Hi everyone –

The information in this post may be old news to many of you, but I have been getting a lot of questions from readers asking why both MBA and Musketeer stopped at three books.  The posts where I explained this are now a couple years old, so I thought I would revisit the issue.  The reasons I stopped writing each series are quite different.

Why I ended Moon Base Alpha

When I first started writing this series, I really thought it might run for a long time.  But I also made the decision to write a sci-fi series where space travel was depicted as realistically as possible.  My good friend, astronaut Garrett Reisman, who was overseeing the human space flight program at SpaceX, served as my technical advisor.  I was very pleased with the world that I created, but it had an unforeseen side effect:

It was very limiting.  Moon Base Alpha was small and cramped; there weren’t many rooms and less than thirty residents.  I had originally planned to bring in new residents (which is why the Patucket family is mentioned) but after three books, I was having trouble coming up with new ways to make life in the moon base exciting.

Meanwhile, the world outside the moon base was also more limiting than I had realized.  Planet Earth has billions of different locations, all of which are different from each other — but the exterior of the moon is basically the same, no matter where you go.  True, there is variation, but for the most part, it is moon dust, with the occasional crater or lava tube.  And there is no way to get from one place to another quickly, so even if there was great variation, I couldn’t move my characters very far.

Even worse, the only way to go outside the moon base involved wearing a space suit, which provided its own limitations.  An action sequence in a space suit is very different from one where the characters are free to move about in any way they would like.

Therefore, I realized that, if I kept going with the series, it was going to start feeling repetitive — and I didn’t want that to happen.  I really hated ending the series, because it was a very personal series to me, but I thought that letting it get boring would be worse than bringing it to a close.  (Plus, I was having trouble getting inspired to write another book.)

Many of you have written to me, suggesting various ways to move the series along.  But all of them have their issues:

Why not open Moon Base Beta — or move the series to another planet?

Neither of those really solves my issue with a series that is set in a base on another planet (or a moon) feeling limited.

Why not follow up with Dashiell’s life when he gets back to earth?

What made this series special was the fact that it took place on the moon.  Once it returns to earth, it’s just not that special any more.

Spoiler alert:  Why not continue the story after it ends in Waste of Space, on another planet in another galaxy?

Because, first of all, after the epilogue in Waste of Space, Dashiell is in his forties.  But more importantly, the story would be very different that the type of story I was telling in the series so far.  I wanted to write mysteries set on a moon base, which was technically science fiction, but very heavy on the science.  Switching to a whole new world would definitely open up what I could do — but it would veer into full on science fiction, which isn’t really what I want to write.

So is the series over forever?

Probably.  I won’t rule out the chance that maybe, some day, I will be inspired to write another story in this series, but for now, I am going to focus on the three series I have going: Spy School, Charlie Thorne and FunJungle.  That is really the maximum number of chapter series I can handle.

In the meantime, if you haven’t read the MBA series, you can get the whole thing in a lovely boxed set by clicking here.

Why I ended The Last Musketeer

The Last Musketeer is, to this date, the only series that I have written for a publisher besides Simon & Schuster.  (That’s why the covers look different.)  It is also the only series I have written that was not my original idea.  Before Belly Up was even published, I was approached by an editor at another publishing house (which I will not name).  The editor wanted to know if I would do a three book series and gave me the basic concept: Kid goes back in time and meets the three musketeers.  He had a few other ideas, which I used in the book, although I would say that 98-99% of the story is my own original ideas.  I was told that this was a huge priority for the publisher, and that I would need to be prepared to do a lot of travel to promote the series.

Here’s what happened instead: After I finished the first book, the publisher fired the editor and shut down the entire division.  I still was under contract to do the other two books, but no one really was looking out for the series.  In my opinion, the publisher didn’t do much to market the books at all.  To this day, they have never arranged for a single school visit, festival or book store event.  Meanwhile, the original covers were very disappointing.  Bookstores didn’t realize that I had even written those books.  They looked so different, people assumed that a different Stuart Gibbs had written them.

I would have been happy to write more books in this series if the publisher had supported it.  But it made far more sense to write books for a more supportive publisher like Simon & Schuster instead.  There is little point in writing a book that you think no one is ever going to read.

I spent years pestering the publisher of The Last Musketeer to change the covers, which they finally did.  This change encouraged more bookstores to carry the books, and so they have started selling better — although they still don’t sell nearly as well as my other books, as that publisher really still doesn’t promote them.  The major way those books are promoted is on this website.  At this point, it has been nearly a decade since I wrote that series, so I can say that there is no chance that I will revisit it.

I still like the series, though.  If you want to give it a try, you can get the first book by clicking here.

And just in case you’re interested, here’s what the book originally looked like:

Here’s what it look like now:

Hey everyone!

Many of you have been writing to me, saying that you need a great new book to read.  Well I have one for you.

