Rick Riordan at the 2009 Texas Book Festival

Rick Riordan has been a fixture at the Texas Book Festival since at least 1998 ... the first year I went. His first series had Tres Navarre as the protagonist and was set in San Antonio. He was a middle school teacher in San Antonio at the time. The first book The Big Red Tequila, a paperback original, won both a Shamus and an Anthony award. His next book, also a PBO, The Widower's Two-Step, won an Edgar. Five hardback books followed in the series .

Rick Riordan then made a brilliant move in 2004 to write a young adult series about greek mythology after his son asked him for stories. Percy Jackson is a schoolboy with troubles in the first book of the series, The Lightning Thief. Four more books followed with the fifth out in 2009. The last book had a first printing of one million books.

Rick Riordan was at the Book Festival to announce to his many fans that the movie, The Lightning Thief would be opening in February.

He brought and showed the audience a sword that was used in the film.

Before the Percy Jackson series ended, Rick found time to start another children's series, The 39 Clues. Rick wrote the first book (the series will eventually have a total of 10 books) but other authors are writing the other nine as he did not have time to write them all.

The books are hardcover without a dustjacket. I found the first book now being remaindered in book stores for a few dollars.

Peter Lerangis wrote the third book in The 39 Clues series. He presented a humorous presentation about himself. He said he was invited to go to Russia with Laura Bush to a book festival. One of his books was available there. However, the Russian version of the dustjacket depicted a scene that had nothing to do with the charactors or plot in the book!

Another big announcement from Rick was that he would be starting a third young adult series. This time about Egyptian mythology.

The series is called the Kane Chronicles and the first book, The Red Pyramid will be out in May.

The audience had many young fans of Mr. Riordan and he let them ask many questions throughout his presentation.

It was obvious that this next series will be a hit as well.

I'll try to do some research to find out what the print run is for The Red Pyramid and report on it. Unfortunately, Rick's signature may be very hard to get in the future. I waited for about 45 minutes this year.

One interesting question that was asked was "what books are you reading". Rick immediately said Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games and also her first series of books. Peter Lerangis is reading her books as well.

This was by far the best part of the festival for me as my $40 purchase of The Lightning Thief two years ago increased to about $400 once Rick Riordan signed it for me.

The value of this book is one reason I am now always on the lookout for promising young adult book authors.

(Be sure to see the December 2009 and January 2010 newsletters for more on collecting young adult books.)

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