And how Kurt Cobain became an unlikely inspiration.
Although Magnus Chase narrates his adventures in first-person just like Percy, hes a little rough around the edges.
(When we first meet Magnus, hes living homeless on the streets of Boston.)
How do you differentiate your protagonists?
I did want Magnus to be his own person with his own voice.
I just decided that I wasnt going to stress about it if I could avoid it.
So I let Magnus kind of tell me what his story was.
I knew he was homeless, I knew he was 16, so hes older than Percy.
His background is a little rougher.
Hes had some really hard knocks in life.
He does have that sarcastic edge like Percy but hes a little grittier.
Hes a little more cynical about life.
How did you go about tackling that teen homelessness issue and balancing it with your light-hearted tone?
It keeps things from getting unwieldy and just so serious that its hard to kind of take.
I kind of pulled on that.
Its such a huge problem in Boston especially.
It struck me that Magnus might put a face to some of that.
What were lessons you learned from earlier books that you applied to this one?
Well I like to hope that Im learning lessons.
We all hope were getting better at what we do.
I cut my teeth writing private eye novels for adults.
That taught me a lot about the wisecracking first-person narrator.
It taught me a lot about plotting and clues and the mystery elements.
Percy Jackson came from my experience being a middle school teacher.
That taught me what kids like, what they relate to, what they find funny.
Itll have the action, itll have the page-turning, itll have the humor.
Fortunately thats the stuff I like too, so Im happy to do that.
What were the unique challenges of adapting Norse myths versus Greek and Egyptian?
The Norse myths are a lot more gruesome.
They have a lot of blood and violence.
I mean Valhalla is basically about killing each other all the time every day.
So turning that into a funny scene for kids was definitely a challenge.
I think that just sort of reinforces what kids expect anyway, that the world is kind of absurd.
That just ties into that.
Absolutely, mead comes from a magical goat that lives in a tree sure, why not?
We certainly have things that ridiculous in real life.
And I think the Vikings themselves played a lot of that for humor too.
I dont think they necessarily took it all at face value.
Were there any particular Norse gods or monsters you were excited about?
As far as monsters, Fenris Wolf has always just scared the bejeesus out of me.
Hes a pretty amazing monster.
I like your portrayal of him.
Its not that hes a huge wolf but hes got that silver-tongued devil going on.
You even joke about Loki and Thor in theAvengersmovies.
Speaking of Loki, one of my favorite characters in the book is Sam, or Samirah Al-Abbas.
Shes also seamlessly woven into the history of this myth.
Can you talk about the conception of her character?
The idea for her started with the primary sources.
And then again I started pulling on stories from students Ive had in the past.
Samirah kind of came out of that confluence of things.
Another thing thats interesting about the Norse myth is this concept of Ragnarok.
;How did you tackle that?
Is that a unique thing to Norse mythology?
I think it is.
There are prophecies and people give a shot to get around them.
But in the Norse myths, everybody accepts thats the way its going to be.
How do you make the dramatic tension if you know the ending?
Loki has a line in there where he says, Well what you do is change the details.
Thats how you rebel.
Thats how you change the narrative.
Im not gonna complain, because that is what I think he looks like.
Yeah, they noticed.
Did that come out of your own experience?
Yeah thats true, Ive always been close to my mom.
Shes a real strong figure in my life.
Shes a very artistic person, very supportive of me doing creative things.
That is probably where that comes from.
And of course with kids lit, theres always the thing about the absent parent.
Annabeth Chase shows up and is related to Magnus.
How much you’ve got the option to tease for future plans for that?
Are you building to an Avengers of YA mythologies?
That would be really fun.
Whether I will ever get to that point I dont know.
I do very much enjoy the model where worlds are parallel, that they are happening concurrently.
And yeah, Annabeth will be in the series.
She does have a role to play.
Its not huge, but its also not superfluous.
Youll see her again.