Super Puzzletastic Mysteries is out today.  It has twenty great short stories written by a cavalcade of exceptional Middle Grade authors: folks like Chris Grabenstein, James Ponti, Kate Milford, Lauren Magaziner, Peter Lerangis… and more.  Including a short FunJungle mystery by me.  Grabenstein himself edited them all — and did his usual, excellent job. Some are hilarious.  Some are touching.  And all are wonderful.

And, for extra fun, you get to match wits with these mystery writers.  Like Encyclopedia Brown mysteries, each story challenges you to solve it — before turning to the back of the book to see if you’re right.

Click here to order it today!

Ten years ago today, I became a published author. Belly Up was released by Simon & Schuster.  If you go back to my very first blog post (which was also published about ten years ago) you will see that it was a very momentous week fo me.  On May 14, I had watched my friend, astronaut Garrett Reisman, blast off into space, and then my family spent the next few days having fun in Florida.  Somewhere around may 18, Garrett took this incredible photo of my first copy of Belly Up (which was an Advanced Reader Copy) on the space shuttle.

At the time that Belly Up was published, I thought that maybe, this might be the only book I would ever write. But thanks to the support of some of the finest people I have ever worked with, such as my agent Jennifer Joel, my publisher, Justin Chanda, editors like Courtney Bongiolatti (who really left publishing to become an FBI agent), Kristin Ostby Hoyle, Liz Kossnar and Krista Vitola, and my cover artist Lucy Cummins (who may have created the finest cover ever for this book), I have now published twenty books and am scheduled for another six over the next two and a half years.  (Plus, there might be some exciting new projects to mention in a few months.)

1. Bookshop.org supports local businesses, which are having a very hard time right now.
2. You will get your books delivered to you faster if you use Bookshop.org.  Amazon has said that shipping books is now a low priority for them.  They are too busy shipping other supplies.
3. Bookshop.org can connect you with local independent bookstores.  Some of them are still open, as they have been deemed vital businesses.  You can’t go inside, but they will deliver your books to you at the curb.  That’s much faster than having them shipped!
4. Bookshop.org is easy to use!  Just click here.
5. Let’s face it, Amazon is kind of evil.  (And frankly, they’re going to be fine.  They’re making plenty of money shipping toilet paper right now.)

And if you want a signed book from me, Once Upon A Time has many in stock.  And they will ship to you as well. Click here to get one!

Finally, if you want an exclusive version of tyrannosaurus Wrecks, with sixteen pages of bonus content, click here to get it from Barnes & Noble.  Yes, B&N is not an independent company, but they are still a bookstore and thus, prioritizing shipping of books over other items.  (You can also order puzzles, games, Legos and other items from them as well.)

I hope all of you are holding up well during this trying time.

Hey everyone –

I am constantly being asked for recommendations for books to read, so I figured I should just write a post about it.

The easiest way for me to introduce you to a trove of incredible authors is to direct you to the Renegades of Middle Grade website, which features the work of eighteen fantastic authors with links to their websites.  Plus, there’s even some fun games devised by my fellow author James Ponti that can keep you busy for a while.  Just click here to visit it.

Or click here to see a great trailer for books by thirteen of us, each talking up our books.

That said, I’ll single out some other great authors that I have become friends with over the years.  Just click on their names to access their sites.

Since I’ve already mentioned him, James Ponti writes great, clever mysteries and just published City Spies, which is excellent.

Sarah Mlynowski has books for just about every age that are all funny and extremely creative (sometimes with a bit of romance thrown in).

Christina Soontornvat also has a book for just about every age, although her newest, A Wish In The Dark, comes out the same day that my new book does and it’s wonderful.

Gordon Korman has published 96 books!  So it’s guaranteed that he’s written at least one that you will love.

Karina Yan Glaser writes the endearing Vanderbeekers series.

Ally Carter writes exceptionally good spy stories and has a brand new middle grade book out this month: Winterborne Home for Vengeance and Valor.

Max Brallier writes hilarious illustrated books like The Last Kids on Earth and Galactic Hot Dogs.

Varian Johnson wrote the award-winning Parker Inheritance and the very fun Great Greene Heist.

Liesl Shurtliff has her new Time Castaway series — and many other great books.

Leslie Margolis writes the Maggie Brooklyn mystery series.  (She’s also my neighbor!)

Julie Buxbaum writes the hilarious Area 51 Files series — and a lot of great YA.

Aly Gerber‘s Liar’s Society series is really fun — but her semi-autobiographical Focused, Braced and taking Up Space are excellent too.

Stamped by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X Kendi, just came out and could not have been published at a more appropriate time.

Genesis Begins Again by Alicia D. Williams has won so many awards, they can barely all fit on the cover.  And it deserves them all — and more.

