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!

As much as I enjoy writing the Spy School series, the Belly Up series has been a lot more fun to research.  Being an author has opened some doors and allowed me some experiences lately that have been truly wonderful.  I thought that my recent experience getting to meet a rhino at the San Diego Zoo would be tough to top.  And then this happened:

Despite the fact that I have been writing about all sorts of other fascinating animals in my books, elephants have always been the animals that I loved the most.  They are intelligent and emotional and amazing.  I had always hoped to have the chance to interact with them like this, but never got the opportunity until this week.  This is not at a zoo, but at a private facility.  Both these elephants have been rescued from other facilities where they were not being properly cared for.  In addition to having all my research questions answered, I was allowed to spend three hours with the elephants, feeding them, petting them, and occasionally just relaxing with them.

Now if I can only talk NASA into letting me go up on a rocket as research for Space Case…

I will fully admit that I started writing middle grade fiction, in part, so that I would be cool to my children.

Now, in the pantheon of cool jobs, ‘middle grade fiction author’ is still well below ‘astronaut,’ ‘fireman’ and ‘quarterback,’ but still, it was the best I could do.

And for quite some time, I don’t think my kids necessarily regarded the job as being cool at all.

But that has now changed.

As you may recall from the last post, I finally had the joy of reading one of my own books to my son (who is now old enough for them).  He requested Spy School first, and the good news is that he really, really liked it.

Still, this wasn’t what made me cool.

That happened after we finished it.  My son then expressed regret that he’d have to wait until the sequel came out to read that one.

“Actually,” I said, “You’re the one kid in the entire world who doesn’t have to wait for the sequel to come out to read it.”

I happened to have a copy of the sequel right there.  I’d been planning on proof-reading it.

And so, I’m now reading it to my son.  (And proof-reading as we go.)

My son is enjoying this one too, and getting a great amount of joy that he’s the first kid in the world to read it.  (Although he keeps giving me notes.)

This, to him, is cool.

And frankly, the whole experience is awfully cool to me as well.

Now I just have to keep him away from kids whose fathers are quarterbacks.

In posting the following list, I do not mean to indicate in any way that Belly Up is actually better than any of the other works.  Only that, according to the reviewers on Goodreads, it is:

Belly Up: 4.05 avg rating

Hamlet, by William Shakespeare: 4.00 avg rating

Romeo & Juliet, same author: 3.73

A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens: 3.64

The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway: 3.78

Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen: 4.02

Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck: 3.71

Slaughter-House Five, Kurt Vonnegut: 3.88

The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne: 3.27

So, the next time your teacher catches you reading Belly Up instead of the book you’re supposed to be reading for class, just let your teacher know that Belly Up is considered a better piece of fiction by the masses.

I’m sure that will go over well.

So I read at the West Hollywood Book Fair this Sunday and while the fair was lovely — and much larger than I’d expected — it was also one of the hottest days ever in Los Angeles (only beat out by Monday’s 113 degrees).  That’s not the wonderful part.

This was the first time I’ve ever read at an event like this and there was one unexpected result.

It was the first time my children have ever heard me read Belly Up.

This might seem odd, but my kids are still young.  I’ve been trying to get Dash onto chapter books for a while now, though he’s still needed plenty of pictures to hold his attention.  (‘Winnie the Pooh’: Not quite enough pictures.  Shel Silverstein’s ‘Lafcadio’: Close.  Dav Pilkey’s ‘Captain Underpants’ series: Perfect.)

So I hadn’t read my own book to them.  But after I read my passage (the part where Teddy goes to meet Summer at World of Reptiles and trouble ensues) Dash was excited to hear more.  The moment we got home, he went to his room to get his copy of the book and asked me to read it to him.  He really wanted to hear how the hippo got murdered.

Now, there’s NO pictures in Belly Up, except for the gorgeous chapter headings.  I had to explain to Dash that these were merely decorative — and that a chapter with a lion heading didn’t necessarily mean it was about a lion.

I don’t think Dash is quite old enough for this book yet, so I’m reading parts I think he’ll like.  After the first few pages, he told me, “I can picture everything you’re reading in my mind.”

“That’s what reading is all about,” I told him.

I’ve wanted to write a book since I was around Dashiell’s age, but I don’t think it ever occurred to me that one day, I might be reading a book I wrote to my own son.  Or that it might be the first non-picture chapter book he ever listened to.

It’s incredible.  Wonderful Wonderful Wonderful.

In my very first post, I mentioned the fact that I have a good friend who is an astronaut.  There are a great many perks to having a good friend who is an astronaut.  (Though not quite as many perks as there are to being an astronaut.)  Among them:  Occasionally, they are willing to take stuff of yours into space.  For example, the cover of the galley of Belly Up.  (The actual book cover wasn’t ready in time for the launch.):

This was taken in the cupola of the International Space Station.  That big blue thing in the background is our planet.  (In fact, if you look really closely, you can probably see your house in this photo.)

And, just so you don’t think I’m the kind of Dad who carelessly sends his book cover into space and doesn’t think about his kids (or his niece)… Here’s my family… IN SPACE!!!

Awesome, isn’t it?