In addition, he created the overall storyline for the 39 Clues series, about two children who race around the world searching for hidden clues. The adventure series features books written by different authors - Riordan penned the first book, The Maze of Bones (2008), and cowrote the 11th installment, Vespers Rising (2011) - and includes additional cards and Internet gaming activities.

Rick also has stated that a new series based on old Norse mythology was being developed and that it would be published in 2015. In an interview with the Boston Globe, he announced that these books will take place in Boston, Massachusetts. In September 2014, during a live webstream, Rick Riordan announced the series would be called Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard. At the back of The Blood of Olympus, the new book title was revealed to be The Sword of Summer. The book was released on October 6, 2015, with the amazing news of new Greek/ Roman series named The Trials of Apollo.

Achievements

• 

  Riordan is the multi-award-winning author of the Tres Navarre mystery series for adults and the #1 New York Times best-selling Percy Jackson and the Olympians and The Kane Chronicles series for children. "Tres Navarre", an adult mystery series about a Texan private eye, won the Shamus, Anthony, and Edgar Awards. His "Percy Jackson and the Olympians" series features the titular twelve-year-old who discovers he is the modern-day son of the ancient Greek god Poseidon. Twentieth Century Fox purchased the film rights and released a feature film in 2010.
  
  Following the success of Percy Jackson, Riordan created "The Kane Chronicles". He also created a sequel series to Percy Jackson, "The Heroes of Olympus". Also helped create the children's book series "The 39 Clues"; he authored several of its books, including "The Maze of Bones", which topped The New York Times Best Seller list on September 28, 2008.
  
  Another Riordan's remarkable achievement resulted from fifteen years of his work teaching English and history at public and private middle schools in the San Francisco Bay Area and in Texas. In 2002, Saint Mary's Hall honored him with the school's first Master Teacher Award.

Works

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  • The Demigod Diaries

    (What dangers do runaway demigods Luke and Thalia face on ...)

    2012
  • Percy Jackson's Greek Heroes

    (Who cut off Medusa's head? Who was raised by a she-bear? ...)

    2015
  • Dark Prophecy

    (Zeus has punished his son Apollo - god of the sun, music,...)

    2017
  • The Mark of Athena

    (In The Son of Neptune, Percy, Hazel, and Frank met in Cam...)

    2012
  • The Blood of Olympus

    (Though the Greek and Roman crewmembers of the Argo II hav...)

    2014
  • Sea of Monsters

    (After a summer spent trying to prevent a catastrophic war...)

    2009
  • 9 from the Nine Worlds

    (The Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard trilogy may have ...)

    2018
  • The Burning Maze

    (The formerly glorious god Apollo, cast down to earth in p...)

    2018
  • Throne of Fire

    (In this exciting second installment of the three-book ser...)

    2015
  • The Crown of Ptolemy

    (In their first encounter, demigod Percy Jackson and magic...)

    2015
  • The Last Olympian

    (All year the half-bloods have been preparing for battle a...)

    2009
  • The House of Hades

    (At the conclusion of The Mark of Athena, Annabeth and Per...)

    2013
  • The Ship of the Dead

    (Magnus Chase, a once-homeless teen, is a resident of the ...)

    2017
  • The Hammer of Thor

    (The thunder god has a disturbing habit of misplacing his ...)

    2016
  • The Trials of Apollo

    (It's not easy being Apollo, especially when you've been t...)

    2019
  • The Serpent's Shadow

    (Despite their best efforts, Carter and Sade Kane can't se...)

    2012
  • Lightning Thief

    (Percy Jackson is a good kid, but he can't seem to focus o...)

    2009
  • Mission Road

    (Tres Navarre is used to working the razor’s edge between ...)

    2005
  • Big Red Tequila

    (Ten years ago Navarre left town and the memory of his fat...)

    1997
  • Titan's Curse

    (When the goddess Artemis goes missing, she is believed to...)

    2007
  • The Maze of Bones

    (Grace is the last matriarch of the Cahills, the world's m...)

    2008
  • The Hidden Oracle

    (After angering his father Zeus, the god Apollo is cast do...)

    2016
  • The Red Pyramid

    (Since their mother's death, Carter and Sadie have become ...)

    2010
  • Battle of the Labyrinth

    (Percy Jackson isn't expecting freshman orientation to be ...)

    2008
  • The Sea of Monsters

    (Seventh grade has been surprisingly quiet for Percy Jacks...)

    2009
  • The Sword of Summer

    (Magnus Chase has always been a troubled kid. Since his mo...)

    2015
  • Battle of the Labyrinth

    (A new prophecy leads to a dangerous quest. When Percy rec...)

    2008
  • The Lightning Thief

    (You've read the book. You've seen the movie. Now submerge...)

    2005
  • The Lost Hero

    (Jason has a problem. He doesn't remember anything before ...)

    2010
  • The Son of Neptune

    (Percy is confused. When he awoke after his long sleep, he...)

    2017

Religion

Riordan doesn’t seem to want to talk about his own religious beliefs. Maybe that’s because he’s not religious, or maybe he’s an atheist, and he doesn’t want to stir any controversy with Christians over his books, which are based in various ancient mythologies. He distances himself from Christianity by saying that “we tend to believe” in it. He also makes a point to distinguish the old mythologies as simply myths, as opposed to modern religion.

Views

In all his novels Riordan makes a strong accent on various ancient mythologies. The novels draw on Riordan's experience teaching Greek mythology and his interaction with students who have learning difficulties. Other than Norwegian mythology, Riordan dove into Greek, Roman, and Egyptian mythology with the Percy Jackson series, The Heroes of Olympus and The Kane Chronicles because he “(grew) up with them.”

Quotations: “Every time I finish a series I think, "OK that’s it, I have now done everything about Greek mythology," and every time I’m wrong,” Riordan said. “Because the deeper you go into mythology, the more you find. More gods, more monsters, more weird stories; and I keep finding things to write about. In this series (Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard), this was the first time I wrote in the point of view of a god.”

Personality

Rick Riordan has always been a big fan of Suzanne Collins, even before she wrote The Hunger Games. He loves Jeff Kinney’s sense of humor in Diary of a Wimpy Kid. He also admires J.K. Rowling, not just for her brilliant series but for all the doors she opened for both readers and writers of children’s literature. He is a big fan of J.R.R. Tolkien since an early age.

Here what Riordan says about his years in college: "When I was a student, I used to daydream in class that I could uncap my pen and it would turn into a sword. Fortunately, it never happened. I would have been sent to the principal’s office." Later Rick started writing as a bedtime story for his son Haley, who was seven years old at the time and was struggling with ADHD/dyslexia. And now, he’s doing very well in university and is hoping for a career in writing.

Interests

• swimming, playing guitar, travelling, online games, tai chi

• Writers

  J.R.R. Tolkien, Suzanne Collins, Jeff Kinney, J.K. Rowling

Connections

Rick married Becky Riordan, originally from the East Coast, in 1985 on the couple's shared birthday. They have two sons, Haley and Patrick. It was Haley Riordan who inspired the Percy Jackson series as a bedtime story. They moved from San Antonio to Boston in June 2013, in conjunction with older son Haley starting college in Boston.

Wife:

Becky Riordan

grandmother:

Lillian Haley

Grandfather:

Jack Haley

Son:

Haley Riordan

Son:

Patrick Riordan

References

• Rick Riordan's Official Website