The Parker Inheritance, by the very talented Varian Johnson, is a great mystery with great characters that will also really make you think.

New Kid, a graphic novel by Jerry Craft, has also won a slew of awards.  And deservedly so.

You have probably already heard of The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas.  But still, if you haven’t read it, you should.

And… this one is for all the adults out there.  My father just published his first book!  It’s an alternative history of the Revolutionary War that wonders what might have happened if George Washington was wounded in battle.  It follows the race to save his life and keep the British from taking advantage of the lack of leadership.  You can get it by clicking here.

And there are so many more that I could list!  Maybe I will get around to adding a few more names to this list when I have more time.  (I’m actually staying very busy right now wrangling my kids and writing more books for you to read.)  But for now, that ought to get you started.

As always, it would be great if you shopped at your local, independent bookstore, or bookshop.org — or even Barnes & Noble, rather than Amazon.

It’s been a long time since I posted about The Last Musketeer.  But there have been some exciting developments since then.

For those of you who are unaware of what The Last Musketeer even is, it’s a trilogy I wrote back in 2011-12 about a modern day kid named Greg Rich who gets transported back to Paris 400 years ago, where he ends up bringing together the Three Musketeers for their first adventure — and becoming the infamous D’Artagnan.

For the past few years, it has been relatively hard to get these books — and the second two in the series were never even released in paperback.

Well that has all changed!  Some of you may have noticed this beautifully redesigned version of The Last Musketeer in your bookstores recently:

Well, the next two books in the series will be re-released this spring!  (Eagle-eyed readers of this website may have already noticed that this has been mentioned in the ‘Upcoming Releases’ on the right hand side of this site.)  On February 26 (which also happens to be the release date of Lion Down) you will finally be able to get The Last Musketeer: Traitor’s Chase in paperback:

And on May 7, the final book in the series, Double Cross, will be available:

And if you prefer audiobooks, the series will soon be available that way too.

If you have never had the chance to read this series, here it is!  It’s full of adventure, swashbuckling, mystery and humor.  I’ve always been proud of this series (my son used to claim it was his favorite of mine) so I hope you check it out.

You can start by getting The Last Musketeer by clicking here.

For those of you who don’t know, the plot of my book Big Game is about someone trying to poach an endangered rhino from a zoo, possibly to steal its horn.

Well, that has now happened in real life.  Yesterday, in a French Zoo near Paris, poachers broke in, killed a four year old rhino and stole its horn.  You can read the story by clicking here.  This is the victim:

I am devastated by this news.  When I came up with the idea for Big Game, it was because I actually had a fear that something like this might happen some day.  But I really hoped it wouldn’t.

The reason this happened is because the price of rhino horn is ridiculously high.  There are still horribly misinformed people out there who believe that rhino horn has the power to cure diseases such of cancer, even though that has never been proven.  (Rhino horn is made of keratin, which is the same stuff that your fingernails are made of.)  As long as there is demand for rhino horn, no matter how dumb the reasons, people will be killing rhinos.

One species of rhino, the African northern white rhino, will go extinct in the next few years.  There only three of them left in the world.

But there is also a decent chance that all species will be extinct in the wild soon, unless extreme action is taken.

If you want to help, I suggest you visit these sites and learn what you can do:

rhinos.org

World Wildlife Fund

Save the Rhino

Thanks,

Stuart

I get this question more than any other (except ‘When is your next Spy School/FunJungle/Moon Base Alpha novel coming out?’) and it’s one of the most complicated questions to answer.  So I’m going to do my best to answer it right now.

Sort of.  It’s very hard to say where ideas come from.  They just kind of happen.  I didn’t really think, “Where would be an interesting place to set a mystery?” and eventually realize, “Aha!  A zoo!”  Instead, one day, a long time ago, the idea of doing a mystery in a zoo just popped into my head and I realized it was a good one.

So maybe the better question to answer is: What do I do to inspire myself to come up with ideas?

There are two parts to that answer.  1) I tend to write about things that interest me.  Note that this is different than saying “Write what you know.”  A lot of people tell me they’ve been told to write what they know, but if everyone did that, we’d end up with a million books about middle school, high school and college.  There are lots of things that fascinate me: animals, zoos, spies, space travel…

2) I research those things.  This is the fun part, because research isn’t necessarily just reading about something (although that certainly counts).  It’s also trying to experience those things, which I find can generate more ideas than simply hanging around, thinking about something.  For example, walking around a zoo inspires more ideas than merely thinking about a zoo.

It’s pretty amazing how effective immersing yourself in an experience can be to generate ideas.  For example, there’s this volcanic crater in Hawaii — Kilauea Iki — that my son and I love to hike in:

Notice that this crater (which only formed in 1959, by the way) looks pretty alien.  In fact, it’s about as close as you can come to hiking on the lunar surface as possible on earth.  Every time I’m in that crater, I kind of feel like I’m on the moon — and I suddenly find myself besieged with ideas for the Moon Base Alpha series.  Ideas that I might not have come up with otherwise.

It just so happens, there’s a pretty awesome lava tube right near Kilauea Iki.  Fun fact: There are also lava tubes on the moon!  A while back, I sought out the help of some scientists who specialize in potential lunar construction, and they’d told me that if we were to build anything on the moon, we’d probably have to set up our first camps in lava tubes to protect ourselves from meteorite strikes.  (Research!)  Now, while looking at a picture of a lava tube is interesting, actually walking through one is considerably more inspiring:

Research like this and inspiration go pretty much hand-in-hand.  If you’re learning about something, inspiration strikes all the time — often for something you weren’t even trying to learn about. For example, I was researching rhinos down at the San Diego Zoo when we dropped by the panda habitat and suddenly, it became evident that FunJungle four ought to be about — you guessed it — pandas.

Meanwhile, somewhere else along the line, I’d had the idea that it would also be interesting to have a story involving dolphins.  So I took it upon myself to do a little research on dolphins as well.  Luckily, a place called Dolphin Quest was happy to do this for me:

Extremely educational — and very inspirational!  (Not to mention awfully fun.  I told you research was the fun part.)  When FunJungle #4 comes out in spring 2017, expect there to be a bit of a dolphin mystery in there, along with the panda mystery.

So if you’re looking for inspiration, I highly recommend trying to experience as much as possible (as long as your parents say its ok.)  Go to zoos and museums and national parks.  Take lessons in things that interest you.  Explore the world!  And read a lot.

(And for those of you still wanting details on Spy School #4 — and what inspired that — I promise you, details will be coming in February some time.)

EXCEPTIONALLY SAD UPDATE TO THIS POST:

Shortly after I wrote this, Nola passed away.  So now,  instead of four Northern White Rhinos left on earth… there are three.

Here’s the rest of the original post, though:

Nola lives at the San Diego Safari Park.  By all accounts, she as as sweet and good-natured as any animal can be; she’s like a two ton labrador retriever.  And she is one of only four northern white rhinos left on earth.  That’s right: THERE ARE ONLY FOUR OF THESE RHINOS LEFT ON THE ENTIRE PLANET.

There are none left in the wild.  The other three are in a zoo in Europe.  And they’re all too old to breed, which means there is really nothing we can do to save them.  This beautiful creature is going to die out in your lifetime.

If you’ve been paying attention to this blog, you’ll know this isn’t the first time I’ve called attention to this.  However, it seems worth bringing up again.  I’ve been traveling around the USA over the past few weeks, talking about the serious problem of rhino poaching (as it’s at the heart of my newest book, Big Game).  And the school kids I’ve talked to are very, very upset to learn about Nola and the rest of her species.

They’re also very upset to learn about the fact that other rhino species are being killed off at an unsustainable rate, meaning they might go extinct in our lifetimes as well.

They’re upset to learn that on average, THREE RHINOS ARE KILLED ILLEGALLY EVERY DAY.

And they’re also upset to hear that elephants are in serious trouble as well.  Right now, on average, ONE OF THESE BEAUTIFUL CREATURES IS BEING KILLED ILLEGALLY EVERY 14 MINUTES.  THAT’S 96 ELEPHANTS A DAY.

Tanzania estimates it has lost 60% of its elephant population over the last five years.

If you want to get involved, there are many great organizations working to help stop the slaughter.  Please check out at least one of these to find out what you (and your family, and your friends, and your school) can do:

www.rhinos.org

www.96elephants.org

www.savetherhino.org

And check out the Save The World tab at the top of this page to learn about other organizations protecting wildlife and their habitats around the world.

Let’s try to make sure that other species don’t suffer the same fate that Nola will.

Thanks,

Stuart

When you want to be a writer, there are some things you dream about: Seeing your book on the shelves of a bookstore, hearing from readers who’ve loved your work… And getting a review in the New York Times.  Yes, there are other places that review books, but for me, the Times has always been the gold standard.  (Maybe because I’ve been reading this book review every weekend for a very long time.)

It turns out, the only thing better than getting a review in the Times… is getting a GREAT review in the Times.  If you’d like to read it yourself, just click here.

Or, I could give you some nice excerpts.  Like: “…a delightful and brilliantly constructed ­middle-grade thriller.”  Or: “In a novel with such a highly imagined plot, a protagonist this layered is a rare treat.”  Or even: “At its heart, “Space Case” is about exploration for the sake of exploration, offering up the same wonder as a good long look at the night sky.”

I cannot possibly describe for you all how awesome this is.  It’s simply amazing.

Meanwhile, this has also coincided with my Six Minute interview popping up on LitPick today.  Click here for it.

Have a happy holiday, everyone!  See you in the new year!